Nels John Bequest

 

About Nels John Bequest

  1. He was born in Östra Ämterviks parish in the county of Värmland at Dec 27 1857, baptised Jan 1 1858. His father was Per Nilsson and his mother was Britta Jönsdotter, aged 34, from the village of Smedsby

 

  1. In 1873 his family moved to the city of Söderhamn i Hälsingland county, when Per Nilsson Byqvist got a permission to move for work (arbetsattest) to Söderhamn Aug 25 1873 and that they moved Nov 5 1873. Per got a job at a lumberyard, Marma brädgård, where he worked all his life and so did his youngest son Gustaf.

 

  1. Before they moved to Söderhamn they added a new familyname, Byqvist. Probably from the village ”By” where Nels father was born.

 

  1. In 1879 Nils Johan Byqvist left Söderhamn for USA. The last tracks of him on swedish soil is from a passenger list from the boat ”Rollo” when he left Gothenburg to sail to Hull, destination Chicago. Now he has skiped ”Persson” as his family name to N.J. Byqvist

 

  1. When and why he changed his name you can only speculate about. Was it an immigration officer that wrote what he thought he heard or did Nils changed his name himself?

 

  1. When his parent died 1906 and 1908 he was last mentioned in their ”Probate” as living in Michigan, U.S.A.

 

 

About the sources to my research:

 

Little about Swedish archive system.

 In our national archives, Riksarkivet, there are both the different state records, mostly for taxation purposes and the whole church archives. The protestant church has been our state religion until 2000 so there are many things you can find. The purpose of these different church records and archives in Sweden had primarily been to ensure that we in had the true belief.

 They area gold mines for genealogy. Beside the books with births (födelse), marriages (äktenskap), deaths (död) and migration (flyttning), the main source are “Husförhörlängder”. They are a sort of parish registers. It’s a mix between a census and a hearing to control every person’s knowledge about “Luther’s little catechism”.  I call them HFL.

  

Little about Swedish names.

The normal way, until about 1900, to get a last name was to take the fathers first name and put –son for a boy and –dotter (daughter) for a girl. During the late twentieth century many took a extra last name, for example when Per Nilsson took Byqvist. He was born in a village named By in Östra Ämtervik. One of his brother took also Byqvist and another Bylin.  

 

 





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