@Genealogy Matters Storyteller Tuesday Challenge
This post is the first for Robin Stewart’s Genealogy Matters Your Sixteens – Storyteller Tuesday Challenge.
The Turning Point: Sven Mattisson & Sissa Andersdotter
My Father’s Father’s Father’s Father and Mother
Sometimes a turning point doesn’t announce itself with fanfare—it arrives quietly, in the realization of an unexpected pregnancy.
In the spring of 1866, two young people—both nineteen years old—lived at No. 6 Östad in Näsum parish. Sven Mattisson and Sissa Andersdotter shared the same birth year, 1847, and according to the household examination records, they both resided at the same farm: he was a farm laborer, she was a maid listed as a “foster daughter” who had arrived from Jämshög in 1864.
Then something happened that would create an ancestor turning point for both their lives forever.
Sissa became pregnant.
The Settlement
On March 19, 1867, Sissa gave birth to a son she named Sven. The birth record contains that revealing word: “oäkta”—illegitimate. But unlike many such births, this one didn’t remain a mystery. The household examination records document what happened next: a formal church process unfolded—a “förlikning” (settlement) and “förhöra” (hearing).
Sven Mattisson’s name appears in the parish records with the stark notation: “förtälje! Se 130, Pigan Sissa Andersdotter barn!” (declared/revealed! See 130, Maid Sissa Andersdotter’s child!). Whether this acknowledgment came willingly or under pressure from church officials, we cannot know. The records tell us what happened, not why.
When I turned to page 130 of the household examination book, right at the top of the page: Mattis Ingemansson, with his family, including Sven Mattisson.
There was a note beside his name that made my heart race:
“förtälje! Se 132, Pigan Sissa Andersdotter barn! oth. Eg.”3
Translation: “declared/revealed! See 132, Maid Sissa Andersdotter’s child!”
Separate Paths
What we know for certain is this: Sissa left No. 6 Östad and returned to Jämshög, to her mother Inger Sunesdotter, who stood beside her daughter as godmother at little Sven’s baptism on March 24, 1867.
Sven Mattisson did not go with her. He remained in the area, and by 1870 had married Kersti Olsdotter. Within a year, they had started their own family and were living in Kyrkhult, Blekinge—just 16 kilometers from where Sissa was raising young Sven in Jämshög.
Sixteen kilometers. A three-and-a-half-hour walk through the Swedish countryside. Close enough to reach, yet a world apart.
Sissa built a full life in Jämshög. She eventually married and had six more children, living to the remarkable age of ninety-four. Young Sven Svensson grew up surrounded by half-siblings, raised by his mother and stepfather, perhaps never knowing his biological father lived a half-day’s journey away.
When Sven Mattisson and Kersti emigrated to America in 1884, they left behind the seventeen-year-old boy who carried Sven’s patronymic name. Whether young Sven Svensson ever knew his father lived nearby, we cannot know.
In Hindsight
What relationship existed between Sven Mattisson and Sissa Andersdotter before that pregnancy? We don’t know. The records don’t tell us if they were sweethearts, if their connection was coerced, or something else entirely. We only know they lived and worked on the same farm, and were the same age.
But this we do know: the pregnancy in 1866 became the turning point that sent their lives in different directions. Sven Mattisson built a new family and eventually crossed an ocean. Sissa built a long life surrounded by children and grandchildren in the village where she’d been born.
The baby born that March became the hinge on which two futures turned—creating a question that would echo through generations, a mystery that would persist for 160 years until DNA and dusty church records finally revealed this ancestor turning point at No. 6 Östad.
For more about Sven and Sissa, please check out “Chasing My Swedish Roots – Part II – Breaking Through the Brick Wall” using the link below! Part III is coming in the next few months. 🙂
This story is part of the Your Sixteens: Storyteller Tuesday Challenge, Week 1—Turning Point. Each week, I select one couple from my 2x great-grandparents and explore a moment when something shifted in their lives. An ancestor turning point might be a move, a marriage, a loss, or a decision made under constraint. Follow along as I preserve these small, intentional acts of family history.
Have you discovered an ancestor turning point in your own research? Share your story in the comments—I’d love to hear how one moment redirected your family tree.
- Näsum Parish, Kristianstad County, Sweden, Birth and Christening Records, ArkivDigital: Näsum CI:8 (1862-1867) Image: 880 Page: 85, entry for Sven; imaged, ArkivDigital (https://app.arkivdigital.se/volume/v100653a : accessed 1 Feb 2025) ↩︎
- Näsum Parish, Kristianstad County, Sweden, BiS (Population of Sweden) 1800-1947, ArkivDigital: Näsum (L) AI:9 (1861-1871) Image: 135 Page: 132, entry for Sven; imaged, ArkivDigital (https://app.arkivdigital.se/volume/v100637 : accessed 25 Jan 2025). ↩︎
- Näsum Parish, Kristianstad County, Sweden, BiS (Population of Sweden) 1800-1947, Näsum (L) AI:9 (1861-1871) Image: 133 Page: 130, entry for Sven Mattison; digital image, ArkivDigital (https://app.arkivdigital.se/volume/v100637 : accessed 25 Jan 2025). ↩︎
- Photograph of Sissa Andersdotter Riddell, [date unknown]; Arthur Stone Bahnmuller Collection, privately held by The Family of Arthur S. Bahnmuller, Sumter, SC, 2026. Received from the Estate of Arthur Stone Bahnmuller (1931-2018), 4 January 2026. ↩︎
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