When your name is Mary Inga Anderson and you live in Sweden, you are about as easy to find as Mary Ann Jones in America.  Lots of them exist, but which one is the right one?  It is often impossible; thus, leading to one solid brick wall. However, sometimes you get lucky and a DNA match puts a crack in the wall.  Soon, it comes tumbling down.

 

In Front of the Wall

My husband has known for a very long time that he had a great-great grandmother whose maiden name was Mary Inga Anderson.  She had immigrated to the United States in the 1800s, married, and had children.  One of those children would marry and give birth to his grandmother Donna Isabelle (Van Allen) Thomson.

Mary married Hans (Magnus) Hanson, a first generation American whose parents were born in Norway, in Wisconsin in 1873. Until recently, very little was known about Mary’s life prior to her marriage other than that she was born September 10, 1852 in Sweden and had immigrated sometime prior to her marriage.

Magnus and Mary lived in Richwood Township in Richland County, Wisconsin where Magnus worked as a carpenter and farmer.  Over the coming years Mary gave birth to ten children.  All their children except John, who died in 1887 as an infant, and Martin (Norman), who died at age 18, lived into their adult years.

The family rented property until sometime between 1900 and 1910 when they purchased a property in or near the Village of Byrds Creek.  By that time, Mary was a naturalized citizen who was able to read and write.

Mary died January 29, 1915.  Magnus lived another 21 years during which he continued working as a carpenter despite his advanced age.

 

Research

Despite searching, we could never learn anything more about Mary.  Her name was simply too common.  We did not know her parents’ names or the location of her birth or departure from Sweden.

 

The DNA Match

We had uploaded my husband’s DNA results from ancestry.com to MyHeritage.com since his family is relatively new to the United States and MyHeritage tends to have DNA from more people outside the United States.

In February, my husband got an interesting DNA match from Sweden.  C.T. matched him at 73.8 centimorgans, which is a good match for a more distant relative.  Although there are a variety of possible relationships with that amount of shared DNA, MyHeritage estimated that C.T. was likely a third cousin (3C).

The diagram below shows C.T.’s family tree from MyHeritage.  Her Name has been replaced with initials for privacy. 

 

With this tree in mind, searches were done for Inga.  People’s trees were utilized to create possibilities of Inga’s family line.  From there records were used to match up with the trees, people, and locations, to find the connection to C.T.’s tree. 

 

Breakthrough

As can be seen in the chart below, the breakthrough  led to the identification of Mary’s parents’ names: Jan Gust Anderson and Gustafva Shalotta Adamsdotter.  In addition, her maternal grandparents, Adam Abrhamson (Abramsson) Gewert and Ingeborg Parsdotter (Persdr), were identified as the common ancestor with C.T.  They are highlighted in green in C.T.’s family tree above.

It turns out that the relationship to C.T. is more distant than MyHeritage predicted.  At 4C1R (fourth cousins once removed), it is still within the range of possibility, but DNAPainter only gives a 4% chance of this relationship.  Thus, it may be that their is a second direct connection, that one segment is a “sticky segment” (it just doesn’t breakdown easily), or that enough intermarrying between families in the community over the years led to increased shared DNA.

 

Immigration

 

A church record was found that shows Mary immigrating with her family to the United States in 1869.  According to the record, they departed for North American (Nordamerika) on April 23, 1869 from Varmland, Langserud in Sweden.  She traveled with her parents and several others.

Mary’s father is listed as Jan Gustaf Andersson Gäfvert (b. Jul. 24, 1822) and her mother as Gustafva Adamsdotter Andersson Gäfvert  (b. Aug. 1, 1825)

Everyone else is listed as a son or daughter.  This would imply that the children would be Jansson or Jansdotter by typical naming convention where the last name of the child is based on the first name of the father.  However, some are listed as Gustafsdotter.  The father’s second name is Gustaf and the mother is Gustafva.  So, it isn’t clear if this is a reference to one of them or someone else.  It is known that Stina likely isn’t a full sibling to the others.  However, more research is needed to understand the specific naming of the children.

The children are:

• Stina Kajsa Jansdotter (b. Oct. 22, 1849)
• Inga Maja Andersson Gäfvert Gustafsdotter  (b. Sep. 10, 1852)
• Wilhelmina Andersson Gäfvert Gustafsdotter (B. Dec. 28, 1856)
• Anders Gustaf Gäfvert Andersson Jansson (b. Aug. 27, 1862)
• Augusta Gäfvert Andersson Gustafsdotter (b. Aug. 3, 1865)
• Johan August Gäfvert Jansson Andersson (b. Nov. 28, 1867) (last two names are possibly switched)

 

Life in the United States

In 1870, the family, excluding Mary, appears to be in Richland County, Wisconsin where Mary later married.  Mary is living in Racine, Raymond County, Wisconsin working as a domestic in the Cross household.  She was 16 and was the oldest child able to work as Stina was “deaf and dumb.”

By 1880, Mary was married and it appears that her parents moved on from the area.  They possibly lived in or near Forest City, Iowa.  However, more research is needed to track her parents and siblings after their arrival in the United States. 

 

Life in Sweden

 

In Sweden, Mary Inga, who was sometimes Inga Mary, shows up as Inga Maja.  Now, Maja is another spelling of Maya and can also be used for Maria or Mary.

We find Mary with her parents in Långserud, Värmland, Sverige (Sweden) in the village or farm of Eldansnás (Eldansnäs) during the period 1851 to 1855.  Mary’s parents and Stina had all been born in Svanskog.  Only Mary had been born in Långserud at Långelanda . From this record, we also learn that Stina was considered illegitimate.

By the first half of the 1860s, The family had grown to include Stina, Inga Maja, Wilhelmina, Emma, Anders Gustaf, and Augusta.  Emma (b. Mar 6, 1860) was not with them when they made the journey to America, as she died at age 4.

 

More Work To Do

Plenty of research on Mary Inga and her family remains.  However, we now have names and places to aid in that research.  Perhaps we will be able to uncover more details and possibly even more generations.

 

Image: via pixabay.com by Neypomuk-Studios

Prompt: Brick wall

#52Ancestors52Weeks 

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