You might have read In Search of Erik Bergstrom, Part I a few weeks ago. To recap, it covers the tragic story of my great-great-grandma Emma Hagberg and her short, but frustrating life in late 19th century Norway.
When she passed away in 1904 at the age of 39, she had three living children from three different fathers. A fourth child, only one-month-old, died just a couple of weeks before Emma. We don’t know for sure, but we think Emma probably died of complications from that pregnancy.
One of her three living children was my great-grandfather, Erick Hanson. Despite losing his mother at such a young age, he was known in Southeastern Wisconsin as a happy Norwegian farmer who loved to tell jokes and sing Norwegian songs for anyone who would listen. Despite his positive demeanor, Erick’s life was always surrounded by the sadness of losing his mother and by one mysterious question. Who was his birth father?
Who was Grandpa’s Birth Father?
Erick’s daughter Ruth, my grandma, got into genealogy in the 1970s. The more she uncovered the more convinced she became that records must exist that would answer that burning question about the identity of her grandfather. Back then, the internet didn’t exist. And, with two kids and a teaching job, she couldn’t quite swing a trip to Norway. Instead, she wrote a letter to the Norwegian National Archives and asked for any information they had pertaining to her father, Erick Hanson, born February 4, 1899.
Today we call paper mail “snail mail” because it is slow. Back in the 1970s, international mail might as well have been called “rock mail” because it felt like it didn’t move! Ruth waited for a response. Then she waited some more…and some more. Finally, one day to her delight a letter with Norwegian postage was waiting for her. It contained something huge… her father’s birth certificate! On it, she saw her grandmother’s name, Emma Hagberg. She learned her father was born at Rikshospitalet (the national hospital) in Kristiana (now Oslo), Norway. And, there was one more piece of information on his birth certificate that left Ruth speechless. Listed as the father was a man named Erik Bergstrom.
With that information in hand, along with an approximate birth year of 1863 and birth location of Sweden, my grandma Ruth set out to figure out who this Erik Bergstrom was. But that proved much harder than she realized.
Who was Erik Bergstrom?
For the next thirty years, Ruth dug and searched for any information that might link an Erik Bergstrom to her grandmother, Emma Hagberg. Unfortunately, there were a number of tall brick walls she was going to need to smash through.
- Naming conventions were changing in 19th century Norway and Sweden.
Traditionally, children took a patronymic name. For example, at birth, Erick Hanson would have actually been called Erick Eriksson. However, Norway had begun requiring families to take on a surname. Bergstrom is a surname, which means Erik Bergstrom was probably born with a different patronymic name and possibly continued using it throughout his life. - Norwegian records were, of course, written in Norwegian.
Ruth didn’t speak or read the language very well. - The name Erik Bergstrom was just popular enough to make finding the right Erik Bergstrom more difficult.
A quick Ancestry.com search for Erik Bergstrom born about 1863 who may have lived in Sweden offers 322 results. I can’t even imagine how my grandma would have sifted through all of that before the internet existed to compile it. - Ruth lived in the United States.
That’s far from all the records she hoped existed somewhere in Norway or Sweden.
Throughout her years of research, Ruth never gave up on finding out the truth. Based on what she could tell from little bits of information she uncovered, she believed Emma had been working at a new hotel in Kristiania and Erik Bergstrom was probably a construction worker or other contractor working on the same hotel. She also believed that Erik was from the same part of Sweden that Emma’s family had lived before immigrating to Norway. If that was the case, it’s possible that Emma’s family had been trying to set her up with Erik, or maybe the two had met previously at some kind of Swedish get-together.
That’s where the data and the research stopped, at least for a time. She had uncovered a lot more than she knew before. Ruth even had the chance to travel to Norway in the 1990s and met a cousin on her grandma Emma’s side of the family. But, unfortunately, the mystery of Erik Bergstrom remained.
Continuing the Search for Erik Bergstrom
Fast forward to 2018. Finally established in “adulthood” and settled down a bit, I decided to carry on the family’s nerdy genealogy tradition. Talking to my mom about what I should research, she brought up the family’s biggest mystery. The mystery of Erik Bergstrom.
I love a good mystery and this project sounded challenging. I decided to take it on!
First, I turned to the internet and the Norwegian Digital Archives
I searched and searched for men named Erik Bergstrom born in Sweden around 1863 for hours. And hours. I looked for men named Erik born the same year who had different patronymic names. Tweaked my search to look for other Bergstrom’s who might have middle names like Erik. I looked for men who had occupations that led them around to different cities… And Eriks born in the same region in Sweden as Emma Hagberg’s parents. I searched until my eyes glazed over.
Fortunately, these searches created a lot of leads. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete that came out of it.
My next step was turning to Ancestry DNA
I had never used DNA to try to track down someone before, so this was an exciting new project for me. I filtered my DNA matches by people on my mom’s side of the family and began grouping them into different family trees. However, I quickly realized that the majority of the results were all from the same family line, and they were not related to Erik Bergstrom.
I tried searching through my matches for people with Bergstrom in their family trees and for people with Swedish surnames. While I did find a handful of people who I think are definitely in the right tree, their family connection to me was so small that it was nearly impossible to determine how we were related. Once again, my eyes eventually glazed over. I promised myself to keep checking back for new DNA matches, but to also move on to other approaches.
A Trip to Norway
In November of 2018, I was looking at plane tickets. I didn’t know where my husband, Patrick, and I were going, but I knew we had a week of vacation in March and a bit of money saved up. Playing around on the Skyscanner app I found an offer for roundtrip plane tickets to Oslo, Norway for just $300. Just $300?! Sold.
I knew eventually I’d visit Norway, but it hadn’t been on the radar at that stage. Now I was thinking I could use this trip to try to dig deeper into the Erik Bergstrom mystery. After all, there were a ton of documents that weren’t digitized yet. Maybe I could find some.
Before leaving, I wrote an email to the Norwegian National Archives and asked if they could help me with my search. I gave them all the information I had on my great-grandfather Erik and his birth, crossed my fingers, and pressed send.
No emails showed up before we boarded our plane, but that was ok. I was going to Norway! The motherland! I was going to see where my great-grandfather was born and experience some of the beauty and language he was so passionate about during his life. It would be icing on top if I was able to find out more about his father.
Norway is fantastic. The fjords are breathtaking. The food is impressive. Oslo is filled with history and an air of sophistication. There were people skiing to work. We saw stave churches, Viking ships, and rode a train around the country. We joined a climate change rally in Bergen. Patrick even paid the equivalent of $13 for a Guinness at a bar named Scruffy Murphy’s, a random Liverpool FC fan pub. He said it was worth it. I think my great-grandpa Erick would have had a great time with us.
Toward the end of the trip, I dragged Patrick along to the National Archives just outside of Oslo. I hadn’t heard back yet, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go ask. When we got there, we were disappointed to find out that the type of records we were looking for would actually be located at the Oslo City Archives, rather than the national archives… Many of these records weren’t digitized yet and it was closed for the rest of our trip. Bummer! We can boil that down to poor planning on my part. We should have visited the archives first thing. But, it definitely wasn’t a wasted trip.
Another Record Uncovered
Once back home from Norway, I sent an email to the Oslo City Archives asking for help. While waiting for a response from them, I actually received my response from the National Archives, and I was excited to find something new! In 1900, with the help of a lawyer, Emma sent a letter to Erik Bergstrom. Since I don’t read Norwegian very well, I found a friendly Norwegian genealogist online who offered to help translate. From his translation, I learned that Emma was seeking child support for her son Erick. The letter was mailed to a county in northern Norway where Erik Bergstrom had possibly lived previously or relocated to. The request went unanswered, so either he no longer lived in the area or he found a way to avoid responding.
No matter – this was huge! Another piece of the puzzle. For me, this letter solidified that Erik Bergstrom was a real person and probably not a fake name. It also gave me another clue as to where to look for the real Erik Bergstrom.
Now What?
Since then, I’ve continued my search. I have come up with some major contenders, but I have yet to find solid proof of the real Erik Bergstrom and who he was. While I’ve had to take breaks for my own sanity, my search is far from over. I’m going to continue checking my DNA matches, continue searching for new records that have been digitized, and continue reaching out to the Oslo City Archives, whom I never heard back from. I’m sure they have better things to do than answer an email about someone who lived over a hundred years ago.
The reason I’m still working on this GIANT brick wall has changed. Today, I’m not only continuing to dig for my grandma Ruth, but also for Emma Hagberg. She deserves to have an ending to this story that doesn’t make her look desperate or crazy. I’m convinced that the mystery of Erik Bergstrom is solvable. And, until I’ve closed all avenues, I’m going to keep looking.
