"Granddaddy" Victor Johnson, 1884-1957, born Anders Viktor Johansson Gästgifvars, is pictured below in 1909.

Click here to see Victor Johnson's ancestors.

December 1997

I remember my grandfather as a stocky man with rough hands and thick fingernails, a shock of pure white hair and eyes so blue they startled you. He didn’t dote on his granddaughters; in fact, he didn’t seem very comfortable with children. I once proudly modeled a new "cowgirl" outfit and his response was, "Why would you want to wear that getup anyway?" But uncomfortable with kids or not, he gave me some good times. He was a carpenter and kept lumber scraps in the basement to make "Lake Superior ore boats" with the grandchildren. He made the first one—sawing the end of a two by four to make a prow and then nailing on increasingly smaller rectangular scraps to make a fine looking boat. Some of them even had smokestacks. We’d finish the boat off with a nail and a string and walk down to Lake Superior to try it out. Soon I was making my own; Granddaddy even bought me my own "little girl-sized" hammer.

He loved the water and the lake. He knew how to do picnics—he’d build a fire for coffee brewed the Swedish way (with egg) in a high enamel pot snuggled among the rocks on the shore. I’d usually be right there to help—and to get warm; the shores of Lake Superior near Duluth were hardly ever balmy even in August when we’d usually visit. He’d also take me to see Duluth’s famous aerial lift bridge. I loved walking to the end of the long concrete pier in rough weather to watch the big ore boats navigate the rough water in the channel leading to the bridge. I’d wave to the deck hands and he’d reminisce about his days as a carpenter on the ore boats. He’d also take me to see the replica of Leif Erickson’s boat in a Duluth park, an important Scandinavian landmark from his point of view. I called it "my boat," though I don’t remember how that started. I always think of Granddaddy more with boats and the lake than I do with building on land, which was his profession.

My grandparents at the beach (Lake Superior). I don't know if the girl is my mother or their foster child, Ethel.

The first I heard Granddaddy had been born in Finland was from his obituary. He died in his sleep in the spring of his 73rd year, my first childhood experience with death. I asked my mother about the obituary and she said he was a Swede, and was born in a part of Finland that had once been part of Sweden. According to her, he considered himself a Swede and was a bit embarrassed to have to explain about Finland. So he didn’t tell anyone he was born in Finland.

Many years later, I remember my mother explaining about his name. She said she had his naturalization papers that showed his real name; it was long and unpronounceable she said. At Ellis Island, they’d asked him his father’s first name. It was Johan—John— so he became Johnson. After my mother died, I looked for the immigration papers, but never found them.

But last summer, I did find something that set me off on a genealogical quest that’s resulted in a family tree that now totals over 2,000 people. Tucked away inside the cover of an old address book of my mother’s were two Swedish documents, dated from the 50ies, which even my rudimentary knowledge of the language could tell were copies of birth records. One showed that my grandmother, Emma Lovisa Andersdotter, was born in Öxabäck parish in the Älvsborg province of Sweden in 1885. The other was the birth record of Anders Viktor Johansson, born in Munsala parish in Vaasa province on 29 September 1884.

The first step in the genealogical quest was to fire off an email to my sister (Ann Helgeson) about the documents. It was her idea to search the Internet for the places. Within hours she’d unearthed sites that told us Öxabäck parish had a famous women’s soccer team and that the coast of Vaasa south of Jakobstad was one of the best areas for windsurfing in the world. It didn’t take long to find the picture of Munsala parish church. Imagine not knowing where you grandfather came from one minute and then finding a picture of the church where he was christened the next!

Well, I put my browser to work too and was soon in correspondence with Ulrika Häggström who works for the principality of Mark—where Öxabäck is located. She knew someone from Öxabäck who described the dirt floor cottage where my grandmother was born and got parish records to show that all the children of the family had emigrated to the US. Ann was soon in email contact with a woman in Finland, Stina Wiklund, who lived in the area where Granddaddy was born and even thought she knew the family. She said that her mother’s friend, Sigrud, was from this family, now named Frilund. Eventually, Stina found an autograph book belonging to her grandmother, like Granddaddy from the village of Peltmo, with a tender message from Anders Viktor Johansson written just before he emigrated to the US in 1902.

The autograph book was such a coincidence that I was skeptical at first. How could the first Finn you contacted turn out to be the granddaughter of your grandfather’s childhood sweetheart? My next step was to look more closely at the birth record. I’d used a dictionary and my rudimentary Swedish to translate it, but I’d missed something. Granddaddy’s name was actually Anders Viktor Johansson Gästgifvars. I’d translated Gästgifvars as something like innkeeper and assumed it was his occupation or his family’s occupation. It turned out to be the "unpronounceable name" my mother had told me about. And that name opened doors.

Once I had the name Gästgifvars, Leif Mather, whom I contacted through the FINNGEN Internet mailing list, found a record of one Anders Gästgifvars, aged 17, who left from Hanko, Finland on 5 April 1902 on the ship s/s Polaris headed for Hull. His ultimate destination was Duluth.

Sue Alskog of the Swede-Finn Historical Society, whom I also contacted via the FINNGEN mailing list, suggested I contact Susanne Holmlund, an Archivist for the records of Vaasa province, for information about my family. Coincidentally, I’d already written to the Vaasa Archives—on the advice on another Internet correspondent—and the request had gone to Susanne. But since I didn’t understand then that Gästgifvars was a name I hadn’t included it with my request and Susanne didn’t have enough information to help. Now she did and quickly came back with five generations of my family in Munsala parish, confirming what Stina had told Ann, that my grandfather was from the village of Peltmo and that his sister, Maja, had married a Frilund whch family still lived in the area.

Susanne also discovered that she and I have a common ancestor in Johan Persson Trött who had three daughters: Karin Johansdotter Trött, Brita Johansdotter Trött and Maria Johansdötter Trott. I am descended from Karin while Susanne Holmlund is descended from Brita and—she recently discovered—from Maria as well. Susanne also told me that the Swede-Finn Historical Society’s Elizabeth Berg is descended from Nils Mårtensson Måtar (whose son Hans Nilsson Rosenlund was married to Karin Johansdotter Trött) so she is a distant connection of mine as well.

Simultaneously, I got additional information from Munsala parish which gave me the address of a living relative in Nykarlby named Karl Frilund. Karl Frilund turns out to be the son of Sigrud who was Stina’s mother’s friend. Sadly, this information shows that Sigrud died in April 1997. I have not yet contacted Karl Frilund, but thanks to Stina, he won’t be surprised when I do.

There’s still so much more to discover. Who exactly is Ernst Frilund, whom Stina called to ask about my family? I find one Ernst, born in 1933, who is the son of Maja and Karl Frilund’s eldest son, Anders Alfred Frilund and his wife Fanny Maria Caldén. Granddaddy had at least one brother who emigrated to the US. According to Stina, a brother, Ville (probably Erik Vilhelm, born in 1879 and died in 1918 emigrated to America in 1899) died in Los Angeles "of too much drinking." Stina also said that young men left in those days to avoid service in the Russian army. Can you blame them?

Back here in the USA, I haven’t yet found immigration papers for Anders Viktor and Emma Lovisa and don’t know when or where they met and married. They turn up in 1909, when, already married, they joined the First Covenant Church. Nor am I sure how Victor (he was A. Victor Johnson in the US) got from Hull to Duluth, though my mother did mention Ellis Island.

And of course, now I’d love to visit Finland. Ann, a Russian scholar, has been to Helsinki many times, but never knew there was a family connection with Finland. The closest I’ve been was an afternoon Hydrofoil trip to Mälmö when I was on a business trip to Copenhagen—just so I could say I’d been to Sweden. One of these days, we’ll pack up and go.