Johan Bengtsson Wessman Letter Part 3

Jag skrif i måndas till Hennry skulle hinna fram till hans födelsedag men ja glömde att skriva något kort och det får ni ursäkta för ja är ju intet vand vid sädana der pålänkligheter.

On Monday I wrote to Hennry and the letter should reach him on his birthday, but I forgot to send him a card and for that forgive me as I am not accustomed to such procedure.

Jag endast tanker att blifva frigiord här och sedan får komma till eder.

I only think of being freed of my possessions here and later to be with you.

I går kväll läste Broder Petterson upp et bref från Carlquist, som var till alla de släktingarna i Göteborg och dett var som ja hadde hört honom tala vid sin höga rina stämma. Dett gick som Broder C. G. alltid sade att dett gick från hjärta och till hjärta; äfven uttryker han sig att hans hustru i normal tillstånd for bade sig och sitt hus och för hela familjen alla och en var så tror, ja att vi prisade Herren för han hadde besvarat våra böner. Du må tro han tilldelade dem trosrika förmananigar som han hadde haft glädjen att inlemma I kyrkan, ja till oss alla.

Yesterday evening Brother Petterson read a letter from Carlquist, a letter to all his relatives in Göteborg and it seemed as if I heard him speak in his loud clear voice. As Brother C.G. always said that it was from one heart to another. Also he relates that his wife and family are in normal states of being and faithful. We praised the Lord for answering our prayers. You may well believe that he conferred on them a wealth of doctrinal admonition in which he was happy to convey to the church, yes, to all of us.

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Johan Bengtsson Wessman Letter Part 2

Ja dett var en stor prövning för dem liksom det var för mig for 18 år sedan som du vet. Ja låg pa Solgrinska i tio veckor och ödelade all mina penningar hela min liande och 250 kronor till. När ja tänker på den stund så går dett inrysning öfver Mitt hela system, men en ting vet ja och dett är om intet det hade varit så, hade ja ju intet gått egenom den Pröfningen; Så att ja annokänner Herrens hand i detta så väl som i de välsignelser som Herren sedermerskafvar tilldelat mig när ja betraktar min ställning som den har varit och hvad den skulle kunnat varit nu om intet Herren i sin nåd hadde gifvit mig förstånd sit frällsande Evangelium och derför hafva vi mycke att tacka Herren för och må vara belotna huru long tiden än synes att vara. Blot vi kan i odminskhet vara tåliga uppfylla våra plikter så godt vi förmår framför allt låt oss vara trofasta i alla omstandigheter.

Yes, that was a great ordeal for them [you] as it was for me eighteen years ago, as you well know. I was laid up in SOLGRINSKA for ten weeks depleting all my money during my suffering and 250 crowns besides. When I think of that adversity I shudder throughout my whole system, but one thing I know and that if it had not been so, I would not have experienced the tribulation and trial so I acknowledge the Lord’s hand in this as well as the blessings that the Lord has later bestode [bestowed] on me. When I reflect on the circumstances as they were and what they could have been if the Lord had not granted me an understanding of His saving grace it is obvious that we have much to thank the Lord for. Let us be faithful in all eventualities.

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Here is a guide to pronouncing Swedish. It is a curious language.

Johan Bengtsson Wessman Letter Part 1

Translation for Mrs Wessman

Göteborg den 25 Jannuari 1895

Kära Älskade make samt mina små gossar, ja äfven mina flickor och mågar Tifalla Lif alla liksom tillfreds i vad ställing ni antager dett är alltid min önskan.

Jag har inget brev fått sedan du omtalade dett öde som hadde drabbat min goda mäg Pärker. Ja undrar just hur dett är med honom. Jag tror väll intet att benet var utaf efter som ditt satt så min ditt kan taga lika lång tid innan ditt blir fulkomligt gott men vi skall hoppas dett bästa, men som jag vet att dett medför verre plågor när dett är så till vridet.

Göteborg 25 January 1895

Dear beloved spouse, also my little boys and even my girls and uncles. That you live in contentment that circumstances permit is always my hope.

I have not received a letter since you reported the affliction that has befallen our good Uncle Parker. I am wondering how he is. I well believe that his leg was not broken the way it sets, but it can take a long time before it is healed. We shall hope for the best, but I know it can be worse in suffering from a sprain.

What a treasure! This is the first of what will probably be four parts to the letter. This is an accurate copy of the translation as given by the unknown Swedish-speaker, even if I see obvious errors (such as Pärker for Parker). When the translation says uncles, it means sons-in-law. How lovely of someone to do this translation for the Wessman family. It is a laborious process. The original letter was evidently written on thin paper and the ink bled through the sheet. Many thanks to Emily for sending the copy of this letter.

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Dedication of the John Morgan Monument

 

 

 

 

Here's a post with a recent picture of the monument and a post about the efforts to create the monument.

Johan Bengtsson Wessman's Trip to America

A few weeks ago I didn't have any documentary information about Johan Wessman's immigration to America. A biography of his son written by his daughter-in-law noted that:

As they were all anxious about the husband and father who was in Sweden it was necessary for them to work to earn money to help him earn passage money. Life was hard for them as their younger brother Joseph was only five years of age when he came with his mother. Later the father came over but lived only six months after his arrival, dying in Kamas, Utah where the daughter Bertha and her husband were homesteading.

Not a bad summary. It's a very minor detail that Joseph was four years old instead of five, and it's likely that Henry was in Utah for longer than six months, as I found out after a hunt for Johan's emigration and immigration records.

First, his emigration records. Sweden kept a record of all its many, many citizens leaving for hopes of a better life in the New World. The record is called "Emigranten Populär, 1783-1951." I don't have an image, but the transcribed record includes the following information:

• Name: Johan Westman
• Birth: about 1840
• Gender: male
• Destination: New York
• Record date: 27 November 1896
• Port of departure: Göteborg
  

And then about three weeks later, the Ellis Island records show the following:

If you look on line 91 (the next to the last line) you can see:

• Name: Johan Westman
• Age: 51
• Sex: M
• Occupation: Farmer
• Country of citizenship: USA
• Intended destination: Utah
• Cabin: Second class
• Number of pieces of baggage: 2
• Port of embarkation: Glasgow

Not all the information is correct; for example, he wasn't a citizen of the United States. But it shows him traveling on the same ship as a number of other people going to Utah, including "C.J. Winder" on the next line. Johan was on one of the last voyages of the ship Circassia. Ship records show that it arrived in New York on December 10, but the Ellis Island records show an arrival date of December 17, 1896.

Ellis Island, where the immigrants were processed for entry into the United States.

The plaque with the poem "Give me your tired, your poor" from the Statue of Liberty.

 A view from Ellis Island across the harbor toward Brooklyn on a very windy day. These photos are from a recent trip to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty taken by seven of Johan and Amanda's descendants, and two in-laws.

 A rather silly photo taken inside the base of the Statue of Liberty. 

With cross-country train service, Johan would probably have been in Utah days or weeks after he arrived in New York. Perhaps he worked somewhere for most of a year before traveling to Utah, but perhaps he was in Utah by Christmas 1896 for a joyful reunion with his family and a chance to meet his two sons-in-law and first five grandchildren. The family records show that he died in Kamas, Utah (above Heber and Park City), on March 15, 1898.

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.

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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).

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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/.