On the other side of the lake

Today we went to the other side of the lake, where relatives from the other side of my Grandmother’s family lived. Hanah Maria Eriksson, Grandma’s mother’s mother. She was the one that emigrated to Proctor, Vermont with her three children. And a year after (14 months) after she arrived, she died. She was buried in Proctor, Vermont, in the cemetery by the house I first lived in when I was born. (How creepy is that... the house was built on the site of the hospital, and when we moved to the area before I was born, my parents had no CLUE that she even came to that town. Mom didn’t start doing Genealogy for our Swedish family until later) Creepy creepy creepy.

So we went to Visnums-Kil Kyrka (church), which was the place my mother re-established three gravestones the last time she was here in Sweden, 2002. The graves where Hanah’s Mother and Father and Brother. (Emma Christina Carlsdotter; Anders Erik Eriksson; Otto Eriksson) It’s sad because when Otto, the baby of the family, went to America to go see his sister’s grave, and on the way back got sick and died, leaving his young family behind. Visnums-Kil was quite neat… They had some 13th and 14th century artifacts there that we could look at and read about, which was quite neat.

From there it was just a short drive past the new school and the old school (about a mile) to the Homestead Museum. We went to the Homestead, where we suspected that there was some information or buildings about Hanna’s mother, Emma. Emma stayed behind in Sweden even when all her family had emigrated to America, staying… somewhere. We suspect the house on the Homestead property, which was converted into a home for the old people, is where Emma spent her last days growing old. The couple there was very nice. We also got to see a bakery that had been moved from Kilsby Farm, where we know the family worked. On that farm, in Kilsby, is where Hanna was born in 1869.

After that we went to the Old Schoolhouse, where we know that all the children from Kilsby farm went to school. We know that Emma and her daughter Hannah both went to the school. The school was built in 1840.

From the schoolhouse we drove out to Kilsby and drove through the farm. There were a lot of little houses, all in various states of disrepair, but the timber was still there, so we could get an impression of what the farm had been like, if we could imagine away the forest.

On the way out of Visnums-Kil we stopped and took photos of someone who was raising (instead of cattle, goats or sheep)… deer. Or if not deer, then some type of reindeer. They had big racks (antlers) and were quite beautiful. I took pictures. Then we grabbed some icecream to hold us over because we were starving, but wanted to keep going. Besides, the food at the rest stop was rather… sketchy. My mother used the word… questionable. (generational differences in semantics)