Where did Axel August Harald get the name Ahlsen from?

+2 votes
369 views
Splitting off the discussion from here: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/998801/emigrants-from-sweden-that-will-become-imigrants-somwhere

Melanie asked: "I have an immigrant to the US born in Linköping, Sweden.  His name is Axel Ahlsen, father was Harold Ahlsen, mother was Hilda Lof."

-and we got kind of lengthy about it.
WikiTree profile: Axel Ahlsen
in Genealogy Help by Eva Ekeblad G2G6 Pilot (565k points)
This should also be of interest: https://archive.org/details/belvidereillustr00repu/page/24/mode/2up?q=episcopal

Axel Ahlsen is also in there, as a member of one of the fraternal societies.

Well, here's a possible association:

Alsen, Östergötland -only in Swedish

It may be as "simple" as Ahlsen being a contracted (and Americanized) version of Alfredsson, which would have been Axel's patronymic if he had ever used one.

He is in the Swedish sources with Harald as a surname - as is sister Ida.

Axel's three brothers are all in the sources as Haraldsson - although this is not a true, oldfashioned patronymic based on the first name of the father but a look-alike construction based on the soldier name of the father - which, confusingly is a name that is usually a first name.

Anyway, none of the siblings are in the birth book with a Last Name. What we have now is their First Known Last Names, as registered when they moved from home. For the sister that died at two days I have used the same Last Name as for her sister, rather than inventing a -dotter name for her. Had they adhered to the patronymic system she would have been Alfredsdotter - but I think this family had entered the free-for-all era of the Swedish naming system trending strongly in the last quarter of the 1800s.

It may be as "simple" as Ahlsen being a contracted (and Americanized) version of Alfredsson, which would have been Axel's patronymic if he had ever used one.
by Eva Ekeblad

.

This makes the most sense of anything. 

So, as nothing has been found to name him as Haraldsson, should I change the LNAB to Harald?

Yes, I think so.
Nobody can say we haven't researched them.

I visit the tree you are building at FamilySearch now and then, although I'm not adding to it.

I am having a terrible time with Axel's one brother-in-law's wife.  cheeky

I may just give up on her and leave her as just a mention in the husband's profile.

I have a self-imposed timetable to get a certain part of this lineage done before the second week of July, so spending so much time on the in-laws may prevent that.  

(I have a bunch of info from Eddie King regards Axel's granddaughter's father-in-law that I need to sort out and "biographise" so I can do a profile so the two lines are properly connected.)

Bless Eddie King!

I cannot help you in the US or Germany, and I may consider my work on the Swedish side done. I'll at least take a break. If I continue, what would you find most useful - attending to the children of Axel's brothers and sisters (I should be able to find death dates in the database I have on USB) or taking the tree another generation back (where possible - an orphan from Stockholm is probably not traceable).

Definitely bless Eddie King!  I would be next to nowhere on some of these folk in the US if it weren't for his superior research abilities!

I think the German and Prussian parts of the lineage will have to wait for someone else to become interested, because it's beyond my abilities as well.

If you were to continue, whatever interests you the most.  I know how much easier things seem to go when interest is engaged.  heart

I did a little cluster this morning: the parents of Anna Greta Johansdotter plus her sister = the second wife of Erik Johan Löf.

2 Answers

+2 votes

Profile made for Hilda Margareta Löf.

She was definitely Löf from the start, although this was not worth mentioning in the vicar's opinion during her servant years. She wasn't Hilda in the birth book, but she was definitely Hilda in the later books, and probably this was the name she was known by in daily life.

She's got a long string of sources - and yet I have skipped a lot of household records when nothing special happened. 

Won't be doing more today, but I find the family interesting, so I'll return.

by Eva Ekeblad G2G6 Pilot (565k points)
Thank you, thank you!  My cousins will be very excited when I can tell them (show them) what we now know.

(Sorry I didn't respond sooner, but my 2-plus days no sleep caught up to me, and I fell asleep in the chair and dropped the laptop.)
So, if Hilda/Margareta was not married when Axel was born, and his father was not yet Harald, what would his last name correctly be?

In this image : https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSGC-9976-6

Who is Augusta Charl Eriksson the wife of?

Augusta Charlotta Eriksson was the wife of Alfred Emil Haraldsson.

I plan to do the grenadier father himself today. Axel's brothers and sisters probably deserve profiles as well.

As for Axel's LNAB I'll start on a new answer to this question for that.
Augusta Charlotta Eriksson was the wife of Alfred Emil Haraldsson.

.

Oh, good!  That's what I thought, but FS has it indexed strangely and it appears she is the wife of the father. surprise 

Are you making the Familysearch tree? Looks neat.

Well FamilySearch indexing being strange is nothing new, is it!!

Where would place Vr. Kl. be.  Presumably in Östergötland.

(Alfred Emil's daughter was indexed as being born there in 1917 -- on the 1906 - 1911 census.)

Vreta Kloster.

That's also where Alfred Harald and Hilda Margareta Löf lived towards the end of their lives.

I haven't looked at the map or checked Swedish Wikipedia, but I think all these parishes were very close. People rarely moved far in those days. Unless they went to America cheeky

Tack!

All this going to Amerika!

I have the Amerikan rellies asking questions.  :)

Axel's one granddaughter is in her 90s, but still very "with it", so her daughter is going to ask her some stuff in the next day or so.  (She, the granddaughter of Axel, lives alone, out in the sticks!)

Cool!

The profile for Alfred Johansson Harald is done. I'm taking a break.

From his marriage and on I copied from the profile of his wife - which seems I mostly wrote from the husband's perspective anyway.

Alfred/Alfrid went through most of his life with the wrong birth month in the papers, and his mother died early, so he had a step mother - those were the only tricky things about him, I think.

I think I'll be looking at Hilda Löf's parents today.
Yay!

I have spent half the day deciphering bad handwriting, and exchanging messages with Axel's 3-greats-grandson (who is rather excited to know he has "new" cousins out there somewhere).

Profiles created for both parents of Hilda Margareta.

I still mean to follow Erik Johan Löf from his second marriage to his death, but I'll take a walk in the summer weather first.

Erik Johan's second wife turned out to be the younger sister of his first wife (mother of Margareta).

Tack!

I hope your summer weather was enjoyable!
+2 votes

Melanie asked: So, if Hilda/Margareta was not married when Axel was born, and his father was not yet Harald, what would his last name correctly be?

Well, that's the 64 000 dollar question. He would implicitly have had the patronymic Alfredsson (or Alfridsson) since this was the name of his known father - but I doubt that he is ever in the books with that name.

I think we leave him as Haraldsson for the time being.

I wish WikiTree wasn't as rigid about Last Name At Birth - I think First Known Last Name makes more sense in a case like this.

by Eva Ekeblad G2G6 Pilot (565k points)
Thanks for the thanks - yes, it's correct!

If the photo is from Axel's shop I would guess that he and his wife are the ones in front of the door. It's ony a guess, of course.

It's a pity that the booklet about Belvidere was printed as early as 1896, when he wasn't established enough to get portrayed.
I would agree with that guess.  It just makes sense that "the boss" would be central.

I have some photos of other family members, too, just not on this line.  OLD photos.

I've asked the great-granddaughter and the 3-greats-grandson for the location of the graves, because there is no notation on the photo itself, and find a gave and billion graves have been less than helpful.

The Belvidere Cemetery has lots of the Totz family, but not, so far as I can discover, Axel and Ida.
No, they could just as well be buried somewhere in Chicago.
I know that a number of the family are buried at Arlington Heights (not that find a grave or billion graves has them, either), but am having no luck with Axel and Ida. Or their daughter.

Sorry, can't help you with that from here. cheeky

I think I'll do some of Axel's siblings tomorrow.

Found it!  Start adding stuff to FS "profiles" (in this case daughter, Margaret's) and FS eventually kicks out new sources that simply did not exist 5 minutes ago no matter what search terms were used.  Chicago cemetery, indeed. Irving Park Cemetery, Chicago.  Now I just need to add that info to Ida and Axel.
Yes, I have learned that about FS recently, that it often pays to look at every source from the perspective of every family member mentioned in hopes of something fresh popping up as related.

OK: I did Thure Fritiof Haraldsson and Ida Alfrida Harald today. The Swedish naming system was seriously in flux at this time.

It seems Ture did not bring his family to the US. It also looks like he initially hadn't meant to stay in Sweden. He is not in sequence in the moving-in book. He is listed among people who left the parish in September (when his brother left, but as a visitor he wasn't registered), but I think the scribble in the date column for Ture says mars. The thing is, his wife had a new baby in November - and I only read the bit on the household record saying that he returned in July. Now I see that there is an explanatory note further to the right saying he had returned during the spring. So he probably had planned to go back to the US but changed his mind with the beby on its way.

I would never have been able to figure all that out.  surprise

I'm having enough trouble sorting out the Totz family .. and that's not even the German part!

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