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| Helena Sofia is sitting down and her sister, Anna Lovisa, is standing behind her. The photo was taken around 1885. |
"I think I should start from the
beginning. In the middle of the 1800s, 1850 or so, there was a couple named
Boberg that lived in Grönede. That was my Farmor’s parents. Farmor’s dad had
two sisters and they owned this farm together, but farmor’s dad and mom were
running the place, farming it. My grandmother (Farmor) was Helena Sofia. She
had one sister named Anna Lovisa, and she was the Farmor to Marge Paulsen and
Bubs Olson and Fancher Johnson too. Helena
Sofia, in her younger years -- she must’ve been born somewhere in the 1860s --
she decided that she wanted to go to America so she packed her big -- what we
called koffert -- suitcase of sorts and went to America. Well, she disliked it
so much in America and she had a hard time learning the language, so she just
earned enough money to take her back home, and she went home.
When she came home, there stood her
sister Anna Lovisa all packed and ready to go.
My Farmor begged her sister not to go. “You’re not going to like it.
You’re going to be lonely.” She had all kinds of excuses why her sister should
not go, but Anna Lovisa would not listen. She went and she never made it back,
not even for a visit.
So then there was Helena Sofia to help her parents. They
were getting old, and it was harvest time, and they couldn’t see their way to
do all the work -- the three of them -- so my Farmor, Helena Sofia, she said to
her parents, “I’m going to Gröndalen and ask Johan August if he will come and
help us to harvest.” So he did and he liked it so much that he stayed.
Grandmother (Farmor) and Johan August were married. When they married, then
Helena Sofia’s dad asked Johan August to take the name Boberg. His last name
was Karlsson, but he switched over to Boberg because there were no boys in the
family, and the old man had had a brother, but he was not married and had no
kids, if I understand that right, so that would have been the end of that
Boberg family.
As time went on, my dad and all his
siblings were born in the house in Grönede; that house has later been taken
down; it’s not there anymore but they were all born there. In 1911, I think it
was 1911, they bought Kjettestorp Norrgård because the old father, Farmor’s
father, had died, and I don’t know if farmor’s mother was dead too, and the
sisters then wanted their part, and my Farfar, Johan August and Helena Sofia,
they bought Norrgård in Kjettestorp. In Grönede, my morfar, my mother’s father,
bought Grönede, so mother and her family moved in where dad and his family had
moved out."
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A couple of Swedish notes:
Swedish is very specific in the words used to
identify family members. Far = Father. Mor = Mother. Bror = brother. The suffix
-ster identifies a sister. You can see how these words are put together to tell
us exactly how a person is connected. For example, instead of simply saying
Grandmother, they say either Farmor (father's mother) or Mormor (mother's
mother). The two that are a little different refer to aunts. "Moster"
means mother's sister or the person married to your mother's brother.
"Faster" identifies your father's sister or the person married to
your father's brother. And so on :)
The other thing you might not be aware of is that
farms in Sweden have names that can go back hundreds of years. If you
search the name Grönede, you can find records that go back to the 1500s. The
other farm name that you'll hear mom mention is Kjettestorp. She was born in
Norrgård or the northern farm within the larger farm of Kjettestorp.
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