Sentimental Sunday

Today I just want to vent a bit. Do you ever get emotional about the records you are researching? I do.

I get frustrated at the census takers and clerks who scrawled. A few choice words might even pass my lips. Like this one. Where did she go from Halleby?

I ooh and ahh over beautifully written records. How about this writer? I wish my handwriting were as beautiful.

As I research the records for a family, I get to know them. I know where they lived and about their extended family and friends. Sometimes I do the happy dance.

But there is one group of records that always leave me feeling bittersweet -- the Swedish church records of the 18th and 19th centuries. They are comprehensive, as long as the parish clerk was diligent. I can follow my ancestors and their families from home to home, parish to parish, birth to death.

What breaks my heart, over and over, is the high infant mortality rate. I'm happily rolling along and then bam! A baby or young child dies and I feel the sorrow.

I'm sure that other countries experienced the same loss, especially during the years the crops failed. I know it's not unique to Sweden.

I've spent quite a bit of time in the Swedish records over the past couple of weeks, especially using the more recent records from a free weekend with ArkivDigital. I decided to follow one of my great-grandfather's brothers who changed his name. As I traced forward, I saw the children dying until only one child remained, a daughter who married. My heart was saddened when she and her first baby died within a day of each other.

Of my great-grandfather and his six siblings, there are only descendants left today from my great-grandfather. I believe that our branch survived only because he came to America with his wife and children.

I leave you with a look at one of these wonderful, yet heart-wrenching records. Dad Carl Lagerholm works on the railroad, I believe as an engineer. Mom Ester Fors is a housewife. We see their birthdates and parishes, their marriage date and the parish from which they came, with the arrival date. And we see the wee one with the little cross in front of his name, with the dates of his birth and death. Erik's birth date is wrong, as it has a transcription error. The birth and death records revealed that he was born in 1890 and died at two days old.

Carl and Ester did have more children, including a son who joined his aunts and uncles in America.

I have more work to do in the Swedish records. That means more sad times ahead as I look for the remnants of my family.