About the book
About the book
Nord is the story of Nils Zakrisson and Brita Nilsdotter, Hugh Nord’s parents, who followed the land west from the north of Sweden across the northern plains, and of the name their family carried after Nils was gone.
What it covers
The book opens in Jämtland, in the north of Sweden, where Nils, a crofter’s son from Nordannälden, married Brita, a farmer’s daughter at Västerkälen, in 1901. Two chapters follow their families back through the parish books to the 1760s.
In May 1905 they left with their two small sons, Victor and Hugo, by Trondheim, Hull and Liverpool to Quebec, and went on to the Swedish colony at New Stockholm in Saskatchewan. Nils took a homestead on the prairie in 1909. In 1913 the family crossed into Montana and settled near Opheim, and by 1916 they were in Washington, on a farm in the hills above Addy.
Then Nils was gone. The last chapter follows Bertha, as Brita was known in America, and her two sons through the years after, and follows the leads on what became of Nils as far as the records go. An epilogue tells of the family’s return to Jämtland in 1990, and a closing section looks at where the name Nord came from.
How it was researched
The book is built on original records wherever they survive: Swedish parish books, the Trondheim register of emigrants, ships’ lists, Canadian censuses and homestead files, naturalization papers, and Montana and Washington newspapers. Each fact has a source note at the back of the book.
Family recollections are part of it too, and the notes say who remembered what.
Who made it
Andrew Crenshaw wrote the book leveraging LLM research assistants to locate and validate records, draw the maps and charts, and assist with layout and design. It builds on Great Aunt Viola McReynolds’s typed family history, and on the recollections and research of family members in America and Sweden.