I Married a Swede

If I told you that I married a man who is 100% Swedish, it wouldn't seem unusual.  But, his ancestors on both his mother's and father's side immigrated in the 1880's.   For four generations here in the United States they married Swedes.  As a girl who is a bit of this, a bit of that and a whole lot of Irish, it seems so improbable that he can still have 100% Swedish ancestry.

For the past year I have been trying to interest him in researching the family history for his side of the family.  Then, this past week we took a short road trip to visit his cousin. In conversations with Mary she told us about some family documents and photos that she had relating to the family so we decided to travel 8 hours to visit with her and hopefully she would interest him in his family history.  At any rate, we would have some information to pass on to our children before we lost contact with the relatives.

From our visit, I would like to share the photos of my husband's great grandparents, Gustof Erickson and the girl he married, Elida Person.  Gust and Elida were the parents of seven children,  Selma, Alex, Ida, John, Beulah, Hilma, and Gladys.

 

Gust was electrocuted at the Pullman car Factory in 1914 and Elida had to go court to get compensation.  After it was all over, and the attorney was paid, she had $3500.

Mary also shared the naturalization papers for Gust.

Click to enlarge and see detail.

My husband is still only marginally interested, but my daughter has been reading over my shoulder as I write, asking questions and my nephew responded with interest  when I wrote to ask if he wanted to see what we found.  His response:  Awesome!

So even if it isn't through my children, I love the thought that the family history will go down another generation.