KARLSSON / CARLSON
Lists, Documents & Photos

Descendants Of Frans Karlsson & Matilda Andersdotter :

The early information on my Carlson ancestors is because of several people on Genea­logy.com's Sweden Genealogy Forum. They answered a query I put on the list in early February, 2002. These wonderful people looked up information on the "Emi­granten" CDROM as well as searched original documents and registers in the library in Skovdi, Sweden.

So far, this has been discovered:

My great-grand­father Frans Karlsson was born 2 August, 1856, in Varola parish. His parents were Karl Johan Lager (born 1815) and his second wife Johanna Henriks­dotter (born 1822). Frans had a 19-year career as a soldier in the Royal Vestgota Regiment, Kakind Company and lived in Back­garden Öm. Frans' father before him was also a soldier, having spent 30 years in the same regiment.

Frans married (don't know the date yet) Matilda Anders­dotter, born 28 March, 1850, in Skövde, Skara­borgs Län. She was the daughter of Anders Larsson Ahl (1819 - 1895) and Maja Lena Claësdotter (1819 - 1860). Matilda´s parents lived in Skövde lands­för­samling (rural parish of Skövde), first in Öm, where Matilda was born, and later in Bjärby, where the later three children were born.

On 15 June, 1888, Frans emigrated to the USA, sailing from Goth­en­burg Sweden to Chicago. Matilda and their four children followed a year later, also sailing from Goth­en­burg to Chicago on August 2, 1889. Their names were spelled "Carlsson" on the ship's manifest, but "Karlsson" on their emigration records in the Skövde library. And to make things more complicated for North Americans, the surnames of their children is "Fransson" and "Frans­dotter," as required by Swedish naming convention. The family settled in Kasota, Minnesota, and a year later, on September 20, 1890, twin girls, Emma and Alma, were born. The family used the surname "Carlson", and I have yet to see any docu­mentation of any other spelling. Frans became "Frank", and the children's given names were also Ameri­canised.

Matilda died (when? where?) and Frank eventually re-married (who? when? where?). Please click on the link below to see the bare-bones list of their descendants.

I now have photo­copies of the Swedish emigration records for each member of the family, and even more interesting, a copy of the military record of Frans' father Karl Johan Lager. This record gives the names and birth dates of all ten of his children, so it is quite possible that there were other siblings (surnames will be Karl­sson) who emigrated to America. The search goes on!

• Descendants of Karl Johan Lager. The father of Frans Karlsson, below.
• Descendants Of Frans Karlsson & Matilda Andersdotter. Descendant list and some links to Carlson photographs.
• Snapshot of unknown family related to Carlsons, Longs or Lindbergs. My mother vaguely remem­bered as a young child visiting relatives, possibly in Minn­eapolis, and she thought these people may be them. The back­ground looks like rural prairie however, so who knows?