Swedish Court Records

Recently, I attended a Swedish Research Series at the Family History Library in Salt Lake.  One of the classes taught was on Swedish Court Records  The class was "Finding your Family in the Court Records of Sweden, part 1 Domböcker, Småprotokoller"  by Geoffrey Fröberg Morris.  (You can check out his website here:  https://sites.google.com/site/gfrobergmorrisswedish/ .)

Some of the things I learned were:  

1. Swedish Court records offer the best chance for finding the name of a father when the child is born to an unwed mother (oäkta).
2. You should scroll all the way through the book before you really start searching.
3. There is a list of persons fined that acts as an index for the Domböcker (Court Minutes)

With this information I set out to see what I could find.  I first found a court case involving my own grandmother but I'm going to share a different success story.

A patron at the BYU Family History library brought me the following problem:  Her grandfather, Nils Gustav Olsson was born to an unwed mother, Maria Christina Sjöberg.

(Äsphult Kyrkoböcher 1755-1832 page 273 from Arkiv Digital)

Next I went to the 1816 Domböcher (Court Minutes) (FHL Film 141519) , I went to the Saköreslängder (list of persons fined) and found the following:

(Gerds Härad Dombok 1816, FHL film 141519)

From this entry we see we need to look at case 91.

Even though the father is only mentioned as a man from Äsphult, we know where he's from.  The patron's family history/tradition gives the name of Ole Jeppeson.

Next we turn to the Husförhörslänger (Clerical Surveys/Household Examinations) for Äsphult.  After reviewing them, we can only find one Ola Jeppsson in Äsphult.  

(Äsphult Husförhörslänger 1813-1830 page 129, Arkiv Digital)

Now we can go searching for Ola Jeppsson!!!

See how much fun you can have with court records?