NEWSLETTER # 12     DEC 2005

 THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Another summer has quickly gone by, and the members of Swedish Roots in Oregon have recharged their batteries for another busy fall and winter.

At their first fall meeting, the Board of Directors unanimously elected Swedish historian and scholar Victoria Owenius a new member-at-large of SRIO. Welcome Victoria! We are very glad to have you with us and look forward to working together on several new and interesting Swedish history projects.

The addition to our website has also begun, and we are very excited about the new possibilities that this will open up to genealogists in Sweden and the United States. The material we have started making available is the translated texts of Ernst Skarstedt’s biographies of Oregon Swedes from his rare volume Oregon och Dess Svenska Befolkning (1911). We are most grateful to Britt-Mari Lord for diligently translating these texts, to Erland Anderson, Ph.D., for volunteering as editor, and to our webmaster Herje Wikegård for doing the technical work. To all three of you, tack så mycket!

MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERY

While researching the history of Oregon’s Swedish newspaper, Oregon Posten, new SRIO member Victoria Owenius had run across a reference to a little known Swedish emigration journal at the Oregon Historical Society library. The diary was written in Swedish in 1892 by Anna Birchman, whose brother Andrew worked as a typesetter for The Oregonian newspaper. He provided her with tickets from Dalarna, Sweden, all the way to Portland, Oregon. It is a very interesting description of a month-long journey taken in the dead of winter by an 18-year-old girl traveling by herself.

At some later time this diary was anonymously translated into English and neatly typed up, and in the early 1970s, both the original and the typescript were donated to the OHS archive.

            Victoria Owenius found that it was worth publishing in our booklet series, and in October Victoria and Lars visited the OHS library to see if we could secure the permission to publish it in our series. That has now been granted to SRIO, and work on the diary is currently under way.

PUBLICATIONS

We had hoped that the new SRIO booklet, “Trapped in America: Excerpts from Anton Swanson’s Diaries, 1908-1911,” would be in print by now, but a series of technical problems have delayed the printing. It will be published soon, however, so please stay in touch by checking the publication page of our website. This unique and moving journal, originally published in Swedish by Landsarkivet in Östersund in 1989, describes the personal fate of a man who became “trapped” in Oregon after contracting polio at age 26. This unfortunate circumstance reveals how difficult an immigrant experience could be when bad luck struck.

So far, SRIO has published eight booklets on the Swedish experience in the state of Oregon, and they all belong on the “Required Reading List” of anyone interested in the Swedish history of the state. All are available from Swedish Roots at the nominal cost of $2 per copy. Please check our website for details.

A NEW BOOK

In August this year, Lars Nordström published a book of oral histories by recent Swedish immigrants to the Pacific Northwest entitled De nya utvandrarna: Tio svenskar i nordvästra USA berättar. Five men and five women tell their story of how they became emigrants to the United States after the Vietnam War, and how they view their life as Swedes in the Northwest. The book is currently only available in Swedish at:

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

 Anyone who has visited the permanent logging exhibit at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, is aware of the significant role Swedish loggers played in the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps you have driven Highway 30 from Portland to Astoria and wondered, right before you enter the town of Clatskanie, about the sign for “Swedetown.” Swedetown was a large Swedish logging camp, and even though there is some surviving lore, we have not been able to track down any photos or written documentation about it.

SRIO would like to document this little-known aspect of Oregon’s history, and we need your help in learning more. If you have photos, stories, letters, articles, newspaper clippings, or anything else that might pertain to the history of the Swedish loggers, please get in touch with us.

OUTREACH

 If you belong to a group or organization that would like to schedule a Swedish Roots in Oregon presentation, please contact Lars Nordström for further details. You can reach him either through the new SRIO website, or at the new mailing address below. SRIO offers these talks for free.

INTERESTED IN JOINING SRIO?

Are you interested in the Swedish history of the state of Oregon? Would you like to be part of a small, friendly and dedicated research group? Would you be able to attend meetings about once a month in the Portland metropolitan area?