Cannot for the sake of me to find my Great grandfather from Croxhult Sweden's mother or father.
Came here either Ellis or Castle Garden, his name coming in was Johan Thorn, called himself here in the USA John Thorne. I have read that if a son can have a part of first or last name and add for a son ..sson or sen .A daughter same but ends in dotter. Cannot get hints to know to follow as no idea what his dads or moms name , place etc to move on. Any one can help?
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Hello@DanaRamirez5,
1 - Here are some ideas for you to use while searching for your great-grandfather:
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2 - There is a group ( and possibly more) in the Community which may be able to guide you:
Best Wishes!
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To me, Croxhult sounds a lot like Cuxhaven, a small German port on the North Sea across Denmark from Sweden. And the name Johan Thorn is ethnic German. His 1915 Iowa state census card says he was "Swede Lutheran" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Sweden) and both his parents were born in Sweden.
I see no work done yet in Family Tree for this family. @DanaRamirez5, Family Tree is a power tool you can use to build out your tree. I find it very effective.
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Thanks for posting that you have your tree on Ancestry and enough family names to find him there. A direct link would be been quicker, but didn’t take long without it. On your Ancestry page, you have a birth date for him of 7 May 1845 with a source of his Find A Grave record.
In your first post, you said that he was born at Croxhult. This phonetically does really sound like Kråkshult. So you do have plenty of information. At least to take a wild stab at things!
The best place for Swedish records is the National Archives of Sweden at: https://riksarkivet.se The are well organized, easy to look through, and are free to access.
The church parish records section are here: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/kyrkoarkiv After setting the page to English, the first step is to look for the proper parish:
There is just the one result:
Clicking on it gives a list of all the parish register books. First are the clerical survey records, first called Husförhörslängder and later Församlingsböcker. More about these later. Then come records of people moving into and out of the parish, the In- and utlyttningslängder. Next come the birth and christening records, the Födelse- och dopböcker. Find the volume in the list for 1845:
Then click on the green image link to go to that book. On the left hand side click under the table of contents to expand it:
You can jump right to the beginning of 1845. Looking at each entry, you will find that on May 7, a Peder Johan was born:
Could this be your Johan? Or is the name and date just a coincidence?
The Do. in the first column is just "ditto." The month it is referring to is May. 7 is his birth day. 16 his christening day. His father is Carl J...son and his mother Stina Greta Petersdotter. They are living at Håggarp. I'm not sure of the father's last names at this point. I might be Johansson.
This will definitely require more research. This is where the clerical surveys come in. These surveys were a yearly accounting of everyone in the parish. Who moved in, who was born, who got married, who died, who moved out, and how often they went to church. You can follow most people from year to year for their entire lives. FamilySearch has indexes for some of them. My Heritage has indexes for a lot of them. You can just view them a page at a time on the archives site as mentioned.
Before going there, I'm going to take a chance and see if there may be a moving out record for a Johan in this parish in or around 1868.
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Well, that was disappointing, No sign of an appropriate Johan moving out in 1868. Moreover, I took a look at the clerical survey and found I misread that birth date. Peter Johan was born 7 March, not 7 May and he died less than a month of age. So that is not your Johan. And there is not a Johan born 7 May in that parish.
But at least you have the general idea of what you can find in the Swedish records.
I'll poke around a little more and see if I can come up with any other possibilities in Kråkshult.
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You are not alone in your quest to find information about ancestors that came to America, and trying to connect them to their ancestors. It can be quite a challenge. I am also trying to find information about my great grandparents.
You might find additional information from the emigration records, if you know about when he entered the country, and by what means, and where. Sometimes the Census records will give a date. You can sometimes see several individuals with the same last name traveling together, which can give additional clues.
Wishing you a successful journey of discovery!
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Yes, thank you for responding, I have done what you suggested, he came alone and the one he married in The USA my great grandmother came 3 years later, did not know each other, and he moved in a boarding house in Davenport Iowa, and then to Ottumwa, thank you.
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Is your great-grandfather in Family Tree? Have you put all the information you have about him there? I'd be happy to take a look and give suggestions.
If you are sure he is from Croxhult and know the year he emigrated, the first place to start is the moving out records for Croxhult for the years around his emigration date. Sweden kept excellent records. If you can find the moving out record that will probably give where he lived. Then it is a matter of finding him in the corresponding clerical census for that place then tracing backwards through the clerical census records until you find where he was born.
The Scandinavian countries had one to four varieties of surnames, depending on the specific country. Sweden did have patronymic surnames which were the person's father's name with -son or -dotter added, but they also used last names derived other ways. Men were often given an additional surname when they were in the military. I've heard it was to differentiate all the Sven Svensson from one another. For example, my g-g-g-grandfather was just Sven Troedsson until joining up, then he became Sven Troedsson Elg. Thorn is certainly one of those types of names and probably has no connection to the rest of his family at all which will make it difficult to find him unless he used that name in the moving out records.
What is your source for him being from Croxhult? That does not look particularly Swedish and does not come up as a Swedish place name. So actually your first step is going to be to figure what that place really is. The closest I can find is Kråkshult. Could it be that?
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Mostly enter in Ancestery,find that Family Search for census only uses a 1 person and children. I have changed John Thorne to Johan Thorn which shows in his 1868 immigration, and traveled alone, other names not close, cannot even get a brothers name. 2 sons of john ..Ernest and Oscar Karl both born in Ottumwa as well as 2 sisters Ruth Wilhelmina, and Anna Elizabeth also...I have World Explorer in Ancestrry.. any other ideas, as same ines keep appearing.Thank You.
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You can find the same microfilm on FamilySearch at:https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GPZX-7P?i=2&cc=1930273&cat=241320
It is not indexed. Also, since the birth date on his headstone does not have a corresponding birth in that record, It will very difficult to tell who he could be in these records. Unfortunately, it looks like you still need to find a US record that will let you bridge the gap to Sweden.
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