from Gudmundsson to Martinsson to Larsson to Blomquist/Peterson

I write this afternoon from my little private perch above the from door of this lovely home. I drove around today to see the places where my children's ancestors came from. The Peterson side of the family has roots here in Halsingland.

I began my day with a nice breakfast out on this same balcony....a very nice way to start a day.

I drove first to the small town of Alfta where there is a tourist bureau and an emigrant's house (an office that has listed all of the Swedes from this town who went to America.)

In the 1840's, there was a Swedish pastor named Eric Jansson and he was promoting to the Swedes that the State Church, The Swedish Lutheran Church, needed to stop regulated the lives of the people so much. In 1846, I think, Eric Jansson emigrated to America with 400 or so followers, to start a new Swedish Lutheran church and way of life free from all the constraints and rules that the church and government of Sweden had imposed on all citizens.
One of the places the Eric Jansson preached about his vision was in Alfta, and the town soon saw a 10% decline in their population when the people followed Eric Jansson to Bishop Hill in Illinois. Jansson named the place Bishop's Hill after the town where he was from in Sweden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Jansson

Among the people of Alfta who joined Jansson in Bishop Hill was Per Persson Wikblom, the brother of Terry's 2nd Great-grandmother. Terry's 2nd Great Grandfather also disappeared about this same time, never to be seen again by his family in Sweden. He had gone out to find work in a neighboring town. Now that I see the proximity of the disappeared one and the one who went to Bishop Hill, My search will look to see if the one who disappeared actually emigrated to Bishop Hill, forgetting to tell his wife where he had gone? More research is needed for sure to check that theory out.

I found the area where this family lived, near Alfta and took some photos of houses that could have been theirs.

I also drove over to the next town.Edsbyn. This is a larger town and I have no exact addresses for this group of family, or the addresses I have no longer exist.

On the way back, I drove through the area of Ostana and paused to notice the forest had given way to some nice farm pasture and fields. It was in this area the ancestors of the Petersons farmed in the 1700's.

I also stopped at the church in Alfta and walked among the tombstones there....The Swedish tradition of removing the older stones and burying others on top, replacing the stones with the most recently buried, is frustrating.

Halsingland is a very different area of Sweden. The homes are still red, but many of the homes are really BIG. They are elaborately painted inside in a very traditional Swedish manner. Halsingland has been a large producer of Flax to make Linen and many of the farmers here were very wealthy. It does not seem that the ancestors of the Petersons were in that group.

I have also seen these fences all over Sweden, but they are everyplace I look in this area....I think I will try to build one of these when I get home! (HEY! A girl needs a project to work on, right?)