The Soldiers in the Photos: A Family’s Quest Through Lost Names and New Lands.

A journey through archives.

Last week I was contacted by a person named Håkan Bergquist from Malmö, Sweden, and he told me a very interesting story about his two ancestors who were soldiers in the American Expeditionary Force during the Great War.

With some background information from Håkan I decided to write a small article about how it can be trying to find information about ancestors when initially not having all the present facts in hand.

It started with photos which were found in the household albums but with not much facts connected to them, until they looked at the back side of the photos. Here they found some names, and the hunt for more information could begin.

I have earlier described stories about families researching Swedish born soldiers who emigrated to North America. The descendants tried to find more information about the fate of the soldiers, but did not succeed. In those cases the emigrants changed their names and surnames when they arrived to their new country, which made it hard to find information in the archives.

In this situation Håkan’s family had a similar quest to solve when they tried to find more information about the military background of the soldiers in the photos.

Behind one of the photos below they found the text as follows:

“Detta är vår äldste son 1st Sergt Carl J.A.B Collins vidt de amerikanska trupperna i Frankrike sedan Sept 20 1917”

Translated into english it says as follows:

“This is our eldest son 1st Sergt Carl J.A.B Collins with the American troops in France since Sept 20 1917”

The family of today knew that their ancestors had emigrated to North America. The Brandquist family emigrated from their home in late July 1901. They left Malmö on August 15, 1901, passed Liverpool in the UK on August 20th, 1901, and arrived in Boston on August 30th, 1901, after have been travelling on the steam ship “Ultonia” from the Cunard Line.

Below some snippets from the Swedish church book and from the American census documents. In the document from the Swedish church book we find the parents, the mother Mathilda Fredrika Brandquist (Larsson) and the father Frans Oscar Brandquist, and all the children.

⇒ Read the entire article on the Swedes In The Great War website here:

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