New connections abound

I'll admit my thoughts have been there to blog but I just haven't had the time. I've been working so much on sourcing my ancestry.com tree (almost 100,000 records linked now) that when I'm on the computer, that's what I'm doing. Something happened on the 6th to give me pause and redirect my efforts for the moment. I got a message from a woman named Lori, who isn't even related to me. She's researching for some cousins and wanted to know about "Helena Andersdotter b. 1858" in my tree. My tree is set to private so she couldn't see the details. I responded back that Helena was the daughter of my 4th great grandparents and she responded that it was indeed who she was looking for.

Anders Börjesson 1815-1900 and Ingrid Petersdotter 1827-1867 were my 4th g-grandparents. They had 7 known children:
Peter Andersson 1849-1857
Emma Andersdotter 1852-1911 (my 3rd g-grandmother)
Anna Maria Andersdotter 1855-1934
Helena Andersdotter 1858-1880 (from above)
Mathilda Andersdotter 1860-1943
Lydia Maria Andersdotter 1863-1897
Johanna Andersdotter died at birth 17 Oct 1865

 
Emma and Mathilda came to America, settling in Bridgeton, Newaygo Co Michigan. I've talked with a descendant of Mathilda and obviously descendants of Emma but other than the children of Anna Maria and Lydia Maria (that were available via Sweden birth records that I found online) I knew nothing of the remainder of this family. I had thought that Helena died childless. The message I received proved that wrong. It turns out she died 14 days after giving birth to an illegitimate child Hildegard Maria, and that although Hildegard was obviously raised without her parents she did have a family of her own and eventually had contact with her grandfather Anders. She married Per August Ström and had 4 children. 

I got added to a private Facebook group called "Ström Sweden-America Relatives" and it turns out that one of Hildegard's children came to America and had a family in Pennsylvania and in this group are several descendants of that family and several descendants of one of his brothers. Now I was connected with descendants of Helena but there are 2 more sisters that I know had children. I talked with Lori about my desire to find photographs of them and hopefully of their father Anders, my 4th g-grandfather. 

Lori went to work with a friend of hers and within a couple of days she's added a 2nd great granddaughter of Lydia and a 2nd great granddaughter of Anna, both of whom have added their fathers to the group. I'm not sure if this will lead to the photos that I'm looking for but I'm getting to see photos of the nieces and nephews of Emma and am realizing just how magical the internet can be. With one simple email request 11 days ago, we suddenly have descendants of the 5 children that lived to adulthood of a family from 150 years ago all introducing themselves to each other. I wonder what our ancestors would say?

Emma Andersdotter Johnson 1852-1911

 

Mathilda Andersdotter Olson 1860-1943

Hildegard Andersdotter Ström 1880-1945, daughter of Helena Andersdotter (photo from great granddaugher Annica)

Per August Vilhelm Andersson 1890-1964, son of Lydia Andersdotter (photo from 2nd great granddaughter Sofia)