Research tips for November

The Swedish digital provider of digitized Swedish church record Arkiv Digital announces free access to their records for the Weekend of 12-13 November.


Linda Kvist has started a new podcast about Swedish genealogy in English it is called
Cousin Linda 

The Minnesota Historical Society has opened a new website for showing digitized Swedish-American newspapers. 

Hundreds of Swedish-language newspapers were published in the United States from 1850 onward,
catering to America's Swedish immigrant communities. Use this online portal to learn more about these newspapers, and to search over 300,000 digitized newspaper pages from 28 different Swedish American newspaper titles published across the United States between 1859 and 2007. 


North Park University  in Chicago has digitized the records of the first Swedish church in  Chicago
the St. Ansgarius Protestant Episcopal Church

Founded in 1849, St. Ansgarius Episcopal Church was the first parish established for the growing community of Swedish immigrants in the city of Chicago. The church was formed jointly by the Swedish and Norwegian communities within the neighborhood of Swede Town (present-day River North). Gustaf Unonius (1810-1902), a Swedish pioneer and Episcopal priest, served as the church’s first pastor for 10 years.

New Episodes of Anna-Karins Genealogical Podcast

I have at last published two episodes of my podcast Anna-Karins Genealogical Podcast
with interviews I made at last years Genealogy Days in Falköping.
Among the Interviews are with Ted Rosvall,representatives from DIS-Norge, Genline, Arkivdigital
Sweden-American Center and more.
Today I am of to this years Genealogy Days in Örebro

Genealogy Days in Falköping Aug 21-23 2009

This years Genealogy Days were held in Falköping a small town in the province of Västergötland.
The Genealogy Days consist of the yearly confernce of The Swedish Federation of Genealogical Societies as well as exibiotions and seminars about genealogy open to all intrested in Genealogy.

Day 1 Aug 21

This the first Day of the Genealogy Days consisted among other thing of bus tours for all intrested to the historical surroundings of Falköping an area rich in historical landmarks.
I took a tour to the mediaval historic sites .
Here the "Genealogy Day's General" Ted Rosvall (former chair man of the Swedih Federation of Genealogical societies)
is counting all the participants in the bus tour.
In the background our mediavally dressed guide.

there are many mediaval landmarks of intrest in Västergötland the area along with the province of Östergötland were in the center of what was the mediaval kingdom of Sweden.

Among the intresting stops we made on our tour was at the mediaval church in Varhem. Wich was the site of an important monastery as wich church houses the graves of some mediaval kings and other important people.

To the lesf is the mediaval church of the monastery of Varnhem.the church is still in use but the monasterys buildings only ruins are left.
In the 12th and 13th century two Dynasties were fighting over the kingship the Sverker Families (or clans) (most of their kings were named Sverker) and the Erik Family (most of their kings were named Erik. The Varhem monastery was a stronghold for the Erik Dynasty.and several of their kings are buried in Varnhem.





Day2-3 Aug 22-23rd

In the vendor hall of the conference there was a lot of discussions and sellings of books and other materials from the different Genealogical Societies. To the left is visitors taking a look at
the materials from the Swedish Federation of Genealogical Societies.The local Genealogical Society, Falbygdens släktforskarförening(The Falköping area Genealogical society) hosted the event.













One of the sponsors of the Genealogy Days was ArkivDigital A relatively new company who puts digitalised images of swedish churchrecords online. Arkivdigitals speciality is that they photograph the records in color with makes them more easy to read.





Here my friend Ingrid Nilsson from Trelleborg gets help to find her relatives in ArkivDigitals digitalisedimages







.







Some of the vendors and lectures was also of interest for those intrested in Emigrant research.
Erik Gustafsson from The Swedish American Center in Karlstad came as a representative for EMIWEB. EmiWeb is a webbased archive with databases covering with migration to and from Scandinavia.






Anna Lena Hultman (tot the left) and Ted Rosvall launched their joint project "Emigrant Forskning" (Emigrant research"
It is a handbook in for swedes researching the fate of their relatives who immigrated to USA and other parts of the world.
The book is the first in a series of Handbooks published by the Swedish Federation of Genealogical Societies.
The book is very welcome and I was sure to get my own copy
immideatly ;)

Genealogy Days in Malmö Day 2 part 1

The second Day of the Genealogy Days provided many intresting lectures.
Since the theme of the conference was the
Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 when the provinces of Skåne Halland and Blekinge became swedish (they had belonged to Denmark before that) and how that and following events impacted the people of the provinces as well as Denmark and Sweden.

Many of the lectures of the conference was on this theme. I attended one about "The terrible Swedes" given by Charlotte S H Jensen (in the middle of the picture to the left).Despite this fact she and several other friendly Danes had come as representatives of Samenslutningen af Slaegthistoriske foreninger(Danish Genealogical Societies) to give help and answer questions from people with Danish roots.
For those intrested in Dansih geenalogy here is a link to a thew webpage of Arkivalieronline (Danish archives online).
I even got an interview with charlotte wich I will use in a later podcast episode.




The members Malmö Genealogical Society who organised the conference surely had a lot to do.
As seen on the picture beside. they had their hands full of showing people around. Unfortunately I could not get an interview with any of them.






Among the sponsors of the conference where
Genline and ArkivDigital. 2 swedish companies who provides swedish churchrecords online.
Ancestry.se the swedish branch of Ancestry.com
Where also among the sponsors as well as the City of Malmö