Time Travel (On the Trail of Our Ancestors)

(3 August, continued)  

On our way back from lunch at the old mill café, I wanted (if possible) to check some distances between a few places in the neighbourhood of where our paternal grandparents grew up. Back in July 2012 we managed to locate both the farm where our grandmother was born and lived until she got married (easy enough to find), and the small wooden cottage on the grounds of a neighbouring farm where our grandfather grew up (more difficult to find the way to). But I forgot back then to make note of the distances. Over the years since then, I have been going through a lot more old photos and letters and family history; and often find myself wishing I had a better grip of places frequently mentioned.

However, this time we even failed to find our way back to the childhood home of our grandfather. Rereading my old post from 2012 again now, I'm thinking we probably made some of the same mistakes now as we did back then - and gave up quicker... On the other hand, as our last expedition was 12 years ago, even more thoroughfares on narrow dirt roads across farm land may also actually have been closed to the public since then. So we decided not to pursue. I did get one distance properly confirmed, though - between the farm house and the railway station (which back at the beginning of the previous century also served as post office) it's around 1½ km (or 1 English mile). Just about the same distance as my own walk into the town centre these days - so not really "all that" far.

We also drove a roundabout way (more car-friendly) to one of the other places often mentioned in my grandmother's letters (Komlösa). A hundred years ago, I understand there was a chapel there that she walked to sometimes. Nowadays there is a rural museum with a collection of old wagons at an old farm in that neighbourhood. They're the kind of museum that is only open occasionally, though - or on special request. Their website did say it would be open on Saturday afternoons throughout summer (June-August); but when we got there, it looked as closed as the last time we tried (also years ago). We wandered around a bit outside but no person appeared. Never mind - I got a few nice countryside photos, anyway!

 

On the Trail of Our Ancestors

In September 2011, I blogged about my grandparents, both sets of them; with photos of the houses/cottages where they grew up.

Last week while my brother was here, we decided to try to find the respective childhood homes of our paternal grandparents. We knew they both grew up on the outskirts of the same village where they built their own house when they got married (also on the outskirts, but not the same outskirts).

We did have a rough idea where to find the farmhouse where our grandmother Sally was born and lived until she married our grandfather Gustaf. I’d even managed to locate it on Google before we set out, so that one was not hard to find at all.

▲  The farmhouse in the late 1920s.
▼ And this is what it looks like now:

I was less sure about the small cottage where my grandfather grew up. I had tried to locate that on Google maps too, but all I could find was a spot marked with a similar but not quite identical name. However, that place was not very far from my grandmother’s farm, so we decided to try and find it.

The map showed two alternative roads. The first one turned out to be a dead-end, only leading up to a farm. The second road also led up to a farm, but proved to go on beyond it. And then… There it was.

There was even a sign to remove all doubt. The Google map said “Johanneslund”. But the sign on a post at the gate says “Johannelund” which is the name I know from my grandfather’s notes and book. (He was a journalist with special interest in the old cottages in the area where he grew up – I guess it started with his own background.) From the book I know that it was named after a woman by name of Johanna (not a man called Johannes). I suppose Google did not read the book!

Back in my grandfather’s days, the cottage was not quite as picturesque as it is now. It was unpainted then. There is a note under the photo in his photo album saying “the grey cottage – the childhood home”.

They must have had pretty much the same lovely view from the front of the house, though:

And the road probably hasn’t changed much either!

View towards the farm the cottage used to belong to.

After this excursion, at least one question can be put aside. I’ve been wondering (as I’ve begun to look into the stories of their lives a bit more) when and how my grandparents got to know each other. But seeing now that they were almost neighbours (from a countryside perspective) they would have been aware of each other’s existence since childhood. However, since my grandmother was four years older, it probably took  a while for “romance” to grow… (She was 30, he 26 when they got married.)

The kind of cottage my grandfather grew up in was/is called a torp in Swedish. These were small farm units within the estate of a bigger farm. The inhabitants of a torp leased rather than owned their land. Sometimes they owned the cottage but still had to pay lease for the attached piece of farmland. They paid through working on the main farm as well. The system changed gradually during the late 19th and early 20th century. Nowadays the old torp cottages are popular as summer cottages.

In my grandfather’s childhood and youth, it was his maternal grandparents who owned the cottage. (The grandfather was an ex-soldier.) In Gustaf’s early years, his mother and her brother lived there too. I blogged about their fate in life here.

Touristing part II – Hofsnäs Manor

My brother and I have continued to play tourists this week (three days in a row). We both felt we could do with a proper break from the usual stuff for a few days. So I’ve got lots of photos from “out of town” for a change – enough for several blog posts, I think.

In this one it’s still Thurday afternoon and we have just left Torpa Castle, and are driving along a narrow little countryside road…

The landscape here consists of agricultural land and decidious forest. Even if we did not know, it would not be hard to guess that we’re on the land of some big old estate.

Huge old trees on both sides of the road give a clear hint that we’re approaching our next stop.

There it is, a glimpse of a big white house…

Hofsnäs, a former manor house, is now a restaurant and café. The estate is owned by the town of Borås since 1964 and serves as recereation area for town-dwellers who wish to get out into the countryside now and then.

The manor house we see today is not nearly as old as Torpa, but already back in the late 1400s there was some kind of castle here. In 1552, King Gustav I (Gustav Vasa) gave the estate to his father-in-law Gustaf Stenbock (the third owner of Torpa). In the late 1600s, however, Hofsnäs had lost its significance and fell into disrepair. A new manor house was built in 1854, on the same spot as the original one. It got burned down in a fire in 1923, but was rebuilt in 1924.

It is beautifully situated, overlooking vast lawns and the lake. On a sunny and warm day the place will be swarming with people picknicking and bathing.

Not quite the weather for such activities on the day we were visiting, though. It had been raining heavily earlier in the day and was still rather chilly.

Personally, I prefer to just look at lakes and seas anyway, rather than being in them or on them…

The 17th century wooden farmhouse is now a crafts shop:

Below examples of wire craft also called hobo’s craft
(Swedish: luffarslöjd)

There is still also active farming going on at Hofsnäs:

We stared at the cows for a while, and they stared back:

Enough sightseeing for one day. Time to go back home!

H for History (ABC Wednesday)

Ever since my last visit to The House a few weeks ago, I’ve been trying to sort out some of the family history; concentrating for now on my grandmother’s huge family, with help of old photos and postcards. In one of her photo albums I found this photo from around 1920 showing family members and probably a couple of extra farm hands or neighbours helping with the hay harvest. And of course they’re using a horse for the job as well. With most of the photos I’m having a hard time dating them to an exact year, since there are very few dates and notes in the photo albums or on the back of the photos. However, fashion details may sometimes give a clue. Here, the men except one (the youngest) are all wearing hats, and the women headcloths. I guess they would hardly be exactly “dressing up” for the hay harvest. But on the other hand, they might have made a bit of an extra effort for the photo.

Do you know a lot about your own family history?
Have you tried to collect what you know in some way?
I just recently started a separate blog for my own research project: Greetings from the Past. (There is a button to it at the top of the sidebar in this blog, if you want to check it out some other time.) The photo above will probably turn up again on that blog as well, together with a few more photos showing life on the farm.

Have a nice H-day, and if you want more H’s, go visit

ABC Wednesday - H