Swedish America Heritage Online (SweAme)
Special Feature:
To benchmark (so to speak) one of the SweAme
2012 accomplishments (the online documentation of the Iowa Swedish emigrants),
this year’s “Special Feature” is the
Swedish American Museum located in the community of Swedesburg, Iowa.
Swedish immigrants came to Southeast
Iowa as early as 1845, establishing the first Swedish settlements in the
Midwest. In the 1860s Swedish settlers
drained the marshy soil in northern Henry County to create a large new area of
fertile farmland. The village of
Swedesburg grew at the center of this Swedish Heritage area. Today, the Swedish American Museum preserves
and celebrates this story of those settlers and their descendants.
Museum & Gift
Shop Hours
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Monday – Tuesday,
Thursday, Friday & Saturday
Also open by
appointment. Closed New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving
& Christmas.
319 254-2317
Email: swedish@iowatelecom.net
SweAme Purpose:
The Board of Directors of the
SweAme non-profit organization would like to thank ALL of you for your
participation this past year.
This year was our second full year
as an incorporated entity and we are getting great start on accomplishing our
primary purpose and goals.
Our purpose as stated in our IRS 501(c)(3)
status request document and as contained in the SweAme By-Laws is:
A. SweAme is organized
exclusively for charitable, educational, religious, or scientific purposes
within the meaning of Section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
B.
In particular, the purpose of SweAme is for educational and historical
research;
· by the digital preservation of genealogy data,
records, documents, and images related to persons of Swedish ancestry,
· by promoting public
knowledge of and an interest in the history of persons of Scandinavian - and
particularly Swedish – ancestry,
· by presenting the
contents of the Online Internet data base as a FREE
and open resource for all public users,
·
by facilitating an environment of learning and
participation by Swedish Emigrant’s Swedish and American descendants in the
documentation of their own separate branches
Our goals and objectives to accomplish this purpose are being met by our
growing volume of Registered Users and the accumulation of multiple types of
historical information. This growth has
been the result of a strong growth in the interest in family genealogy and
historical documentation by Swedish American and Swedish descendants and, of
course, the increased availability and functionality of the Internet.
The SweAme focus will continue to be the
digitization of the Swedish immigrants who were living in America and
documented in the 1900 census records.
This basic immigrant family information is being updated by Registered
Users on both sides of the Atlantic with information on their own expanding
family branches.
SweAme Accomplishments:
Website Expansion
The SweAme (www.sweame.org) website (aka as swedesintexas.com) has been well positioned to
facilitate the growing interest in digitizing our past and present and
therefore this interest has exceeded our expectations. As of December 31, 2012, the data base
statistics have more than doubled over the previous reporting year:
2012 2011 % Growth
Individuals: 264,327 124,473 112%
Families 69,065 32,526 112%
Program Status
In 2012 SweAme project teams have completed the
states of Maine, California, Iowa and Kansas.
This brings the total emigrant count up to 88,176, which is 15% of
the Swedish emigrants who were living in America in the year 1900. The total completed state and territory count
is up to 28 (which includes Washington D.C. and St. Louis County, Minnesota). This leaves SweAme with 24 remaining states and
territories to capture and document online.
Hardware & Software Upgrades
This year’s significant
hardware/software accomplishment was the expansion of the host services platform
from one website data base onto three websites and three data bases. This was necessary in order to prepare for the
future data base storage and bandwidth requirements to support the growing number
of Registered Users, now over 1,100.
The three SweAme websites are:
·
The original SweAme (aka Swedes In Texas) which includes most of the United
States geographic areas (view at SweAme) ,
·
Swedes In Minnesota is planned for the immigrants who
lived in Minnesota (view at Swedes In Minnesota), and
·
Swedes In ILNYMA is planned for the immigrants who
lived in the three states – Illinois, New York and Massachusetts (view at Swedes In IL, NY & MA.
Project Completions
This year’s major
project accomplishment was funded by the The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.
This project was completed in August and included the Swedish
immigrants that were living in 1900 in the two states; Maine and California. It was executed by four contractors; Brenda
Dahlberg (Dallas, Texas), Kathie Pearson (Stamford, Texas), Melissa Loftus
(Grafton, Illinois) and Maria Sällemark (Hässelby, Sweden).
Process Revision
This year’s most
significant technical/process accomplishment was the development and
implementation of an Excel Macro developed by Norm Lundquist from Iowa. His Macro has dramatically changed the SweAme
execution process from keying data onto the website to a “copy and paste”
function. The “copy and paste” function
is followed by a Macro software execution that builds the data file that is imported
by the SweAme genealogy software onto the website data bases. We owe Norm (a volunteer) a huge debt of
thanks for his willingness to assist our SweAme program. This improvement in process decreases project
time and cost by a factor of 7 to 8 times – dependent upon the concentration of
Swedes in a particular township.
Personal Contacts Obtained
This year’s most
rewarding accomplishment was connecting a Swedish descendant born and
raised in Australia with a cousin born and raised in Texas. Cousin connections have occurred several
times over the past five years that SweAme has been Online. But, this event was
very unique.
Brett Lynn from Orbost, Victoria, Australia (a down under
mate) got a SweAme website hit on a Swedish emigrant Charles Theodor Suderman
who was a brother to his great-grandfather Gustaf Elof Sederlan (previously
spelled as Suderman and Söderman in Sweden). Brett became our first user from Australia. The Swedish emigrant that he had found had
traveled the oceans and landed up for good in Galveston, Texas. Brett’s ancestor - Gustaf Elof Sederlan - had
also traveled the oceans. And, he had landed
and stayed in Sydney, New South Wales to settle in Trentham, Victoria,
Australia.
Brett
Brett asked for some help in finding a living cousin in
America. In this case, we had a very short distance to look. Charles Theodor
Suderman had a grandson by the name of Charles Theodore Suderman - who just
happened to be one of our SweAme Registered Users. As they say “THAT’S WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT”.
J
Charles
Here is their Relationship Chart.
We are very excited that the SweAme website can facilitate
such a rewarding event that brings Swedish descendants together – no matter
where in the world they live.
Special Recognition
The SweAme management team would like to
recognize and sincerely thank two outstanding Registered Users for their significant
contribution in 2012. These two are David
Anderson and Charles Lundquist.
David, who lives in Portland,
Oregon, is just a history nerd. We say that with Great respect. He has spent
many many hours over the past two years in visits to the Oregon State Archives
in Salem - researching Swedish emigrant’s death certificates. David has found a
number of Swedish emigrants who were inhabitants at the Oregon State
Penitentiary around 1900. He considers that these prisoners do in fact deserve
at least an asterisk of recognition in our common heritage story. David
has also mentioned that the “booking photos” (that he has obtained and uploaded
to the website), may be the only identified photograph in existence of these
Swedes. You will really be amazed and
will enjoy viewing and reading his work.
David’s Oregon State Penitentiary
contribution can be viewed at:
Charles Lundquist (a brother to the Norm
Lundquist mentioned above) is from metro San Antonio, and he enjoys playing
golf in the Texas sun. But, he also
enjoys capturing and collecting genealogy data.
So much in fact, that in March, 2012, he asked if he could help document
the Swedes in Iowa. Chuck was born and
raised in the Dayton, Iowa farming community.
This past year he has spent tons of hours at his computer, capturing the
census data for more than half of the 30,000 plus emigrants who lived in Iowa
in 1900. He also contributed to a portion
of the work on the Swedes in Kansas project.
We recognize Chuck and thank him for his tireless effort to assist the
SweAme program.
2011 Income held over: $4,370.21
2012 Expenses - BOPSF: $4,379.96
Net Income/(loss): ($ 9.75)
Doug Anderson, Richmond, Texas
Lissa Bengtson, San Antonio, Texas
Larry Blomquist, Mesa, Arizona
David Borg, Salem, Missouri
Elin Criswell, Georgetown, Texas
Jason Eckhardt, Jersey City, New Jersey
Pam Hicks, Tyler, Texas
Organization Advisor:
John Norton, Moline, Illinois
Finest regards,
David Borg, Chairman
Completed
States/Territories:
Arizona
Terr.
California
Hawaii Terr.
Indian Terr.
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Maine
and, Minnesota (St.
Louis County)