| Ancestor 34 (1,000,10): 3GGF Johannes “John” Anderson (3/09/1804 – 3/12/1900) | Ancestor 35 (1,000,11): 3GGM Johanna Mansdotter (9/13/1814 – 1???) | |
| His parents | Their ancestral child | Her parents |
John Anderson’s lifetime spanned two continents and almost the entire 19th century. He spent the first half of his life in Kronoberg County, Sweden. His exact whereabouts are unknown for most of the 1830s and ’40s. A record after that time describes him as a widow, so apparently he married once and lost his first wife during those two decades.
An 1846 household census shows Johanna Mansdotter as one of several maids working for Hakan Swenson in Backagården Dragaryd Farm, Ljungby Parish, also in Kronoberg County. It was common for young adult women to spend a few years working in other households before marriage. This is apparently where she met John. They married in Ljungby Parish 12/31/1848, took residence in Stensberg Farm, and had two children there. Our ancestor Mary was born 11/05/1849, followed by Anders Magnus on 3/26/1853.
The Swedish household rolls of 1856 show the entire family crossed out, with an indication that they left for America in 1854. I lose track of Johanna after that time; I find no trace of her or Anders in America! The earliest possible sign of John in the US dates to 1858, when someone with his name appears as a new congregant in the rolls of a Minnesota church. This record is an intriguing possibility (unfortunately, I seem to have lost my copy of it). First, it was in Norwegian. It’s likely that he spoke Norwegian, because Mary married a Norwegian-American and John is buried at their Norwegian church. This record also indicates that John “og kone” (“and wife”) joined the church; the wife is unnamed. What is known for sure is that he raised Mary near St. Peter, MN in the 1860s and then moved to Yellow Medicine, a few counties to the west.
A Yellow Medicine County history book describes John as “The Old Swede”, one of two such residents with the same nickname! He was one of the earliest settlers there, taking “the fraction – Town 117, range 40”, in the fall of 1869. Mary married Ole Hanson-Fagerland shortly afterward, and John lived with their family for some time in Yellow Medicine County. They attended Trinity Lutheran Church in Wegdahl.
John’s 1900 obituary indicates that he was living in someone else’s care in his final years. He is buried at Trinity cemetery in an unmarked grave (there is a gravestone marked Johannes Anderson there, but that’s another man with the same name). The church no longer stands, though its foundation stones can be traced in the woods. I have stood in the church’s small footprint, imagining a time when four of my ancestors — John, Mary and Ole Hansen-Fagerland, and Knut Fagerland — all sat there together a century earlier.