An Unknown Heroine

Many thanks to a dear friend for sending this article from the Relief Society Magazine (1920).

Amanda Wessman Documents

Amanda Mathilda Hall Wessman with an unidentified child. Amanda was a seamstress. Perhaps she made the baby's beautiful white dress.

Amanda's birth record from Tanum Parish.

The top says "Födde och Döpte år 1848" (Born and Baptized in 1848.) The record lists the dates she was born and christened and lists the names of her parents (Anders Hall and E.M. Bruhn), age of her mother (21) and the names of the witnesses at the christening.

Woman Grieving.

From the Tanum Rock Carvings, Tanum, Sweden.

www.flickr.com/photos/legumvra/393175485/

As I mentioned last week, Amanda's mother Edla Maria Bruhn died two years later after the birth of her second daughter, Berta. Her father then married Juliana Gustava Andersdotter. They had three sons followed by five daughters. Juliana died in 1885 at the age of 55 and Anders died in 1901 at the age of 79. After moving to Utah, Amanda remained in contact with the family in Sweden, and the temple work was done for each of these family members after their deaths.



The copy of the birth record is from my mother, and I have a number of other parish records photocopied in my files. Many Swedish records are available at the Family History Library, and they're also on Genline.com, but it's a subscription service, and I have too much going on to want to subscribe and look everything up right now. Perhaps another year!

Amanda in the 1900 US Census

Amanda in the 1910 US Census

Amanda in the 1920 US Census

Amanda in the 1930 US Census

Amanda Wessman's immigration record.

This is the record for the ship Alaska traveling from Liverpool, England, to New York, arriving on October 24, 1893. She traveled with her four-year-old son Joseph. As mentioned previously, her two eldest daughters traveled to Utah first, followed by her two sons John and Henry, and then she and Joseph came. She left two children buried in Sweden. I will mention her husband's trip to Utah in a separate post.

The ship Alaska.

Here is an interesting article from BYU Studies (41, no. 4 (2002) pp 75-102): Latter-day Saint Scandinavian Migration through Hull, England, 1852-1894. (You can click on the link to download a pdf copy of the article.)

Wessman 5: Amanda Matilda Hall Wessman

A faithful Temple worker, was born April 7, 1848, at Tanum parish, near Strömstad, Bohus lån, Sweden. She was baptized March 26, 1878, by Elder Ingwald C. Thoresen, and on March 25, 1898 [March 28, 1872], she married Johan Bengtson Wessman in Göteborg. Emigrating to Utah, she arrived in Salt Lake City in October, 1893. Her husband died May 15, 1896 [March 15, 1898], leaving the widow and five children, two having preceded him beyond the vail [sic]. Sister Wessman was miraculously healed from a severe sickness in the House of the Lord, and since 1898 has been laboring in the Salt Lake Temple. At the time of this writing, she has been baptized for 130,000 women, and has been endowed for four thousand. Her son, Herbert, is a druggist at Yukon, Idaho.

Jenson, Andrew. “Amanda Wessman” in History of the Scandinavian Mission, 1927, pp 531-32.

The Wessmans in Sweden, Part 5 of 5

Prospects weren’t too good on the farm. A series of bad harvests and agricultural reforms that denied peasants access to village common grounds drove many families and single people to the city. Johan moved to Göteborg and found work as a sailor. As noted in Part 1, he changed his surname to Wessman.

In Göteborg he married Amanda Mathilda Hall. Her family was also from farming communities in Bohuslän and nearby Dalsland. Perhaps they were merchants or landowners, since some had names like Hall, Brun, and Nordstrom.

Johan and Amanda continued to live in Göteborg, where the pivotal event of their lives occurred. They heard the gospel preached by missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Amanda accepted the gospel and was baptized on 26 March 1878 by Elder Ingwald C. Thoresen. Her children and husband were also eventually baptized, Johan in 1889. Two of their children, Gerda Hildegard (age 3) and Anders Johan (age 10 months), died in Sweden on 26 March 1881. The cause of death is not recorded, but presumably they died in an epidemic.

The spirit of gathering took hold of them, but since they were poor, they had to send the family to Utah in installments, as they were able to raise the money.

They first sent their two daughters Fanny Constansia and Bertha Marie. The two girls traveled with other church members and found work as maids in homes of church members in Salt Lake City, Utah. Next, the two boys Henry Richard Emmanuel (age 8) and John Herbert (age 10) came over with church members. When they arrived in Utah they lived with their sisters. Amanda arrived later that same year (1893) with Joseph Harold Moroni (age 5). They were anxious to have their husband and father join them, so they worked hard to help him earn money to travel to Utah.

Like most Swedish emigrants, they probably left from Göteborg and sailed to Hull in Great Britain, traveled by rail to Liverpool, then boarded a ship for America. They were part of a large emigration: over a million Swedes (a sixth of the population) moved to the United States between 1860 and 1930.

Husband Johan arrived in Utah four years later, only to pass away shortly afterward on March 15, 1898 in Kamas, Utah, where he and his wife were living with daughter Bertha and her husband Martin Olsen who were homesteading. Johan Wessman was 58 years old. That same year Amanda went to the newly dedicated Salt Lake Temple. She received her endowment and had Johan’s work done by proxy. They were sealed. She also did the work for her mother, who had died many years earlier. Amanda’s father died in 1903 and she had the proxy work done for him in 1905. Amanda was a temple worker, so presumably most of the early proxy work done for the Wessman family is her contribution. On 23 January 1902 Amanda and her children gathered in the Salt Lake Temple. With proxies standing in for her deceased husband and children, all of the children were sealed to their parents.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

On Monday... a biography of Amanda Wessman written by assistant church historian Andrew Jenson.

Sources

Historical information on the Wessmans before they came to America is quite sketchy. The Lutheran church records and clerical census were well-kept, so some historical information is available through genealogical records. Legal records are also a potential source for more family history information on the Wessman family. The main challenge in Swedish genealogical research is the language difference. Quite a bit of research has been done by family member Edna Amanda Olsen Taylor. Hopefully her descendants have more information on the family. Please contact me if you have more information on this family, or would like more extensive documentation. Also contact me if you would like a starting place for more research. If you know Swedish, you would be a big help in finishing up loose ends in the Wessman genealogy. There are still plenty of records to look at!

The picture of Göteborg is from www.flickr.com/photos/dalaimages/596097819/. The picture of the ship in Göteborg Harbor is from www.flickr.com/photos/dspender/2989895909/. The third picture is of Amanda and Johan.

The Wessmans in Sweden, Part 4 of 5

Here is a copy of my genealogy on this family:

Rootsweb Wessman File

Much work can still be done on this family. As mentioned before, I only worked on one line of the family, and didn't use entire classes of records.

* * *

The first known ancestors in the Wessman line were Anders Olofsson and Ingrid Olofsdoter from Forshälla parish. He was a farm laborer. Records list six children and I suspect that there are other children in this family, but I could not confirm any others in the sources.

One of Anders' and Ingrid's sons was Per Andersson. He was a farmer. He spent his life in Forshälla and Västerlanda parishes. His wife Anna Bengtsdotter was born at Östra Berg, Hjärtum. They had seven children. Per died at age 53 when his youngest child was one year old. Anna died three years later at age 38. I couldn’t find what happened to the children, as they disappear from the parish and census records. Most likely, extended family members in other parishes took them into their homes.

Anna’s parents Bengt Torstensson and Anna Andersdotter were from Hjärtum and Västerlanda parishes. They had six children. Bengt’s parents were Torsten Olofsson and Karin Andersdotter. They had six children including a set of twins. Anna Andersdotter’s sister Kierstin owned a farm in Västerlanda, but I could not find the parents of these two sisters. Anna was still alive in 1811 and possibly longer. Perhaps she took the orphans.

One of the orphans of Per Andersson and Anna Bengtsdotter was our ancestor, Bengt Persson. Bengt was born on 10 January 1796 on the North Farm (Nordgård) in Västerlanda Parish. He was christened by the Lutheran church on 17 January. He worked as a farmer, at one time a Torpa, a tenant farmer working a small plot. During his lifetime, the nearby Göta Canal linking Göteborg (on the west coast of Sweden) and Stockholm (on the east) was completed (1810-1832). He may have been involved in providing food for the soldiers who built the canal.

When Bengt was 25 years old, he married Ingrid Ambjornsdotter who was 24 years old. She died giving birth to their sixth child, a boy named Helje who then died a week later. Ingrid and Helje were buried together, since it was wintertime. At the death of the mother, the oldest child was 15 years old and the youngest only three years old.

Bengt remarried that same year. Maret Olofsdotter was a single woman with a 13 year old daughter, Borta. Maret had been a servant in several households and had served as a wet nurse for at least two children. Borta was later sealed to Maret and Bengt. Maret’s parents were Olaf Bengtsson and Brita Larsdotter. They lived in Romelanda. Unfortunately, the parish records burned in 1815, so genealogical information on this line is conjectural before that date. In the census Olaf is referred to as Undant: a previous farm owner living on a pension from a farm. He died at age 65. His wife Brita also died at age 65. They had five children.

It is easily imagined that after many years of living as a servant in other people’s households, Maret Olofsdotter was happy to have a home of her own, even one that came with five children. Bengt and Maret had one son, Johan Bengtsson. He was born in 1840 on the farm at Braseröd, Romelanda Parish. Johan is known in the family as “John”, but I prefer to use his original Swedish name for the sake of historical accuracy. Bengt died in 1868 (age 72) and Maret died in 1885 (age 84).

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 5

Assignment (if you care to take it):

Look through the Wessman genealogy file. Look at the types of records that are used to prove names and dates.

I drew the map in 1997. Please attribute this blog if you wish to use it for any reason. The transcription of Bengt's christening record is also mine. Please contact me if you would like any other information on the genealogy of this family. The beautiful picture of the Göta Kanal is from www.flickr.com/photos/tomhe/139860581/.

The Wessmans in Sweden, Part 3 of 5

In all the records I’ve seen, our ancestors were tenant farmers or farm laborers.

Life was more primitive than we're used to. Women were likely to die in childbirth or at young ages of other causes. A normal life expectancy for women in our family in Sweden was 40 years. Edla Brun, the mother of Amanda Hall Wessman died at age 23 after giving birth to her second daughter. Edla’s husband Anders Hall remarried, as did most widowers, and had nine more children. The infant mortality rate was high. Many families lost at least one child to death.

The major events in life centered around the parish church. Some time after birth, a child would be christened with several witnesses attending the ceremony. The Swedes had a tradition that a woman would not attend church services for some time after a baby was born, and then the pastor would accept the woman back into church fellowship. Marriage also took place in the parish church and burials were done in the graveyards around the church. In addition, the Lutheran church kept censuses and kept records of when a person moved from one parish to another. These records are, of course, only as accurate as the parish officials kept them and have sometimes been lost to fire.

I did some research on the “Wessman” side of the family and not the “Hall” side of the family for a college research course. Tomorrow I will include links to the genealogy and provide a map of Göteborgs-och-Bohuslan.

Assignment (if you dare!):

Read the Family History Center’s Research Outline for Sweden. (You can download and print a copy.)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4
Part 5

1. Photo of the church in Tanum where Amanda Hall Wessman was christened from sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanums_kyrka. 

2. Photo of Svarteborg church where members of the Hall family were married and christened from sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svarteborgs_kyrka. 

3. Photo of the church in Romelanda where Johan Wessman's parents were married and he was christened from sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Romelanda_kyrka.jp

The Wessmans in Sweden, Part 2 of 5

Life was hard for our Swedish ancestors. They lived in a very beautiful land, which was quickly becoming overpopulated.

Sweden is about the size of California. It has 96,000 lakes. The country is divided into provinces (landskap). Our Wessman ancestors are from the provinces of Bohuslän (about 25 miles wide and 100 miles long) and Dalsland (30 miles wide and 60 miles long) which are on the western coast of Sweden bordering Norway and just across the Kattegat or strait from the tip of Denmark. Scandinavian borders have shifted extensively during history, so this area has sometimes been under Norwegian rule. The area is rich in legend and superstition including tales of a giant who formerly lived in the mountains of Svarteborg parish (northern Bohuslän), a king and his knights who live inside the mountains of the same area and would return to help Sweden at its time of need, trolls, and little elves (tomts) who lived in orderly households and helped the inhabitants.

Although Swedes now enjoy religious freedom, the Catholic Church was the state religion until the Protestant Reformation, when the Swedes became Lutheran en masse. In doing genealogical research, you must know the ecclesiastical divisions. Information on the Wessman family is in the church records of “Göteborgs-och-Bohus Län” and “Alvsborg”, which are then divided further into districts and parishes. The genealogical records may also mention the farms where people lived. Our ancestor Johan Bengtsson Wessman was born on Braseröd farm, in Romelanda parish, Göteborgs-och Bohus Län (G-o-Bh), Sweden. The Wessmans did not live in the city of Göteborg until the mid 19th century.

Update: I realized that the farm names are probably the same 170 years later. Here's a map of the location of Braseröd farm. It's a 20 minute drive to Romelanda and a 45 minute drive to Göteborg.


View Larger Map

Assignment:

Read a history of Sweden (short or long) and debate with someone the merits of cross-country versus downhill skiing. Extra credit if you do this at Ikea while eating Swedish meatballs.

Part 1

Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The photo of Bohus is from www.flickr.com/photos/jimmyroq/1088257154/. The photo of Göteborg is from www.flickr.com/photos/mikaelmiettinen/3929886448/. The picture of hunting wolves on skis from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wolfskidor.jpg.

The Wessmans in Sweden, Part 1 of 5

Johan Bengtsson was a Swedish sailor. Sweden, like other Scandinavian countries, used a patronymic naming system except when a family name existed, usually among nobility and people of property. Children were named after their fathers. Johan Bengtsson was the son of Bengt Persson who was the son of Per Andersson who was the son of Anders Olofsson. Johan’s mother Maret Olafsdotter was literally Olaf Bengtsson’s daughter. (Genealogists sometimes simplify and write Maret “Olafson” although this is not correct.) Women didn’t change their names when they married.

Amanda Hall and Johan Bengtsson Wessman and a happy child. I'm not aware of any other pictures of Johan.

In the 19th century, the Scandinavian governments discouraged use of the patronymic naming system. Unless a family took a non-patronymic name, the family used the patronymic name that was currently in use. Johan’s daughter-in-law, Jean Wessman, noted that, “John Bengtson… had been legally been given the name of Wessman as there were so many of the name Bengtson on the ship where he worked as a sailor.” He chose the name “Wessman” which was the name of a family in the city of Göteborg (pronounced “yur’-ta-bor-ee” and written in English as “Gothenburg”) where he and his family lived.

If Johan had not chosen this name, the family would most likely now be called “Bengtson” rather than “Wessman.” (Swedish families often dropped the double “s” in patronymic names when they came to America, and it’s often done in genealogy, although it’s not correct to record the names that way until the families started using the new spelling. Names should be listed as they first appeared in the records.)

Assignment (just for fun!):

Read this article on Swedish patronymics and figure out what your name would be if we used a patronymic naming system.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The photo of Göteborg is from www.flickr.com/photos/andreas/3285219827/.

The Wessmans Go To War

 

The Henry and Jean Wessman Family

A photo of the young Wessman family with Jean's parents.

Another copy of the photo has names written on each figure, but some are a bit hard to decipher.

Front: John, Jean, Phil, Betty, Bobby (cousin Robert Edwards, son of L.R.J and Elizabeth Hayward Edwards)

Middle: Merle, Harry, Paul, Dick, Ernest (baby)

Back: Jean, Grandpa Henry Hayward, Henry, Grandma Elizabeth Pugsley Hayward

1946—after the war.

The people in the photograph aren't identified, but I am guessing the following from looking at other photos in which family members are identified. Please leave corrections in the comments. [Thanks for all the comments. It looks like we have everyone correctly identified now. 1.28.2010]

Front: Barbara (Harry's wife), Jean, Marilyn, Elaine Shirts, JoAnn Shirts, Harry (Henry H. Wessman)

Middle: Richard, Elaine (Ernie's wife), Elizabeth Jane (Betty; Phil's first wife), Norinne, James (Harry's son), Jean, Beverly, John

Back: Phillip, Henry H. Jr (Hank; Harry's son), Gammon, Ernest (Ernie), Joseph Shirts

After Jean's funeral.

Front: John, Keith, Liz, Boyd, Gam

Back: Ernie, Harry, Jean, Phil, Norinne, Paul