Residence: a Study in Swedish Records

Evidentia comes with many claim types. One of the claim types is ‘Residence’. Why do a residence study? Most genealogy sources are location based, so knowing where your ancestor lived is essential to discovering information about him.

I recently performed a residence study for one my relations. Anna Katrina is the sister of my great, great, great grandfather from Sweden.

Swedish research is blessed with an (over) abundance of records. In addition to birth (or baptism), death, and marriage records, there are also move in and move out records as well as household records that contain running accounting of everyone living in a parish. These records are created in the Parish and are contained in books with each book spanning several years.

The Swedish state archive website (ArkivDigital) contains high resolution color images of these Parish books.

What did I know?

I knew some things about Anna Katrina from records I received from my relatives, but there is much I didn’t know. The following table summarizes what I knew about her residences.

I also knew some information about her mother, grandparents and that her siblings moved to Denmark in about 1856. In addition, I knew the name of her spouse, Johan Hendric Petersson of Fagared, and her son Johan Bernard Johansson.

As you can see there are gaps in the chronology and some conflicting information. Nothing is shown of her life after birth until age 16. There is nothing about her after age 32. In 1843 she is shown both as moving out of Lindberg and living in Lindberg.

Like a typical inexperienced genealogist. I decided to start my search with the last information that I had. I searched in the next book of household records for Lindberg Parsh (1853-1856). I found a record for her with a note that she moved to Kvibille. I searched some Kvibille records (move in and household) but did not find her. I next spent some time looking for her husband in Fagared. No luck. I then looked in later Lindberg records to see if she moved back. Still no luck.

I didn’t make any more progress until I went back and examined the records I already had and made sure that I knew what information was there. This is about the time I started entering information into Evidentia. I also went through and made sure I had household and move in and out records for the time periods where I already knew Anna Katrina’s location.

Somewhere in this process, I found that Anna Katrina had moved into Lindberg from Sollefteå. I don’t remember if I found the move information in the household record or the ‘move in’ record first. Both records are valuable in that they were written at the time by someone who would likely have spoken with Anna Katrina. I could tell it was her since the birth date was the one that has always been used on her official records and her husband’s name was listed as well as her birth place. This was a breakthrough. I searched in Sollefteå, found Anna Katrina, her husband and another child. I used a time-line/table to make sure I knew where the gaps in my information were and I used Evidentia to make sure I extracted and analyzed all the information that would be useful.

What I now know:

What did I learn from this experience?

Building a table or time line was very useful. It made it very apparent where knowledge gaps where.

It is worthwhile to be disciplined in going over and recording the information in the sources found. Evidentia is designed to help with that process.

The residence study is still ongoing. Going forward I should record the searches performed with negative results. It may also be useful to record information on the location of some of her siblings. It seems most likely that she would return to a place she has already been, or go where her siblings or spouse are living.