20120624 Sunday Cool, Sun/Rain/Cloud/repeat
Very mixed up weather today, but always in the mid-50’s.
A note. “Farfar” means father’s father, i.e., paternal grandfather. “Farmor” means father’s mother, i.e., paternal grandmother.
Up at 8, dress, breakfast in the dining room (same as yesterday, good herring). Then up and out to Kopparberg.
We stopped first at the Turistbyra and found Ken Karlsson and his wife staffing it. We reviewed the material we brought with us with Ken and he told us all sorts of information. He congratulated us on finding Östra Kumlan yesterday. When we went into the heading on the page in the church records, where above the Persson/Bergqvist family listing there are the words “Greve Mörner”, he told us that Count (Greve) Mörner was a very powerful and affluent man who owned much of the land around Kopparberg and Ljusnarsberg parish, and in other areas.
Ken said it was likely that our people worked for Count Mörner and moved to other locations through the years as the Count shifted personnel from a place that had “played out” to a place where labor was needed. The last location shown for the family was in the Stjärnfors Gård location very close to the Count’s manor house, which we saw later today.
Ken was born in this area and has worked all through it, managing restaurants and other businesses. For this summer he is the head of the Turistbyra. He highlighted on my large-scale map the locations I told him where my farfar Jan Erik Karlsson and his later wife Alma Eleanora Ersson had lived prior to their emigration.
He noted that many of the place names and family names here have roots in Finland. The winter weather is cruel up here and the soil is not good for growing, but the Count and politicians granted seven years free of taxes to any of the Finlanders who would move down here and work.
The Finlanders came, many of them miners, some farmers. The farmers took up the practice of cutting down the trees and firing them where they landed. The fats and ashes from the burned trees enriched the land briefly, enabling the farmers to get three years or so of good crops before the soil wore out again. Then they moved and fired another section of land, repeating the story.
About the same time, the miners needed wood to shore up the stones above their heads in the tunnels, so they were cutting trees for that and for homes. Pretty soon, trees became scarce. The government stopped the practice of firing woods for farming to allow the trees to grow back. The miners used wood for charcoal for iron smelting. Coal was found south of here and used for heating. Large iron mines were found north of here and some of the population moved there. The iron and copper in the area’s mines became unproductive and gradually shut down in the early 1900’s.
Ken said a lot of emigration to “Amerika” took place then, and some internal movement to the cities started.
We’ll return there (Turistbyra) tomorrow to swap stories again.
We drove to the various places then. First, back to Östra Kumlan again to use the camera with GPS enabled to fix the location where farfar’s family lived from 1868 to 1875. Then off to Runnberg (1875-1876), which Ken said had been changed to Rundberget; again, a small clump of houses in the forest. On then to Kopparberg for diet Cokes, then to the Stjernfors Gård area (1881-1888 when farfar moved to “N.Amerika”); all we found there was the manor house the Count lived in some of the time.
Back east and north then to the area on the south side of Kopparberg. Farmor’s family lived in Westra Dal from her birth to when she left for Stockholm, returned, and emigrated to “N.Amerika”. From 1876 to 1881, farfar’s family lived in Heden, and Daltorp, both of which are within a kilometer of Westra Dal, near the old Bångbro industrial area. It’s quite easy to believe that farfar and farmor became acquainted during this period.
We went briefly back across the new highway 50 to a clump of houses in a locale called Björkäng, where some of the ancestors of farmor lived.
Having covered all the areas we had information on our grandparents families for, we headed back to Lindesberg to rest and type up these findings, and do the pictures (we didn’t take pictures of all the places noted above since we had no specific house to look for).
We rested, then went out for dinner, again to Palmas. This time D had the peppersteak and I had a bacon-wrapped chicken dish. Good enough. We walked back by way of the path along the lake, but it was getting cool and breezy, so we didn’t dally. We’re in for the night.
Picture Link OPicture Link D
