Busvebacken

The hill on burn-beaten land with the old Church/Temple This place is situated ten kilometers East of the town Ostersundthe province is Jemtland and it is right in the middle of the map of Sweden, but for Swedish conditions it is seen as a Northern region.

Busvebacken is an old name of the spot where I and my wife (Jan and Lena Nilsson) have continued the work which once began with my great grandpa Hans Andersson and his wife Brita Jonsdotter/Andersson. They left his father´s farm in Kläppe, a neighbur village, to his next brother Lars, and moved to this place in the small village Bringåsen and settled down with their newly born first daughter, Anna. It was at midsummer time 1855, and this farm, also called Backen had been out-sourced into uncleared forest land from the old village nucleus a couple of years earlier in a legal land divide. It was then bought by Brita´s father, who used it extensively, and at 1855 Brita and Hans inherited it.

The family grew, the farm grew out with new buildings, cleared fields (about an acre/year) and Hans also went on as a community leader of the very small parish and community of Kyrkas (400 souls) which his father had been before him. And that task was later left over to their eldest son "Ante" A. J. Hansson. He took over the farm 1887 and he became my grand father.

Both of them had obviously no formal school education except low grade school up to they where about 12 - 13 years old, in spite of that they aquired lots of knowledge about realities of life and they left quite a lot of written matters behind them, which is the base of this web site.

So - in 1870 Hans found himself (said he was astonished) elected as a member of the Swedish Parliament´s second chamber (Riksdagens andra kammare). The term began at January 15th and at that time he had to go there by horse and sled, a journey of seven days and 600 kilometers. He was accompanied by two other colleagues from the region and about then a letter exchange started, which I have filed and shown in BrevSamling. It contains letters home to his beloved wife, often called "lilla gumma" and a lot of letters to and from different persons in a net work about political topics, different kinds of services he might do for his electors at home and so on. Unfortunitely we have not yet found any letters saved from his wife Brita to him.

One of the big issues in the parliament of the decade 1870 was to decide how the Swedish main railways north of Stockholm should be develloped. Hans fought (and lost the fight) for a different and for the north part of Jemtland better direction and that is reflected in a lot of the letters. 1880 - 1882 the railway at last connected Ostersund with the seas in East and West and with Stockholm. From now they could bring heavy goods in and out cheaply which had earlier been carried by horse and sled wintertime to high costs if possible at all. For instance was it now possible to buy hay and straw from the south if the harvests were bad and from now folks at Bringasen started using artificial fertilizers. I think it was a revolution.

From the time Ante was young and through his whole life Ante collected and wrote down historical facts about folks and communities in this part of the country and he registered very carefully how the family farm develloped and how the fields were cultivated and harvested in a period around 1880 - 1890 f ex. That is expressed in KulturBerättelse (historical) and SläktRegister (Family tree).