Grandma's family took a bit of researching on Genline to find the correct records. Even with her death certificate, marriage certificate, Naturalization certificate, letters, postcards and photographs, finding the correct Parishes still took hours of pouring through pages of Household Exams, birth records, etc. What really helped to find Grandma's family were the postcards from Göteborg and her birthdate. This information made it fairly easy to find her birth record. Tracking the family through the H.E.'s was a tad bit more difficult until I became proficient at finding the exact information on her birth record.
As you can determine, all of the Genline records are written in Swedish. I had discovered over the years I've researched these records that one tends to pick up on what certain words mean, i.e Död for death, Födde for birth. Ancestry.com made this easier by translating these words in the record description. Still, I was working with Genline for the first 2-4 years before the records became available on Ancestry.com and Genline is a website from Sweden, so learning the basics was a complete necessity. Fortunately, Genline had a web page dictionary for Swedish to English translation on the most important words in the records.
I finally determined she had been born in Örgryte, a municipality in Göteborg. It didn't take me long to find the family in the H.E.'s after that discovery.
Grandma was born in 1895 to Herman Justus Sjöholm and Alma Linde (sometimes spelled Lindhe) Lått.
Herman and Alma had 9 children - 7 natural, 1 from a prior relationship of Alma's, and 1 adopted. When Herman and Alma married, Alma already had a young daughter - Elin Evelina Linde. They proceeded to have 7 more children - Axel Sigurd Linus, Tor Ragnar Hilding, Adolf Fredrik Georg, Herman Julius Gottfrid, Gustaf Otto Rudolf, Ragnhild Amalia Hermina and Judith Linnea Torhilda. They would later adopt another daughter, Sigrid Matilda Dorothea, whom they nicknamed Sigga.
The family moved around a bit before settling for a number of years in Örgryte. Herman and Alma had married in Sil, Skaraborg, where Elin and Axel were born. Alma's parents, Otto Lått and Christina Andersdötter had lived in Sil, also.
The family moved on to Göteborgs Karl Johan, where Tor (who went by Ragnar) and Adolf (who went by Georg) were born.
Herman (their son who went by the name Gottfrid) was born in Göteborgs Gamlestads, where the family lived for a very short time before moving to Örgryte, where the rest of their children were born, except Sigga. Sigga was born in Skälvum, Skaraborg.
After years of studying the photographs of grandma's family, I could tell they were close-knit. But they were not without their share of tragedy and sorrow.
When their son, Gustaf, was just days before his 10th birthday, he fell from a kitchen counter he had climbed on to retrieve something from a top cupboard. He had brought to the kitchen a metal pole that he had been playing with and leaned it against the table. When he fell, the pole pierced him through the stomach and he died, according to Mom, a few days later.
Sorrow again visited the family in 1916, when their adopted daughter, Sigga, died from an illness at the young age of six. At the time, the family was living in Mariestad, Skaraborg. Mom told me it devastated her grandfather, who was quite close and very fond of his adopted daughter.
Of course, Herman wasn't without his share of sorrow and trouble in his life either. My next blog will be on the truth of Herman's parentage, as there was a family story that was unlikely to be believed, and the real tragedy that was the truth.
