I became interested in genealogy during late 2014 and have used both Family Search and Ancestry to facilitate my research. I am first generation American on my father’s side; and was especially interested in learning about my Swedish heritage. My grandparents were from Uppsala, Sweden and converted to the gospel while they were still in Sweden. The following is is the story of my grandmother, Anna Hedvig Thelin’s and provides a good example of what those that imigrated from Scandinavia went through during the early 1900’s:
In 1902 When I was about 14 years of age I heard a Mormon missionary for the first time. After the meeting some of us were discussing the missionaries. I told my friend that I liked them and I said if I ever gave up the Lutheran Church, I would become a Mormon. When I was 18, I met my husband, Johan Anton Thelin and we were married. To my surprise, I learned that I had married into a Mormon family, although my husband was not a member. He was away from home working at the time his parents and bothers were baptized.
The missionaries were updating the district records, and found a name of a sister for whom they had no address. The missionaries came over to my mother-in-law’s house to see if she knew the address of this sister. I was visiting her so one of the missionaries asked me if I was a member of the Church. When I said no, he started questioning me and preaching the gospel. After about 20 minutes, I could see that the gospel was true. The following Sunday I attended church and went to two more meetings and asked to be baptized. The missionaries wanted to make sure I really knew the gospel to be true and told me the mission president would have to be consulted. I told the missionary that he would be the one to baptize me the next Sunday. The missionary explained that he wouldn’t be able to baptize me because he was called outside of Stockholm to a special cottage meeting. I felt a strong impression that he would baptize me, and told him so. As it turned out, the cottage meeting was postponed and, I was baptized by this elder December 15, 1912. On Christmas Day, my two sons were blessed, and in January of 1913, my husband was baptized. October 1914 my mother also joined the church.
From the time, we first joined the Church, prayed that we would be able to come to Utah, but we had no means whatsoever to pay for this journey. My stepfather asked, “would you like to go to Utah?” I told him, “that it would be my happiest day” and he gave us the money. Before we left Sweden, Father asked us, “who are you going to when you get there?” and I answered, “it doesn’t matter, as long as we can get there”.
We left Stockholm on September 3, 1917 and went to Oslo, Norway where we boarded the boat “Bergensfjord”. The day we left our son, Ingvar, broke his arm. Our trip was a terrible one because of the war. We had to go far off course to get out of the war zone. We even went by Greenland. When we were quite a distance out, a battleship fired a warning shot for us to stop. A boat came along side us and the captain of our boat had nothing to say about the matter, as they went through everybody’s trunks and belongings and papers to check where they had come from and their destinations. Everything was in order, so we were allowed to go on. We arrived in New York on September 22, 1917, at 2PM. All the banks were closed, so we could not buy a ticket to Salt Lake staying on Ellis Island until Monday when the banks were open. We finally arrived in Salt Lake September 29, 1917. There we stood with 2 children, 2 suitcases, and no one there to meet us.
A missionary, Mr. Soderberg, who had been released and was on the same boat with us, told us to come home with him so that we could have some dinner. That night he went with us to Sandy, to try and locate the wife of the missionary who we expected to meet us, and whose letter we had. Later that night we located their home but no one was there. Mr. Soderberg had to catch the street-car back to Salt Lake before it stopped running for the night, so he departed, and we made a bed with our coats for the boys on a bench underneath an apple tree. At about 1AM, the son of the missionary and the son’s wife came home. They could not understand us, nor could we understand them. But we showed them the letter, and the son immediately recognized his father’s handwriting.
His mother was visiting in Salt Lake and came home the next day. After reading the letter from her missionary husband, she exclaimed, “this is a fine place to send an immigrant—what work can he get in Sandy?” She took us back to Salt Lake to her daughter’s home and we stayed there until that evening. Soon Bernard Holmstrom, whom we knew and who had come from Stockholm a few months before us, came and took us to his home where we stayed until we got a place of our own. My husband started to work on Wednesday at the Interstate Brick Company.
Shortly after arriving in Utah, a letter came from my mother, in it she said that my stepfather had admitted to her that he thought I would rather give up the church than to take his money and go to Utah. He thought I was the one of all the family who loved my home the most, and he could not think that I would accept the money and go to America. He told my mother, “there is more to that religion than I ever thought, if Anna would leave her home for it”. He later read the Book of Mormon and was baptized. We were happy to be in Zion and that was all we wanted. Nothing else meant anything.
Soon after I set up my Ancestry account, I received a message via Ancestry from a distant cousin from Sweden named Susanne Åkerfeldt: “Greetings from Sweden! I just found out by seeing your family tree on Ancestry that we’re distant cousins. As I understand it, your great grandmother Gustava was the elder sister of my great grandfather Carl Gustaf. Would love to hear back from you. I have pictures of Gustava and her family and researched ancestry back to the 1600’s on the line we share. Happy New Year! Love, Susanne”
Through this wonderful distant cousin I was able to receive copies of photos and details of our family history.
Another blessing I’ve received since I started doing my genealogy, and after having my DNA done through Ancestry, was the discovery of a half-sister. This discovery turned out to be a positive experience for all concerned, this was largely because all our parents are deceased now. My newly found sister, Barbara was told by her mother when she was in her thirties that her father wasn’t her biological father. Barbara told me the day we met that even at age 83, finding out who her biological father was gave her a long-awaited feeling of peace. Also learning that she was not an only child, but has three sisters and two brothers made it that much more special. I was pleasantly surprised to find out I have two nieces (the oldest is just two years younger than me) and two nephews! We’re very close and since Barbara lives in Salt Lake City; we’ve been able to spend a lot of time together “catching up”.
I am so thankful for the blessings my family and I have received through genealogy research. –Pam Anderson, Newcastle Ward, Sandy Granite Stake