Sweden and Jersey Trip - 2016

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Oh dear, has it been 12 months since I have worked on the blog!  Memories of my 2016 trip to visit Ancestral countries!

It has been a very busy 12 months and I am afraid my blog has suffered.  However, lately I have been sorting the photos of my visit to the paternal ancestral counties of Sweden and Jersey in 2016.

SWEDEN

I have had many wonderful and strange things happen throughout my many years of Family History research however ....who would have thought!  I made the local Kalmar (Sweden) papers.  I will follow up in a later blog - as I think the picture and translation tell the story.


Translation:
                                                                                   Barometern Tuesday 14th 2016

Barometern 175 years: “Great to be here”.

Heading 1
Peter Strömgren and Sandra Reid. Two relatives from Sweden and Australia, which has now met, thanks to a small ad in the Salvation Army magazine in the 1920 s. Barometern was with them on Monday when they visited Kalmar Castle.

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Family relationships between Kalmar and Melbourne Australia were established in the mid 1920's.  Peter Strömgren 's father then contacted and exchanged letters with Sandra Reid’s grandmother. Eventually they met in Kalmar, and on Monday it was time for the younger generation to meet.

Heading 3
Sandra Reid flew from Australia to Europe, where she boarded the cruise ship Prinsendam, which on Monday was at anchor outside Kalmar.

Here, at the anchor outside the castle, Barometern photographed Sandra Reid where her grandmother was in August 1954. “It's great to be here, Grandma talked so much about our Swedish roots”.

This is how it looked when Sandra Reid's grandmother Josephine Romeril visited Kalmar in August 1954. “I have always wanted to visit father's old country”, she said to Barometern.

Main Story
Happy coincidence behind the family meeting

Kalmar
Barometern was also here when Sandra Reid's grandmother Josephine Romeril in 1954 visited Sweden and Kalmar. The picture and her story, was published on the newspaper's front page on August 12th 1954.

Josephine Romeril was then invited by Peter Strömgren father Sven, who was born and raised in Kalmar, but later moved to Stockholm, Västerås and India.

At the anchor outside the castle Sandra Reid stands in exactly the same place as her grandmother did 62 years earlier.

"I was eight or nine years old when she came back, all of us grandkids got a Swedish wooden Dalecarlia horse,” Sandra Reid remembers.

"She reminded us always of our Swedish origin."

Family roots go back to “Little Horn” in northern Öland and Borgholm, where the ancestor Carl Magnus Brudus ran a tannery. One of the sons, Johan Magnus, emigrated to Australia while his sister Selma remained in Sweden.

Selma's son Sven Strömgren was born in 1897 in Kalmar and was soon very interested in genealogy. In mid-1920´s, he tried to find his relatives in Australia, and by a happy coincidence, he got in touch.

"Yes, my father did put a small ad in the newspaper Salvation Army in Australia, and after a few years, he got a reply," says Peter, showing the telegram, with info from Melbourne, which arrived in 1928.

Contact was established with the cousin Josephine, and now the next generation meets. With the help of the internet, Sandra Reid five years ago got in touch with Peter Strömgren and they have visited both Stockholm, Borgholm and Kalmar.

Sandra Reid is also one of more than 800 passengers to enter on the cruise ship Prinsendam which on Monday called at Kalmar. Later in the afternoon, she went on, including more genealogy on the island of Jersey, while Peter Strömgren saw the family grave at Southern Churchyard.

“She reminded us always of our origin”
Sandra Reid about Grandmother Josephine Romeril

Text
Birgitta Hultman
birgitta.hultman@barometern.se
+46 48058282
Also on internet:
http://www.barometern.se/kalmar/lycklig-slump-bakom-slaktmote/


Above:  Josephine Annie (Brudus) ROMERIL at Kalmar Castle, Sweden in 1954 and her granddaughter, Sandra 2016 


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