Once retired, she found her roots

Kristina O'Doherty (maiden name Kristina Johnson) knew her family had emigrated from Sweden. But it wasn't until she retired that she found the time to start digging.

Cleaning out her parents' house, she discovered that her grandfather had emigrated through Philadelphia. His surname was Johannson, Americanized to Johnson.

"It really set me on a course to find out more," she recalls. "I knew my grandparents attended a Swedish Lutheran church in Wilkes-Barre, and that was it."

In 2003, she retired and took a writing class. First assignment? Her family history, a poignant reminder that, aside from a brother, "there's no one else living. My parents are dead. I had to know more."

O'Doherty knocked on the doors of the American Swedish Historical Museum, an architectural marvel at 1900 Pattison Ave., near the sports stadiums. She met librarians who helped translate her grandfather's citizenship papers, and she took Swedish lessons "so I could read the documents myself."

Ultimately, she tracked his journey from Sweden - and found living relatives.

Today, O'Doherty serves on the board of governors of the museum, which has children's exhibitions such as a Pippi Longstocking room, a choir, and cooking nights. There are rooms highlighting famous Swedes such as singer Jenny Lind, chemist Alfred Nobel, and crime author Stieg Larsson.

Swedes have a long history in the Philadelphia region. Many emigrated between 1638 and 1655, arriving aboard ships such as the Kalmar Nyckel and founding New Sweden along the Delaware River. Recruiters were taking Swedes and other Scandinavians to settle along the Delaware, including Johan Printz, later governor of the Swedish colony.

"The figures of settlers on top of City Hall? They're Swedes," she notes proudly.

Her own family didn't arrive until a second migratory wave two centuries later.

"Farmers in Sweden couldn't support their families, so the oldest children left for America. There are Little Stockholms all over America, in states from Texas to Maine," O'Doherty says.

Her grandfather, Severin Johannson (born 1866), and his brother went to Wilkes-Barre to work as coal miners. He died when his son, O'Doherty's father, was just 8 years old.

The former FBI special agent became a detective investigating her own life. She joined the museum's genealogy club and Ancestry.com.

Luckily, "a lot of old Swedish records were kept through the church parishes in Sweden, and today those are all online. So I began plugging in variations of my grandfather's name," she said and discovered a Severin Johannson birth record in Stensebo, a farm area in Halland, a province in southern Sweden.

Then another find: a ship's manifest with Severin Johannson sailing through Philadelphia in 1888.

He probably left Sweden because of the poverty of his region - one record showed that a relative had died of malnutrition.

In 2012, O'Doherty and her husband planned a trip to Sweden to track down any remaining family. Google Earth satellite photos of the remote ancestral town showed a collection of farmhouses that might be her grandfather's birthplace.

She didn't have an address. Still, it was a tiny town.

"So we drove our rental car around in Stensebo using a rough map I had drawn from Google, including curvy roads and power lines. We stopped at one farmhouse, and in my rudimentary Swedish, asked if we were headed in the right direction. The lady gave me a better local map," and they continued driving.

The visit to Sweden gave her a peace and comfort that she had not expected, O'Doherty says.

"As soon as I arrived, I felt at home, that this was a place where I belonged. Everything felt strangely familiar," she recalls. "And everywhere I looked, I saw my father's face."

Finally, at the third farmhouse, an elderly man and woman answered the door.

"Severin? Severin Johannson?" the old man asked her. "Yes, that's my father's brother!"

They ushered in the Americans. Kristina Johnson O'Doherty had finally found her Swedish roots - and long-lost family.

"On a rainy day, we just appeared at their doorstep. It was like we had fallen from the sky," she recalls.

The two families exchanged stories. Now, they correspond regularly, and O'Doherty and her husband traveled to Stensebo again last year.

"It was such a gift to me and my relatives in Sweden," she says, "because they never really knew what happened to their family in America."

She thanks the museum for helping.

"I could have hired someone to do the research. But I never would have found my family on my own. Now, I know how to do it, and how to help other people."

earvedlund@phillynews.com

215-854-2808@erinarvedlund