Find your long lost Swedish ancestors at New Sweden’s Midsommar Festival the weekend of June 19th to the 21st.

This June you just might be able to find your long lost Swedish ancestors while attending New Sweden’s Midsommar Festival the weekend of June 19th to the 21st.

For decades, New Sweden and the surrounding Swedish townships of Westmanland, Stockholm and Woodland have been celebrating the festival of Midsommar.

You can still come and enjoy the Swedish Music and dancing, help decorate the Majstäng (Maypole), eat hardy at the Midsommar Frukost (breakfast), partake in a real Swedish Smörgåsbord, have a Swedish Supper at the Lutheran Church, tour some of the local historical buildings, and take part in all of the other fun and festive events. But this year you might also be able to FINALLY find your ancestors in Sweden!

Lynn Johnson, a former resident of New Sweden, and now the chair person of the New Sweden Historical Society's Genealogy committee will be hosting Swedish Genealogy Research Classes on Friday, June 19, 2009, at 3:00 and again at 6:30 at the New Sweden School.

For the last several years Lynn has been researching Maine’s Swedish immigrants, their ancestors and their descendents. She is in the process of constructing a Northern Maine Swedish Family Tree type database. Her database currently contains over 6,000 persons of Swedish lineage or of people related to persons of Swedish lineage. Included in this database is information on where, in Sweden, over 800 of the local immigrants came from and where they were born. Her ultimate goal (though she readily admits it likely isn’t possible) is to locate the home parish of all Swedish emigrants that ever came to northern Maine and the first generation or generations born in the US.

Each class is scheduled to last 2 hours and will briefly cover basic beginner research (for the person totally new to genealogy research) and then more in-depth information for the more experienced researcher.

Because there is much more to cover than time will allow study guides and handouts will be provided to all attendees. These handouts will provide you with hints and help in searching local records as well as online sources and information on various CDs that may be ordered to expand your research.

Layman John Lundgren and
his three grandchildren

Some of the topics to be covered are:

• Getting started - starting with the bare basics
• Where to find your initial information
• Sourcing the information you find
• Evaluating conflicting information
• Searching the US census records
• Cemeteries: Just because it's carved in granite doesn't necessarily make it so!
• Swedish place names: Farms, Villages, Parishes, Counties and Provinces
• Swedish Given and Surnames- patronymics, military and spelling variations
• Searching various Swedish data bases to find your ancestors
• Searching and Navigating through the Swedish Clerical records to find your family– even if you can’t speak a word of SWEDISH!!

Class size is restricted to 30 participants. Please contact Lynn to reserve your seat or for more information about the class at newswedengenealogy@gmail.com. The cost for the class and materials is $12.00 per person and all proceeds will go to the New Sweden Historical Society for the restoration of the newly acquired Nicholas Clasé historical home.

To confirm your seat, send a check for $12.00 with preferred session, your name and contact information to New Sweden Historical Society, PO Box 33, New Sweden, ME, 04762. Or stop by the Museum, 116 Station Road, New Sweden, any afternoon.

Clasé house