IX. “Those Wealthy Lundborgs”
May 18, 2008
Hossna

The previous leisurely days came to a sudden conclusion with a 6:00 a.m. alarm beeping at bedside. We actually had to set the travel alarm to awaken us for all we would do today, and upon looking out the window we were greeted by cold and snow. O no! The snow didn’t really accumulate, however, and we were on the road by 7:00 to Vargarda and beyond, a bit more than an hour’s worth of driving. We were the first arrivals at Sodra Harene, a church where the 9:00 a.m. service was to be shared with the local historical society. Thankfully, the scheduled outdoor service was moved in to the church’s school building, and we sat in folding chairs in a circle with about 25 others to listen to the pastor from the local Missionchurch preach a Trinity Sunday sermon on the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. We caught words like “microorganisms” and “bacteria”, and I thought he must be embellishing the story of a man dead for 4 days, but then we also understood “lif” and “dot” and “lif kum ut uv dot” or something that sounded like that, so we knew he was on track with the text. This was Swedish low church with Pastor Tommee Anderson from the Algutstorp Lutheran Church greeting, reading, and praying mixed with congregational singing like “Morning Has Broken” and several solos finally concluding with the sermon. I’m sure we must have been the only visitors, but no one paid any attention to us, so Rose Ann tried to strike up a conversation with the man next to her. Despite his limited English and our nonexistent Swedish he recognized the name Lundborg, and was quick to say he was a member of their historical society. The Broberg families who were almost completely wiped out in the Monson Lake Massacre had come from this area, and their story and their relationship with my family are well known here. This local historian wanted to show us the grave of Lars Bengston in the nearby cemetery. Lars was married to the Brobergs’ sister, and he had a powerful experience on August 20, 1862—the day of the Monson Lake Massacre—where he heard his brothers in law (the Broberg men) in Minnesota cry out to him for help. Everyone here knows the story, and it is told with great solemnity.
So the conversation with the historian led to two other people stepping forward to offer to show us around, and soon a plan emerged to meet together again in the afternoon so we could talk some more. We would have stayed longer, but our day’s plan had been to attend two church services, and the next was scheduled to begin soon, at 11:00 a.m. in Algutstorp, a church we had previously visited in 1992. So we were off.
I’m glad we left when we did because although we knew the journey should be brief, we managed to get lost and finally arrived at 11:15. It’s good that I’m learning to swallow pride at being late because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this one. This church building is not large, but it manages to feel like a cathedral because of its wonderful design and beautiful art. Perhaps 60 people were in attendance, including a 20 voice choir. This was Swedish high church, more formal with chanted liturgy, a seminary student in robes and the older pastor changing into an off-white golden-edged chasuble to preside at Holy Communion. It’s fun to sing hymns in a language we don’t know. I guess we’re learning to pronounce some of the words, and the organ drowns out our mistakes and frees us up to pretend we’re fluent. The choir was good, and the organist was excellent, and we could hear the music director’s wonderful voice. I heard music written by the Taize’ community in the service and remembered our visit there in 1992 and was pleased to realize the international influence of their sound. We met the young seminary student and learned he had just delivered his first sermon. Who knows what the content was, but I had been mesmerized by his totally unmoving head and body. His eyes moved from manuscript to us, and his hands turned the pages, but his lips were locked in a perpetual smile and his body seemed frozen. The senior pastor was sophisticated, fluent in English, and was eager to be moving to Goteborg in June to serve an urban church after what he called his “ten years in the country”. He told us he was a boy from Stockholm who belonged in a city.
We recalled our joy in discovering this building in 1992 and how we then thought we must have ancestors buried in this cemetery, but now our genealogical focus has shifted to the country churches nearby and we enjoyed this as a pleasant experience in a remembered Swedish church.
We looked for a place to have lunch and remembered Anna-Lena said we should find a restaurant north of Vargarda, and in a few miles we parked in front of the Rasta restaurant. I could go into detail about the food, but at meal’s end I had concluded this food wasn’t worth writing home about, so I won’t.
It was 1:30, and we had some time before our 3:00 meeting so we used our map and drove around the countryside. This area is beautiful, and in spite of the cold we found ourselves stopping to walk around and take pictures. Tumberg is the site noted on church records as the birthplace of all in the Lundborg family, and there is nothing in Tumberg now except some scattered farm places. I took pictures of open fields, mustard in full bloom, pastures made greener by the rain, and contented Swedish cows grazing and staring back at me. Little did I know we would return here later in the afternoon with a knowledgeable guide who would point out the ruins of the previous church and the still-standing parsonage that had held the church records for Tumberg and neighboring church Kullings-Skovde, both churches the Lundborgs had been a part of for brief times. The rest of our driving was not as fruitful in terms of knowledge gained, but it was enjoyable.
At three we returned to the Harene Church, mentioned as the birthplace of the Brobergs, and two of the persons we talked to in the morning were there with two others plus a freshly baked cake and some coffee and tea. The mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks are almost sacred to the rural Swedes, and we thought it’s a fine practice. The local historians had recruited two others to come to meet us. A man in his 40’s named Jerker Saxentorp (how’s that for a name?) and his mother Britta were curious to visit us because they know the area, he’s fluent in English and has led tours to the US, and they’re very interested in local history and descended from the Brobergs. (10 Brobergs and 3 Lundborgs were killed August 20, 1862 in the Monson Lake Massacre.) Roll your r’s and say “hair-i-ker” to pronounce his first name. He’s very familiar with all the nasty things Americans can do with his first name. And the last name is one he chose to honor the farm he grew up on—the Saxtorp farm. He’s a remarkable person who spent the next three hours with us guiding and informing us about this area and Lundborg history.
He says that the Lundborgs left Sweden after living on the Saxtorp farm, and even though our mentor—Anna-Lena Hultmann—disagrees with him because she trusts church records more than local lore, she concedes they might have lived there briefly. I can’t go into the whole debate because it’s too confusing. What I have come to appreciate is that in the 50+ years my great, great grandparents lived in this area before leaving for the US in 1861 they did just that—lived in the area. There are records in books that have them in Tumberg, Kullings-Skovde, Sodra Harene, Algutstorp, Lund, Tostorp, and Alvsborg. Some of those are farms. Some are church districts. One is a county. And they are all right here within an 8-10 mile radius. They moved. They weren’t always in the same place. In their younger years Andreas and Lena were a farm hand and a maid, but they improved themselves and eventually owned a farm—a larger than average farm for those times. And they planned to go to America not because they were starving; they wanted to do even better. Local lore says they and the Brobergs wanted more. They planned carefully and moved out of one farm to avoid getting caught in a land reform act that might have short-changed them and moved temporarily into another before leaving for the US. They arranged with a carpenter in the area to emigrate with them. Jerker says there are records to prove they paid the way for Sven Oman and his family to move to Minnesota with them because he was a timber worker and farmer who could help them build newer and bigger buildings in the new land. So I’m a descendant of land baron wannabees. It’s hard to be humble when you’re a descendant of privilege, but I’m learning to live with it. Unfortunately, their personal tragedy in 1862, one year after arriving in the US, wiped out the Broberg family and forced the Lundborgs out of their homestead acreage for three years due to government decree, and they eventually moved to Carver County where they did ok but never really flourished.
History is very fluid. I can never really grasp the totality of their experience, so one moment they look like paupers and later they are prosperous. Will our descendants know us if they know only one or two stories about us and identify one house where we lived? I doubt it.
Our new friend, Jerker, showed us farmsteads where he believes the Lundborgs lived. One was particularly beautiful with Viking ruins in the back yard. Viking history is alive and well in this area, but that’s another whole story. I’m more interested in the 1800’s, but there are many signs of the 800’s around here. Jerker, who is a wheeler and dealer, is planning to buy one of these properties formerly in the hands of the Lundborgs within the next year, so I told him to let me know so I could toast him when he does. He said maybe we should make another trip here so we could stay on the ground where our ancestors had lived. Why not?
We concluded the day thoroughly chilled by the weather but warmed by new friends and new images of those hardy folks who left this country in the mid-1800’s. We had names of new connections who told us to write to them with our questions. We had awareness of new resources like a series of newspaper articles of the Boras Tidning (Boras is 20 miles away) from 1969 with details about the Monson Lake story. We had pictures, some of them will be quite wonderful, of scenic, historic places that have deep meaning for us. We drove to Hossna and returned in sunlight at 8:30 p.m. after a rewarding day on the genealogical trail.