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Like many other Minnesotans, my daughter's paternal Johnson line came from Sweden in the late 1800s. The surname spelling at the time of immigration was actually Johansson, but many Swedes chose to Americanize their surnames upon arrival. This spelling change was not that significant though when one considers that prior to 1901, most Swedes still used a patronymic surname system (Ref 1). That means that rather than being hereditary, Swedish surname changed every generation based on the father's first name. In other words, the surname of Johan August at immigration was Johansson because he was literally Johan's son. Similarly, in Sweden his daughters had been given the surname Johansdotter. Meanwhile, wives kept the surname they were given at birth rather than taking on their husband's last name. So where do we begin then with tracing the "Johnson" surname line? Thus far, the answer seems to be with a man by the entirely different surname of Måns Månsson, born about 1729 in Asby Parish, Östergötland, Sweden.
Organization of Östergötland County, Sweden, before and after the Swedish Municipal Reforms Act of 1862. Ydre Municipality contains 6 districts, which correspond to the former parishes. Arrows in the top figure point to the parishes of the Ydre region of Östergötland: Torpa (#30), Asby (#31), Västra Ryd (#32), Svinhult (#33), Sund (#35), and Norra Vi (#36).
Ydre municipality is a small, rural area within the boggy and forested southern Swedish Highlands. The climate is not unlike that of Minnesota, generally ranging from zones 3 to 5, though perhaps a bit dryer. This was important for Swedish farming immigrants, as it helped them to be more successful with their crops in the first few years after arriving. One of the most stunning land features of Ydre is Lake Sommen, a long, narrow, crystal-clear lake found on its northern border. Science tells us that its nutrient poor waters were formed by cracks in the bedrock due to tectonic plate shifting. However, ancient folklore ascribes its origin to the hoofmarks of a primeval cow named Urkon, who hollowed out the area that became Lake Sommen in a fit of rage (Ref 2). The lake contains the large, "almost island" of Torpön (about 8 miles long from end to end), part of Torpa parish, with which our "Johnson" line became well acquainted.
In the early 18th century when Måns Månsson lived, Sweden had not yet been impacted by the agricultural and industrial revolutions. More than 90% of its inhabitants lived off the land in small clusters of dwellings that formed rural farming villages. Land ownership in Sweden was never taken hold of by a strong feudal system as in England, and so in the early 1700s it was fairly evenly divided between land-owning farmers (freeholders), the nobility, and the Crown (Ref 3, p.3). About 85% of this land was worked by the peasant farmer class. Most of these peasant farmers did not own their own land, and instead rented it from either the nobility or the Crown (as tenant farmers) where they worked as farmhands under contract, usually for a year at a time. Male farmhands were called dräng while female farmhands were called piga (Ref 4).
Typical lodgings (drängstuga) for unmarried farmhands on a Swedish farm in the 1700s. These simple dwellings were shared by several workers each contract season.
Farming life ran by a fairly predictable schedule. Each new contract season started in November. If all had gone to plan, by that time the harvest would have been brought in for the year, and the excess livestock slaughtered for the winter season. Any outdoor repairs that needed to be done were undertaken before the snow set in, and of course there was always loads and loads of firewood to chop. As the cold winter months set in, women spun wool for their knitting and sewing, and tended to the sick, while men repaired tools and transported goods and supplies. Everyone waited anxiously for the spring to come, hoping it would be in time to not out last the food stores and to provide enough growing season for the new crops to fully mature.
Spring was for tilling and seeding the soil, while keeping up with the never-ending weeds. Once the snow had all melted, a few of the younger women were tasked with managing the summer pasture. This would be at someplace close enough to the main homestead to reach quickly, but also large enough to allow the animals to roam freely and graze without getting into the crops. It was their job to process the daily milking into butter and cheese, while keeping an eye out for predators lurking in the woods nearby. Östergötland was known for its Prästost cheese ("priest cheese"), a semi-soft cow's milk cheese with a mild, sweet flavor that was used by farmers to help pay their parish tithes.
These were some of the likely characteristics of the life Måns Månsson was living when he married Brita Pehrsdotter at the age of 26. By age 33, he had managed to find a more permanent position at a farm in the neighboring Torpa parish. It was called Smedstorp, and was home to about 3 other families as well. These families were not as large as one might assume in this age before birth control. The infant mortality rate in Sweden was 45% in the early 1700s, and likely a higher proportion of those deaths occurred among the lower working-class peasants (Ref 6). The reasons for this were many, including poor nutrition, lack of proper sanitation, cramped living conditions, and outbreaks of diseases such as smallpox, dysentery, and cholera at regular intervals (Ref 7). If a child died before christening occurred (by law, within 8 days of birth), the birth may have never even been recorded. This omission is clear in the large gaps of time between many children on Swedish Household Survey records. Additionally, the loss of a mother significantly increased the mortality risk of any of her other children who were less than 2 years of age at the time of her death (Ref 8).
Parish records show that Måns and Brita had at least 5 children, one of whom died at about 3 months of age, (though large gaps in birth ages suggest that they may have had up to 5-6 more who did not survive the neonatal period (Note 2)). Their youngest child, Jonas Månsson (b.1776), was our lines direct ancestor. By the time Jonas was 5, his older siblings had all left home already to work on the neighboring farm of Södra Lindkulla, about 2 miles SE of Smedstorp. The fact that the name of the farm they lived on ended with the suffix "-torp" was significant. A torp was the name for a farming homestead that was being rented by a crofter (Ref 9). Rather than the rent being paid for in cash, however, crofters paid for their tenancy by an agreed upon number of days of labor (dagsverken, ie "days work"). Crofters tended to be married men with families, who were willing to stay for longer periods than contract workers, and thus provided the landowner with stable reinforcements to their annually fluctuating contract work force. In some cases, a son could even inherit their tenancy, and if they stayed long enough, they could usually count on some form of support during their elder years. Also, unlike contract farmhands, who were required to work every non-sabbath day, crofters were generally free to take on other work as well at times, which could add to the financial stability of their household (Ref 10). The croft that Måns Månsson lived on, Smedstorp, literally meant Smiths croft (as in blacksmith), so he was likely involved in forge work of some kind.
Smedstorp farm, now and then (1707). The original farm center is shown in the red circled area on the left. The current town center (SW of Hestra) lies just to the west of the original farmland today. Following the Great Partition Act of 1762, central strip villages with haphazardly partitioned fields such as this were broken up in favor of no more than 4 autonomously owned congruent partitions. The village dwellings were also separated and moved to the outer edges of their new land allotment, permanently altering the original structure of most medieval Swedish farming villages.Johan and Anna Lisa's son, Johan August Johansson (b.1831) (direct line), was born the following August. By the next flyttdag, Anna Lisa had returned to the home of her parents in Sandvik, Lars Jonsson and Lisa Gustafsdotter (see Note 6). Meanwhile Johan left Bjorkevik without a "forwarding address" (see Note 7) and we lose track of him for several years after that. A year after Johan August's birth, Anna Lisa began working as a farm maid at Prästgården farm while her parents cared for her son. Prästgården means "The vicarage", or home of the vicar (ie the parish minister's farm), so perhaps this was seen as a way for her to repair her moral standing within the community (see Note 8).
Duly reformed, in 1834 Anna Lisa went to work for 2 years at Morashemmet, a small, rural soldier torp farm up in the hills about a mile north of her parent's home. (Her son continued to live with his grandparents at that time). Anna Lisa's parents may have thought that in this removed location, and living under the same roof as the soldier whose farm she was working, it would be easier to keep to their daughter out of further trouble. However, just a mile downhill, towards the western Torpön coast, was Boda farm. And working on Boda farm that year was a young man named Peter Magnus Petersson. The only thing we know for certain, of course, is that in about May of that year, Anna Lisa Larsdotter became pregnant again, this time with a little girl she named Anna Stina Petersdotter. Rather than tie the knot with her, however, the father left for a farm on the mainland at the next flyttdag (when Anna Lisa would have been about 4 months pregnant) and married a different woman a year later.
1) Hedblom, F. (1985) "Swedish Personal Names in America". Swedish American Genealogist: Vol. 5, No. 1, Art. 6, p.20. https://digitalcommons.augustana.edu/swensonsag/vol5/iss1/
2) Translated and annotated by Reaves, W. P. “Viktor Rydberg’s Investigations into Germanic Mythology Volume II Part 1: Indo-European Mythology.” Germanicmythology.com, 2010, https://www.germanicmythology.com/ugm2/ugm2no7-14.pdf.
3) Bengtsson, Erik, and Patrick Svensson. “Inequality and Wealth of the Swedish Peasant Farmer Class 1750–1900.” Org.uk, https://files.ehs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/29060824/a8913d7e-6dac-4a00-a8e0-cf270bec3041.pdf. Accessed 2024.5) Torpa (Östergötlands län) kyrkoarkiv, Husförhörslängder, SE/VALA/00382/A I/1 (1783-1790), image id: C0018646_00017, p.11. https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/C0018646_00017
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11) Tomasson, R. F. (1976). "Premarital Sexual Permissiveness and Illegitimacy in the Nordic Countries". Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18(2), 252–270. http://www.jstor.org/stable/178131
13) Högman, Hans. “The History and Organization of Church of Sweden.” Swedish History, 4 July 2023, https://www.hhogman.se/church-of-sweden-history.htm. Accessed 2024.
14) Olsson, M., and P. Svensson. “Agricultural Growth and Institutions: Sweden, 1700-1860.” European Review of Economic History, vol. 14, no. 2, 2010, pp. 275–304, doi:10.1017/s1361491610000067.
15) Fisher, D. (1992). "Sweden during the Industrial Revolution". The Industrial Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13445-8_6.
16) Uppenberg, C., & Olsson, M. (2022). "Under the landlord’s thumb: municipalities and local elites in Sweden 1862–1900". Social History, 47(3), 265–289. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2022.2077478
17) “Swedish Immigration to the U.S./Svensk Invandring till USA.” Minnesota Historical Society, https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/swedishamerican-migration. Accessed 2024.
18) Högman, Hans. “Poor Relief in the Past.” Swedish History, Feb. 2023, https://hhogman.se/poor-relief-formerly.htm. Accessed 2024.