Sweden Genealogy Genline Workbook

Parish Identification

The effort you make to find a parish and year for your immigrant ancestors is the 
single most important task which confronts you as a genealogist. You will be able to 
go into the Genline records only if you have a key that lets you in. Otherwise the 
Genline records are just so many volumes of no use to you.

For each branch of your ancestors, you need to find a key to open Genline. So if you 
had only one ancestor who came from Sweden, you need only one key. Likewise, if you 
has a married couple who came from Sweden, married before they came, you still only 
need one key if they were married in Sweden.

If you had two ancestors who came from Sweden you need a key for each. In my case all 
four of my great grandparents came from Sweden. So I needed four keys to open Genline 
to each of the family branches.

Here are the keys which will open Genline for you. Any one of these keys will open 
Genline.

#1  The name of an immigrant ancestor from Sweden, their birth date and the birth 
parish.

#2  The name of an immigrant ancestor from Sweden, their birth date and year of 
emigration.

#3  The name of an immigrant ancestor from Sweden, their birth date and the name 
of a parish where they lived and when they lived there.

Without a key, you won't know where to access the records you need. Of the now 15 
million images available through Genline, you won't know where to begin. With the 
key you can go right to the correct volume, and perhaps even to the right page by 
number. This is a dream situation made possible only through Emibas.

Let me clear up misconceptions you may have. You don't need to know where the person 
was born. You don't need to know where the person died. Although either of these facts 
will give you a point of entry into the records. So if you have a specific parish by 
name where you know your ancestor lived, and a general idea of when that was, you are 
ready to enter the collection of church records. And you can expect to find your 
ancestors.

A bonus would be if you also have the farm name. That will give you a specific page 
in the volume. The process of looking through an entire volume can produce results. 
But this brute force method will be quite time consuming. Yet sometimes it is the only 
way to find a person.

The next eight pages of this workbook go on to help you with the various ways you 
might discover the details you will need to access Genline. Here is an overview 
checklist which gives my evaluation of these different methods. These evaluations 
are based on my experience. Your ability to obtain parish details could be far 
different. All of this is directed toward completing page 48 of this workbook.

                   Very Good                                           Poor                                             Not Likely To Help            
Birth Certificate                                      Oral history                                                   USA Census
Emigration documents                        Naturalization papers                                 Death certificate
Sweden census                                    USA Swedish newspapers                        Castle Gardens book
USA church records                            Letters                                                             Ellis Island book
Passport from Sweden                       Postcards                                                       Passenger Ship Searches
Family bible                                            Picture identification
CD's of records                                     Genealogies by others
Swedish Län Genealogi Groups      Marriage license in USA
Marriage license in Sweden              DISBYT Swedish computer club

SOURCE

Sweden Archives

You may find it necessary to ask for the assistance of archive workers in Sweden to identify the Parish of your ancestor. Here is a list of archives in Sweden.

SOURCE

Kungliga Biblioteket (Royal Library) has a helpful collection of published genealogies, manuscripts, histories, directories, maps, and newspapers.

Kungliga Biblioteket
Box 5039
S-102 41 Stockholm
Sweden

The Swenson Center

Probably the best source for details about Swedish Immigrants to the United States is available at the Swenson Center in Rock Island, Illinois. Follow links from this web page to view details of many kinds.

SOURCE

MySwedenRoots.com 2006-2018 

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