This week’s Friday records post is all about Swedish genealogy! Findmypast has added 12 million Swedish records to their international collection, and we’ll show you other resources for accessing similar records. We’ll also highlight some past unique collections for Sweden, and you can explore expert research tips from a professional genealogist.
Featured: Swedish Genealogy Records Online
June 6 is the National Day of Sweden, which honors two historical events: Gustav Vasa being elected king on June 6, 1523, and the adoption of a new constitution on June 6, 1809. After decades of discussion, the Swedish parliament finally voted to make June 6 a public holiday. And we can’t think of a better way to observe than to spend time researching your Swedish ancestors!
As Findmypast continues to grow their international records database, they’ve highlighted the recent addition of Swedish records to their collection. Over 12 million Swedish baptisms, marriages, and burials are now dating back to 1611 are now available to search on Findmypast. These records will also generate hints against your Findmypast family tree.
Their Swedish collection consist of the following indexes:
If you’re a Findmypast subscriber, head over there now to explore these indexed records. If you’re not a Findmypast subscriber, you can explore select Swedish baptisms, burials, and marriages at Ancestry.com. You can also find select Swedish baptisms, burials, and marriages at FamilySearch.org for free.
Unique Swedish Genealogy Resources
Swedish Newspapers. A couple of years back we highlighted the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection of Swedish-American newspapers. They are available through an online portal. Users can explore more than 300,000 pages from 28 different Swedish-American newspaper titles published across the U.S. between 1859 and 2007. The portal is available in Swedish and English and includes a keyword search.
Biographies of notable Swedish women. The Chicago Evening Post reported on a new online biographical dictionary of women in Swedish history. The site itself is Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexicon (it does have an English-language home page). The home page encourages visitors to “Read up on 1,000 Swedish women from the Middle Ages to the present day. Use the search function to reveal what these women got up to, how they were educated, which organisations they belonged to, where they travelled, what they achieved, and much more. All of them contributed in a significant way to the development of Swedish society.” According to the Chicago Evening Post, the current collection of 1,000 biographical sketches will soon double (at least)
Expert Swedish Genealogy Research Tips
Swedish genealogy can be daunting. Many people avoid Swedish research because they don’t speak the language and because the names change every generation–like from Ole Olsson to Ole Nilsson to Nils Pehrrson. Despite these barriers, Swedish research can be relatively simple, fun, and successful! In a special guest article, Paul Woodbury, a Senior Genealogist with Legacy Tree Genealogists, shares the following 5 things to keep in mind when researching your Swedish ancestors:
You can “read” many records without reading Swedish.
Family events are summarized in Swedish clerical examinations.
Many Swedish records cross-reference each other.
You can trouble-shoot record gaps.
There are some excellent Swedish indexes and databases online.
About the Author: Lisa Louise Cooke is the producer and host of the Genealogy Gems Podcast, an online genealogy audio show and app. She is the author of the books The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, Mobile Genealogy, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, and the Google Earth for Genealogy video series. She is an international keynote speaker and the Vice President of the Genealogical Speakers Guild.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
This isn’t a mess—it’s a pile of unprocessed records at an archive, and buried within may be clues about your family history. Eventually, these items may be filed away neatly for you to find. But how can you access them in the meantime? As an archivist who works in an...
Merging duplicate records in your family tree is important. Perhaps you have inherited a giant genealogy file (GEDCOM) from a relative. What now? Follow along in our series on Inherited Genealogy Files as we talk about how to merge the duplicates in your family tree.
Have you cleaned up your family tree lately? Whether you have inherited a genealogy file from a relative or have been an avid researcher yourself, clean-up is necessary from time to time, especially as your database grows.
Merging Duplicates from an Inherited Genealogy File with RootsMagic
When you sit down to do your genealogy research, the last thing you want to worry about are duplicate names. Duplicates can be distracting and confusing.
You may have inherited a genealogy file or files in the form of GEDCOMs. (Read more on what and how to use a GEDCOM file here.) While inheriting this family history is great, it can also be a lot of work to clean-up, confirm the data, and add source citations where needed.
If you use RootsMagic or other similar software, it can be quick and easy to clean up duplicate names in your database. Start by running a duplicate search by clicking on Tools, selecting Merge, and then clicking Duplicate search merge.
You can search for duplicates by surname or given name. You might consider running a duplicate search for sounds alike, as well. This is particularly important if you have merged two databases in which you and the other contributor may have used different surname spellings.
When you are ready, click Search for duplicates at the bottom of the box. The system will tell you how many duplicates it finds and allow you to compare them one-by-one.
If you find a duplicate, the primary person will be on the left and the matching record on the right. Whichever record/person is most correct, use the Swap button to move that record to the primary position on the left.
If you feel these are a match, click Merge duplicate into primary at the bottom left corner. You have now merged these two individuals. It should be noted that you do not actually lose any of the data of the duplicate person. If I find Dean Howard Lockwood in my index and double click on his name, a pop-up window appears and I see he now has two birth and death entries, however. To fix this, click on the duplicate fact to highlight it, then click Delete fact at the top.
Cleaning Up Duplicate Places
You may not have considered cleaning up the duplicate places that exist in your file. For example, perhaps Great-aunt Susie liked to use the old format for place names. [i.e. , Ross County, Ohio] Notice the comma before the county name Ross. This was the way in which genealogists used to indicate Ross was the name of the county. Now, we use the more recent accepted format and change that to: Ross county, Ohio, United States. You can quickly merge these two places into one by clicking Lists at the top left, and choosing Place List.
Now, choose the place you would like to fix and double click it. In the pop-up window that appears, simply type in the place name as you desire it to appear in your database.
In the example above, we have changed , , Kentucky to Kentucky, United States and clicked OK. But wait, there’s one more step! You may notice your list now shows duplicates of Kentucky, United States or some variation. To fix that problem, click on the merge button at the top of the Place List pop-up window. A new window will pop-up and you can choose all the places you wish to merge together. Then, click Merge selected places.
More on RootsMagic Software
RootsMagic is the genealogy software used and recommended by Lisa Louise Cooke and The Genealogy Gems Podcast. You can purchase this amazing software from the Products We Love tab in our store or by clicking on the RootsMagic 7 image link. When you use our affiliate links, you are helping to support the free Genealogy Gems Podcast. Thank you!
Listen to the Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast by Lisa Louise Cooke. It’s a great series for learning the research ropes and well as refreshing your skills.
Family History: Genealogy Made Easy Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke Republished April 22, 2014
Welcome to this step-by-step series for beginning genealogists—and more experienced ones who want to brush up or learn something new. I first ran this series in 2008-09. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.
Episode 28: Find Your Family History in Newspapers, Part 2
Newspapers offer such a unique perspective on history in general, and our ancestors specifically. In Part 1 of this 2-part series, we talked about finding historical newspapers. In this episode, Jane Knowles Lindsey at the California Genealogical Society shares inspiring stories about the kinds of family items she’s found in newspapers. She offers a dozen more fantastic tips on researching old newspapers.
Jane mentions these family history finds from old newspapers:
crimes involving relatives as victims, perpetrators, investigators, etc.
profiles of jurors
family reunions
probate items and transcriptions from court cases, like divorces
Here are 12 more tips for researching newspapers and organizing your discoveries:
If you print out newspaper content found online, make sure you note where you found it. Source citation information may not be included in what you print.
Look for probate and “bigger” news items in newspapers that have wider coverage than the town: a neighboring larger city or a county-wide paper. Also look at the map to see whether the nearest big paper is out-of-county or even out of state.
Social calendar items (family visits, etc) were most popular up to the 1960s and 1970s. Newspapers today don’t look at local and personal news items.
Sometimes death notices for more prominent people are accompanied by a much larger article about them that runs within a week before or after the obituary.
There may have been both a morning and afternoon newspaper in some areas. Learn what papers were in town.
Transcribe short newspaper articles into your family history software. Transcription helps you catch details you may otherwise miss, if you’re not reading very carefully.
Nowadays with OCR and scanning, you can actually keep a digital copy of the article itself.
Look for ethnic newspapers in the advanced search at the U.S. Newspaper Directory at Chronicling America.
Any mention in a newspaper can point you to other records: court files, immigration and naturalization papers, military documents, cemetery records and more.
Google! See the link below for the updated Google News resource (for historical newspapers).
Newspapers can act as a substitute or supplement for records that have been lost in courthouse fires and floods or other records.
Like today, not everything we read in the newspaper is true!
Updates and Links
Some of the digital newspaper collections mentioned in the episode are available by library subscription, like The Early American Newspapers collection the and 19th century Newspaper Collection from The Gale Group. Check with your local library.
My You Tube channel now has several videos on newspaper research and on using Google’s powerful tools for your family history research. However, Google discontinued the Google News Timeline mentioned in this episode.
Check out the benefits of Genealogy Gems Premium Membership–including all those great video classes mentioned in the episode–here.
Finally, don’t forget this Genealogy Gems resource: How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers walks you through the process of finding and researching old newspapers. You’ll find step-by-step instructions, worksheets and checklists, tons of free online resources, websites worth paying for, location-based newspaper websites and a case study that shows you how it’s done.