The Wessman Home in Göteborg

If you were to visit today, this is the Swedish neighborhood where the Wessman family lived in the 1880s through the 1890s. It appears to have been greatly gentrified.

The Swedish Household Examination Books are an excellent genealogical source. Here is the page for the Wessmans. Their entry begins on the top line.

Here is the first part of the entry for the family.

It lists each member of the family with names, exact birth and marriage dates, whether they'd been vaccinated for smallpox (everyone but the baby), and their religious status.

Amanda and Johan Wessman and baby.

Officials updated the entry yearly. This is the second page showing the name of the neighborhood on the top, Skolgatan 13 and Nygatan 23 (see that corner in the Google Streetview above).

It records their previous residence. If I'm reading it right, they moved within the city to their current location on November 5, 1884. The last columns show Johan moving to a different location and Amanda and the rest of the family moving to America.

"Sweden, Household Examination Books, 1880-1930," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLP2-T36M : 5 April 2019), Johan Westman, from 1885 to 1895; from "Sweden Household Examination Books, 1860-1920," database and images, MyHeritage(https://www.myheritage.com : n.d.); citing from 1885 to 1895, 12842981, Haga AI 6, various Lutheran parishes, Sweden.

Amanda Hall Wessman's Headstone

Amanda is buried at the base of this tree. 

If you look closely, you can see the orange flag marking her headstone. 

After several unexpected delays, Amanda Hall Wessman’s headstone has finally been set. We are so grateful to all of those who donated time and money to help with this special endeavor.

A little about the headstone and its design. It is gray granite, similar to the stone the Salt Lake Temple is made out of. It is the largest stone the cemetery would allow, but we had a lot of information we wanted to put on the headstone!

Amanda Hall Wessman

On the left side of Amanda’s headstone is an image of the Salt Lake Temple. The image represents all her family sacrificed to follow their beliefs and become an eternal family. Fifteen days after Johan’s death in 1898, Amanda had his temple work completed, by proxy, and they were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple for time and all eternity. On January 22, 1902, Amanda and her living children gathered in the Salt Lake Temple to be sealed as a family. As part of that special day, Johan and Amanda’s two children, who passed away in Sweden in 1881, were sealed to their parents as well. 

Johan Bengtsson Wessman

Since Johan is buried in an unmarked grave in Kamas, Utah, we decided to put an image of a sailing ship representing Johan and what he did for a living to support his family.  It is also symbolic of the family leaving their ancestral home and coming to America. (Wind powered ships were no longer in use when they immigrated, but a sailing ship looks better on a headstone than a steam powered ship.)

Johan, Amanda and their seven children are buried in many different places, three of them in unknown locations. For this reason, we felt it was important to list all of the family’s names on the headstone. 

Back, left to right: Henry, Herbert, Joseph.
Seated, left to right: Fanny, Amanda, Bertha.
Photo taken 1906 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

This headstone is a fitting memorial to Johan, Amanda and their children who worked hard and sacrificed so much.  Because of this, we, their descendants, have much to be grateful for.

For those of you who would like to visit Amanda’s grave, in person or virtually, click here.  This will take you to Billion Graves website where you can view an image, obtain a map and get directions.

Here is a list of the rest of the family and where they are buried: 

• Johan Bengtsson is buried in Kamas, Utah, unknown location
• Fanny Constantia is buried here in Salt Lake City Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Bertha Maria is buried here, a short walk from her mother's grave, in Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Gerda Hildegard is buried in Sweden, unknown location
• Anders Johan Herbert is buried in Sweden, unknown location
• John Herbert is buried here in Salt Lake City Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Henry Richard Emanuel is buried here in Salt Lake City Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Joseph Harold Moroni is buried here, by his mother, in Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park, Salt Lake City, Utah

The view from Amanda's grave, looking east. 

The yellow and red flowers are by her headstone.

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 5 of 5

My son Frank came to Mackay to live and I put him in the drug store to help me. Herbert Jr. also came to Mackay. He wanted to get out of Ogden, so he located at Malad Idaho. He started in Malad and picked up a wonderful business. My wife Ruby had been ailing for some time. She had had one operation. She was not getting any better, so we moved her back to Salt Lake. I helped out in Church as a ward teacher, and I was put in as a member of the Sunday school board. Apostle Ezra Taft Benson ordained me to a seventy, Nov. 16th, 1947. 

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 4 of 5

I was doing well in Idaho, but we thought we would be better off if we moved back to Salt Lake City. I bought a nice home at Ucon, I sold it and the Drug store and we moved back to Salt Lake City. I went to work, we bought another nice home in Salt Lake on Princeton Avenue and we prospered there. We met friends and started to go to parties, some of these friends were all right. I was never one to drink and carry on though. About 1923 I bought a drug store at Ogden. I done very well. I eventually started a new store in the residential section, worked hard, made money, but it seemed there was always someone living with us. We had a wonderful home, plenty of rooms and had a houseful all the time.

I got into the machine business and was really taking in the money. Of course, I had to have help, and I put these boarders to work and paid them good salaries. In those days, food was cheap. I remember I bought large hams, 17 cents per lb. It took plenty to keep up the house and business. I was making money, but just couldn’t be every place at once, sold the 5 point drugstore and got rid of the other store and disposed of my businesses, and went to California and stayed all winter.

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 3 of 5

I wanted to help as much as possible, so I went to work for the Western Union Telegraph as a messenger. From the first I done well. I averaged $5.00 a day tips, which was big money those days, and from 5 to 60 dollars a month wages. My brothers went to school and my mother went to work in the Salt Lake Temple. I often think what this meant to both of us, and I thank god for this mother for she was a jewel among women. She started me on the road to success and Church, and I will never forget some of the things she told me. I want to relate an incident that happened. She was not well and one day, the President of the Temple and one of his counselors administered to here, and in the prayer she was told she would be shown what to do to regain her health. One afternoon I came home, she had boiled some potatoes. I noticed she had trouble in peeling them. I said “mother, why don’t you cook them longer”. Her answer “this is the way I was told to do”. By obeying that simple remedy, she was instantly cured and worked in the temple for 42 years – first 20 years not a day was lost when the temple was open.

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 2 of 5

In entering New York, we saw the statue of liberty and landed at the dock six and a half days from Liverpool. It took five and a half days from New York to Salt Lake City. We went to stay with my sister, Fanny Parker, then I went to live with the Charlie Eleason Family at Millville Utah. I stayed at Eleasons for five and a half years, and had many experiences that were new to me. I set traps for wild animals, muskrats, mink, wild cats, coyotes and Mountain Lions. For the bigger animals I used to get help to set the traps at home, for they were so big. I carried them down to the pastures set.

One morning I rode my horse to the pasture when in the middle of the dam, I ran into 3 Mountain Lions. The horse gave one snort and whirled, jumped a 4 wire fence and raced for home. Mrs. Eliason said to her husband there is something wrong, Herbert doesn’t ride his horse like that. He ran to the corral, jumped the poles and stopped. I was still on his back. Another morning I went to the traps and found that a mountain lion got in one of the traps and had gone up the canyon. I was not well and the folks, they said I better stay home. Three young fellows took after it. It had dragged the pole seven miles. They shot it and skinned it. The skin measured 7 ½ feet over the back from foot to foot.

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 1 of 5

Many thanks to Wessman cousin Dave Clawson, who sent this history. It includes lots of new and amazing information about the family.

John Herbert Wessman, born Oct. 14, 1882, Goteborg Sweden. Experiences of my life from the age of three years on.

It was meant for me to live and to come to this land of liberty that is blessed above all other lands of the earth. I have had many unusual experiences and I am grateful to my Father in Heaven that my life has been spared and I suppose it was to be. I had the raising up of a wonderful mother and thank God for this. If I can live an honorable life and graduate with honors in a life to come --in a life hereafter, I owe it mostly to the training of my dear mother.

At the age of three years there was a terrible epidemic of diphtheria. My older brother and sister died with it. Mother left me with a young girl to get medicine for me. I was choking and would have died but she picked me up by the feet and shook me. This broke the membrane in my throat and I recovered well thereafter. There was no diphtheria vaccine and it was almost sure death to have it.