Have
you been able to document your Swedish ancestors who emigrated to San Francisco
and nearby areas in the post-Gold Rush era? Wouldn’t it be nice to know more about them
and to share your information about them on the SweAme Web site at www.sweame.org ?
Luckily,
there are some helpful and fascinating resources that make
the journey fun. Check out Muriel Nelson Beroza’s Golden Gate Swedes: The Bay Area and
Sveadal, updated in 2000
and available at Amazon.com and other Web sites.
The
book gives the history of Swedish immigration to an area that reminded
so many Swedes of Stockholm, describes the Swedish societies’
many functions, and has lists of many participants in those organizations. The
pictures are also fascinating for anyone who enjoys seeing photos of Swedes
from about the 1850s through the
1930s. You might find a long lost family member or two there.
Also,
the San Francisco Swedish Society owns the Swedish American Hall built in
1907 at 2174 Market Street, where there is an
archives. Swedish Hall Chair of the Library and Archives Committee Susan
Bianucci, herself of Swedish heritage, says Swedes have become the most well-documented
immigrant group in the Bay Area.
There
is also a special night club there called Café Du Nord for meetings, and the
architecture is Scandinavian.
San
Francisco’s 1906 earthquake destroyed a lot of primary family history
documents, but there’s a very helpful “work around” book titled
Raking the Ashes: Genealogical
Strategies for Pre-1906 San Francisco Research. It suggests helpful substitute documents that did
survive. You can learn more about it by
clicking on the LINK above.
Another
resource for missing information might be The Bancroft Library at the University of
California at Berkeley that contains information
about Scandinavian Americans.
Just
like your ancestors, you can “dig for gold” and mine these wonderful resources
that will provide context about family members after immigration. And then you
can valorize your family members by putting their family tree on the California
section of the
SweAme web site. SweAme California Swedes and their families.
All
that glitters isn’t gold, but if you put your family members on the web site,
some extended family members may find you, and the Swedish tree may grow!
Jeanne
Rollberg
March,
2013
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