House of Emigrants

I had to get out of bed at 5.15 today. Not pleasant. It was a long train ride to Växjö, where the House of Emigrants is situated. It's an emigration research centre with huge resources; Swedish-American church records, newspapers, books, passenger lists and also an exhibit. It's a place where I could have spent weeks doing research. I started at the archive. After searching their databases the entire morning, 134 of the 140 pages of my notebook were filled. My hand hurts slightly..... For lunch I met some of my relatives (my second cousin and his wife) that I recently discovered live in Växjö. We got in touch through the internet, where they had posted a query regarding my grandfather and his siblings. It was very nice to see them and exchange family history. We sat for almost two hours in the restaurant, talking about our common ancestors.

I had only a couple of hours left before the archive closed, but I managed to look through a part of the book collection and get some photo copies. I also rushed past the exhibit, taking pictures of it. I was very surprised to see a small part of it dealing with Leroy Anderson!!! I was so stressed that I didn't have time to read the entire text, but I might be able to get that later. One of he major finds today were the names of the ships the Anderson family emigrated on: from Malmö to England's east coast they travelled on the Gozo, and from Liverpool to New York they travelled on the Alaska. Both ships owned by the Guion Line. Arrival date was April 17, 1882.

It has been a very interesting day, but now I really should get some sleep.