Finding my roots in New Sweden, Maine

Posted by Bjorn Swenson


This weekend we're heading up to Aroostook County ("the County," as us Mainers say), to explore my Swenson roots in the town of New Sweden.  Although I know a lot now about the Swedish ancestors on my mother's side of the family (a relative in Sweden has us traced back to the mid-16th century), I have never known much about my father's Swedish ancestors.


Until recently, all my father knew about the Swenson family history was that his great-grandfather's name was Adolf Swenson, that he had lived in New Sweden, was deaf, and had supposedly hung the bell in the town church.  Eventually our Swensons ended up in Millinocket, South China, and later, Bucksport, Maine where my father grew up.  A couple of years ago I consulted some online census records and found an entry for Adolf living with his parents, Anders and Britta Svensson (the original spelling) in New Sweden in 1880.  The census indicated that all three of them had been born in Sweden, and that Anders had arrived in 1870, which would have made him one of the first 51 immigrants to settle the town that year.  I had tried to use other online databases to discover more, but with no luck.  There seemed to be a million Anders Svenssons born in Sweden around the same time.


New Sweden has an active Swedish-American community to this day, and holds an annual Midsommar festival.  We figured this would be the ideal time to make the trip to New Sweden since there would be some activities and food to enjoy while we try to do some family research.  I found the website for Maine Swedish Colony, an organization dedicated to preserving the history and cultural heritage of New Sweden and the surrounding communities (they organize the Midsommar Fest), and found that they were advertising an email address one can contact with genealogy questions.  I sent off a brief email with what little I knew about our relatives, and within a couple of hours researcher Lynn Johnson (who actually lives in California but is connected to New Sweden and the historical society there) had already responded that she was on the case.


After what must have been many hours weeding through copies of church, burial, emigration, and census records, both online and in print, and solving a few puzzles along the way - Lynn was able to take us back further than we have ever been able to go before.  In her four-page report where she explains her process and the sources she consulted, she reveals that Anders, Britta, and Adolf had all come from the parish of Träslöv, Hallands län, in Sweden.  What is strange to me about this is that I have actually been within a few miles of this place - when I went to visit my mother's second cousin Anders in Varberg (it looks like Träslöv is now part of the larger city of Varberg today).  Now we know the names of Anders' parents and their birthdays, and I am hoping this will help to take it back even further.  (View a chart of the information - it starts with my grandfather Alfred August Swenson.)


Lynn also described how to find the locations of the Svenssons' original property in New Sweden (one of the 100-acre plots offered tax-free to Swedes who were willing to make the trip to Maine) and their burial plot in the town cemetery.  I am hoping we might be able to find some more tidbits while we are there this weekend. (Are there any Svensson houses still standing? Does the museum have any photos of them? Is it true that Adolf hung the bell in the church?...) 


Reading about the general history of Maine's Swedish "colony" has been fascinating - here are a few sources of information online:

• Narrative on the Maine Memory Network (an online project of the Maine Historical Society)

• History of the colony on the Maine Swedish Colony website

• Photo gallery from the New Sweden Historical Society on Maine Memory Network

• Map of the colony area with points of interest

• The Story of New Sweden, published for the 25th anniversary of the settlement

• Sweden and the Swedes, colony founder William Widgery Thomas Jr.'s book in which he tried to introduce Americans to the (at the time) largely unknown country (he also published a version in Swedish)

Read the next post about how it went here.