A Rudeen probate in Sweden, part 2

In Part 1, we learned about how my third-great-grandfather Johannes Månsson had retired in 1854 to a backstuga called Carlstorp on or near the Eket farm. His son Peter Anders Johansson, my second-great-grandfather, took over the Eket farm that year. Five years later, Johannes died of tyhoid fever.

The other day I stumbled across a map that shows exactly where Carlstorp is. If you look above and to the right of the green-underlined “Marbäck” label on the map below, you can see Eket (also underlined), Kulla and Karlstorp with the #24 label (remember, K’s and C’s used to be interchangeable at the writer’s discretion). By the way, the numbered locations are where soldiers had their cottages. The Household records for Carlstorp show both a backstuga and a soldat torp at that location.

So it looks like Carlstorp was partway between the Eket farmstead and the Marbäck church. I was also happy to see “Kulla” on the map! Johannes grew up on the Kulla farm and I had always wondered where it was. Turns out it’s the farm directly to the east of the Eket farm. It’s clearly visible on Google maps; it’s accessible via the highway and not the road that goes around Lake Ralången.

So in this second installment, we’ll take a look at the itemized listing of what Johannes owned at the time of his death. You can imagine that the contents of a rural Swedish backstuga in the mid-1800’s contained a lot of things that modern homes do not have! Fortunately, there are websites that help with the interpretation of all of the specialized terminology. I am especially indebted to the Sandin Family website which has a detailed index of bouppteckning objects, including pictures!

I had some free time Saturday morning so I spent almost two hours looking up all the translations. It was time-consuming because I had to first figure out the handwriting, then figure out if I was looking at some other form of the word (plurals or other variants), and then look up the word either on the Sandin index or translate it using Google. In the end, there were several items that I couldn’t figure out.

But what fun to unlock, item-by-item, the contents of the little Carlstorp backstuga tucked away in the lovely woods near Eket. The photo above left was taken from a vantage point not too far from where Carlstorp was.

The inventory is divided into the following sections: Silver, Tin and Metal, Copper, Ironware, Carpentry Tools, Furniture, Barrels, Bedclothes and Linens, Clothing, Glass and Porcelain, Animals, and Various Other. I’ve listed the Swedish word, the English translation, and the value of each item. The units are riksdaler and öre, with 100 öre in one riksdaler. I guess the best point of reference is that Johannes’ single most valuable possession was a cow worth 30 riksdaler.

Here’s an example of what the writing looks like (these are the “Glass and Porcelain” and “Animals” subsections):

Here’s the complete list:

I was especially interested in the “Bedclothes and Linens” section. Notice the knitted items in the household! Yay knitting! Also, the “drälls dukar” are worth mentioning. I believe these are a type of fancy-weave tablecloths. Clicking on this link will show you some examples from a Swedish museum website.

I’ll share more detailed observations in a future post but all in all, I thought Johannes was doing pretty well – better than I expected!

Next time we’ll look at some of the loans he had made to friend and family. You will be surprised!

A Rudeen Probate in Sweden – Part 1
A Rudeen Probate in Sweden – Part 3