On October 18, 2025, at a SAHSWI Fika meeting Karen Snowberg presented her story about Emma, her grandmother, who in 1882 left Sweden to settle in Minnesota. This story is about Emma’s life in Sweden and in America and is based on significant research by Karen and her extended family both in Sweden and USA.
Introduction by Karen Snowberg
“Emma’s Story” – a story of one girl’s journey from Sweden to Minnesota and the new life she experienced there.
“Emma’s Story” is about my mormor, my mother’s mother, who came to this country from Öland in 1882 at the age of 16. I wrote this story to help my nieces and nephews and future generations of our family to understand more about their family heritage. It is a product of combining genealogical research, Swedish history, family documents, and word-of-mouth interviews.
Our family – Snowberg in the USA and Snöberg in Sweden – is fortunate that one of our Swedish relatives decided his retirement hobby would be genealogy. He spent years in the 1960’s exploring church records to trace the Snöberg family line. In the 1980’s Anders Snöberg passed the torch to my brother, Richard Snowberg, in this country. He challenged Rich to locate all of the American Snowberg’s descended from the original Anders Snöberg. The results were of great interest to me, but I wanted to know more about the people our ancestors were. The only grandparent still living when I was born was Emma Sofia Snöberg Johnson, so I decided to learn what I could about her life.
Having a great interest in history I was able to research what life would have been like for a young girl born to a poor family in a “company” town in southern Öland. I also did research into what influenced so many people to leave the area and emigrate to the USA. (In the great emigration from Sweden to America, a larger percentage of its population left the island of Öland than from any other area of Sweden.) Conversations with my mother shortly before she passed away helped me find out more about Emma as a person.
Mormor would never talk about her family in Sweden or her hard life there, and it was only through her sister’s letters (discovered still being kept by our Swedish relatives) that Mormor’s story has been fleshed out at last…over 50 years after she passed away. We had a family reunion in Degerhamn in 2005, and an entire day was spent with a second cousin of ours who is both a family and town historian. He told us the history of our family as well as what life was like in 19th century Degerhamn. After that weekend, we finally understood the sad misunderstanding that caused Mormor to feel alienated from her native land.
“Emma’s Story” is based on letters, conversations, memories, pictures, and knowledge of the period. In effect, it’s what I imagine my grandmother may have been thinking as she looked back on her life”. Karen Snowberg
Please find a link to the story below
My Name is Emma Johnson
Herman Wilhelm Snowberg was Emma’s little brother. This story was earlier published on SAHSWI website.
Swedish American Historical Society of Wisconsin 