More than one million Swedes left their homeland between 1850 and 1930. Though these people left their home country behind for opportunities abroad, many continued to keep close ties to their family and friends back in Sweden. Often these ties took the form of personal letters written to and from Sweden between parents, children, friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles all separated by an ocean, but still able to share their lives with one another.
Few historical texts are as interesting and compelling as personal letters. They help to show us who these people were and reveal how they shared many of the same kinds of hopes, interests and even humor that we have today. The letters also give us the past from personal and individual points of view, which can be very valuable to researchers. These personal accounts detail the lives of those on both sides of immigration including those who left and those who remained in Sweden. Many of the letters in collection of the Swedish American Museum are written to the immigrants here in the U.S. from friends and family back in Sweden. The letters are a peek into the lives of their writers and receivers from how the crops were doing that year to news about marriages, births and—of course—who else was beginning to feel the pull of “America Fever.”
This exhibition contains a selection of stories pulled from the hundreds of letters in the collections of the Swedish American Museum Association of Chicago. Discover the world of Swedish immigrants to the United States Midwest, as told by those who lived it.
Tuesday Jan 16, 2018 Sunday Feb 4, 2018