Now that I've covered, pretty much, my paternal lineage (with the exception of Edith's family line - which I will cover later), I want to get going on the maternal lineage, since that is what I've been working on the most for the past few months.
I will start with my maternal Grandmother, Ragnhild Amalia Hermina Sjöholm.
Even though in my early teenage pre-internet days of researching my tree, I was interested in finding out more about my grandfather, Hilmar; it was actually grandma's lineage I pursued. I had more knowledge of grandma, knew her personally (grandpa died before I was born), and Mom's stories of her family were more of grandma than anyone else. Also, having grandma's belongings at the house gave me more insight into her than to grandpa.
Of course, as I mentioned before, the pursuit of genealogy in pre-internet days, especially for a young teenager, was no easy hobby. It was a time when every aspect of researching had to be done by mail - sending away for records from the appropriate repository, whether it was from an archive or a court house. That also included the cost of the source searching for the correct record and mailing it out. A slightly expensive hobby for someone on a babysitter salary.
However, many years later, with the advent of the World Wide Web, that all changed.
For many years after I began internet genealogy, Scandinavian records were still difficult to find online. But Grandma lived in the United States from the age of nineteen until her death at the age of 79 in 1974. So, I concentrated my research on U.S. records - Census, directories, marriage, immigration - any record I could find for her.
It wasn't until I discovered Genline that Grandma's family started to be added to the family tree. It took a subscription to the site, but I was now earning more than just babysitting pay.
Genline is a fantastic resource of Swedish records if you have Swedish ancestry. Now that Ancestry.com has a database for all the records from Genline, it has been much easier to research the Sjöholm and the Bjerkmann family.
The one thing I really like about Sweden's records are the Household Examinations. These records are similar to Census records, recording every person in a household, but instead of every ten years, as in the U.S., H.E.'s were taken every year. Combine this with birth, marriage, death and moving in and moving out records and one can construct a timeline for an ancestor from the time they were born until their death.
FYI: Moving In and Moving Out records are records that were kept of each person moving in or out of a parish. They are very convenient for following an ancestor from one place to another.
So, there were some things I already knew about my grandmother from her scrapbooks and what Mom had told me.
Now, on to the Sjöholm family.
