My wife, Wesla, and I took a cruise last month that ended in Stockholm. On a free day, I could go to the Abba Museum or take a train to Tranas and then find my way to the small village of Saby. It is an area where generations of my grandmother’s family lived and from which her father emigrated to the U.S. I took the train to Saby.
Saby is a small village built around a 1000 year old Viking church that is now a small Lutheran congregation.
My father was there 40 years ago and I had his written instructions for finding the graves in the churchyard of my great-great grandparents, Anders and Anna Sofia Johansson. In fact, the graveyard was filled with Johanssons, initials were often used for first names, my great, great grandmother’s name hadn’t been added to the stone, and the old stones were badly weathered. The truth is, I couldn’t be sure I had found it. In the end, I took a bunch of Johansson gravestone pictures, decided I was close enough, and consoled myself that I had walked through the same church doors they had passed through when they were alive.
I learned that the area in which they lived was quite poor and life hard. Anders worked clearing fieldstones, in agriculture, and carried mail. His wife, Anna Sofia, worked in the kitchen at a 17th century hunting lodge/castle that is still standing and occupied. When her husband died, my great, great grandmother Anna Sofia moved into a house next to the church for poor widows. She lived there for the last five years of her life. I wish I had learned more about them from my father and grandfather.
Their gravestone in the churchyard is a remaining witness to their faith and to their hope in the resurrection. Beyond that, they undoubtedly had hopes for their son, Carl Johansson, who immigrated to the US around 1890 and changed his name to Charles Johnson to be more American. He ended up in Swedesville, Iowa, a Swedish community where my grandmother, my father and I later were to live too.
There is a great irony in all this for me.
I never really cared for genealogy. It was my mother’s love. She would have taken delight in seeing me hunt through a cemetery for a gravestone. What she intuitively understood is that genealogy can help us into stories that we can literally find relatable, part of our own story. Such stories can have special power to touch, encourage and inspire us. They can share life with us of resilience, aspirations, and faith. Their stories can encourage us in seeking better perspective, greater hope, and deeper trust, the first three petitions of the Lord’s prayer, a relevant prayer for every generation and every day.
