Abstract: Ki Chi Saga, Chicago or Stockholm by Siv Gustafsson and Eva Åhs, 2022-11-04, 40 pages.

This is the story of our ancestors on the side of Florries Maria Ström born Andersson (1913-1999), Siv´s mother and Eva’s grandmother. Our family emanates from soldiers and crofters in the region of Kronoberg, Småland. Their soldier´s name is Falk. Our story starts with Soldier Petter Falk (1769-1848) who survived six wars, moves on to his son Elias Falk (1810-1898), to his son Gustaf Falk (1835-1881) to his daughter Charlotte Falk married Andersson (1866-1950) to her son Albert Andersson (1888-1971), Siv´s grandfather. The time of Petter and Elias Falk was a period of great poverty in the Swedish countryside where population increase had made it increasingly difficult to earn a living on the meager stony soil of Sweden ´s  forrest land. The agricultural sector employed two thirds of the Swedish population. Many people cultivated land that they did not own as crofters and had to pay for the land they cultivated by day labor to the owner. The military system required from farmers that they supported one soldier by letting him cultivate a small farm, a soldier’s croft. Petter was such a soldier crofter. His oldest child of five is Jonas Falk who is buried in Chisago county Minnesota and his youngest child is our ancestor Elias Falk buried in his native Lenhovda parish. There were two ways of escaping poverty and increasing life chances: by emigrating to North America or by learning a trade which was in demand in Stockholm. Jonas Falk’s family were early emigrants traveling on sail ships across the Atlantic on four different occasions in the period 1852-1869 , a journey which took 6-10 weeks to compare to two weeks when steam ships later became available. Charlotte Falk moved to Stockholm in 1890 with her husband who was a gifted fine metal worker who made chandeliers, baking forms and coffee pots of metal.