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A spinoff from Olof Andersson in the Global Tree

in order to continue expanding this sidetrack of the 100 Circles.

1 Gunnilbo parish
2 Gunnilbo children of 1793
3 Gunnilbo children 1784
4 Gunnilbo children 1775

Gunnilbo parish

Gunnilbo, a parish of about 227 square kilometers, existing from 1580 to the administrative reforms in the 20th century, is, in spite of its small size, well populated in WikiTree. Several active WikiTreers happen to have roots there. A search for Gunnilbo in WikiTree+ results in roundly 1800 profiles, born from 1560 to 1914. Only 28 of them are unconnected. (Ekeblad-7 09:47, 18 March 2021 (UTC))

According to Svensk Uppslagsbok 1949 the Gunnilbo area is forested, with many lakes; no more than 5% being cultivated fields. In 1945 there was a population of 829, having gone down from 1,560 in 1856 (which may have been the peak). In old times there were several foundries and hammers in Gunnilbo, making use of charcoal produced from the forests and the water power from Hedströmmen and its tributaries.

Olof Andersson (1793-1860) was chosen as a Focus Profile for 100 Circles because of his spacetime placement in a richly populated area about halfway between the "record horizon" and the present. Olof was born in Gunnilbo and moved to the next parish south as a married man. Olof's ancestors were all farmers / foresters in Gunnilbo and neighbouring parishes. Initially owners of their land, they slowly drifted towards cultivating land owned by others. Olof's father owned the land he farmed, but Olof, being a third son, became a contract farmer.

The descendants of Olof Andersson lived in times of increasing mobility, due to industralization and urbanization. Some few emigrated. Olof's eldest brother Anders Andersson (1782-1847) remained as self-owned farmer in Solmyra. He was the fifth generation in the male line from Tyris Andersson (abt.1598-1695) (who had married into the farm). The farm remained with eldest sons in this line for three more generations, to Anders Gustaf Andersson (1857-1886), who died unmarried. His sister married and stayed in Solmyra. Her grandson, who remained single all his life, still lived in Solmyra in 1975.

The people mentioned above are Olof's blood relations. The Global Tree of Wikitree counts four types of connection to an individual: parents, siblings, spouses and children. Of these the spouses are not necessarily related by blood - although Olof Andersson and his wife Anna were fourth cousins. This is quite typical for the area at Olof's time - it was very endogamic, at least within his social stratum. Since this was an iron producing area, there were many smiths, particularly at the hammers in Färna. The smiths were more mobile than the forest farmers, since they often moved from foundry to foundry, at least in the beginning of their careers. They tended to marry within their own ranks, although when you start looking into it, exceptions were fairly frequent. The pattern is highlighted if we look at the children born in Gunnilbo parish the same year as Olof, 1793.

Gunnilbo children of 1793

Taking a cue from Bernard Vatant's exploration of the children born in the same village the same year as focus profile Jean-Joseph Marie Vatant (1804-1875) we are looking at the 35 (+2) children born in Gunnilbo in 1793:

All the children of 1793 were possible to connect to the Global Tree (the son of the vicar does not even have a profile yet). The smith families were connected mostly by finding a local girl who married a smith - it seems to have happened a bit more often than we previously thought.

Clicking through the links to the connection finder on June 1 reveals that nine of the profiles now have a shorter connection path to Olof Andersson than they did March 9 when the list was finalized. This is presumably due mostly to the work done on connecting the other two cohorts, 1784 and 1775, which has tightened the network a bit.

Of 36 profiled children born in Gunnilbo in 1793, eight died before the age of four - a child mortality rate of 22.2%

Of the remaining 28 only six stayed in Gunnilbo. Most of the rest moved south, more or less with a couple of exceptions moving north. So Olof Andersson was far from unique in his age cohort. This contrasts with the preconception that people did not move far and married somebody from next door. It makes one curious if and when there was a change in the pattern.

Spreadsheet over the connected children 1793 - with one tab showing relationships by blood

Gunnilbo children 1784

The choice of a second, earlier, sample was based on the fact that there is a big gap in the birth records for Gunnilbo - a whole volume of the ministerial book (covering 1753 to 1774) has been lost. So, in order to make it possible to have two evenly spaced samples we settled for 1784.

In 1784 there were 43 children born in Gunnilbo.

One of them still has not been connected to the Global Tree (connected by chance two years later, in August 2023)
Fourteen died at age seven or earlier - a child mortality rate of 32.6%
Nine of the 29 survivors died in Gunnilbo
20 moved out. Six of these we have still not been able to follow to the end of their lives.
Spreadsheet of Gunnilbo children 1784

Gunnilbo children 1775

In this sample there will be some individuals even harder to follow to the end of their lives; some will be impossible to connect because of insufficient information about the family.

Spreadsheet of Gunnilbo children 1775

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The context of a focus profile

Contents

Gunnilbo parish

Gunnilbo children of 1793

Gunnilbo children 1784

Gunnilbo children 1775