1881 Voyage from Sweden to Maine
January 31st, 2010 | 
Author: 
SS Ethiopia, Transatlantic Passenger Steamship 1873-1907
The research of Degerstrom genealogy and our Swedish roots has yielded great progress since started in 1995, and this site replaces a free hosting Geocities version of the Degerstroms from Maine that was lost when Geocities closed. Research continues with remarkable success.
The steamship in the photo shown here is the SS Ethiopia that brought the last of the ancestors of the Degerstroms from Maine to America in 1881.
That last group of the Degerstrom clan emigrated from Ranea Sweden near the Arctic Circle in Norrbotten Lan by way of the port of Malmo Sweden and began their 1881 voyage from Sweden to Maine on 15 September.
They went from Malmo to Glasgow Scotland and sailed to America on the SS Ethiopia after first stopping in Moville Ireland before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to New York City where they arrived on 5 October 1881.
The eldest son Nils Johann “John” Degerstrom preceded the family coming to America in 1870, the oldest daughter Katrina-Degerstrom Lindgren with her husband and 4 children arrived on 24 August 1880, and then the entire group of immediate family members arrived on the SS Ethiopia in 1881.
We are certain they did not stay in New York very long because a son of Lars and Matilda Degerstrom, Oscar Fredrik Degerstrom, was born in Brownville, Maine on 15 October 1881 just 10 days after they arrived in New York.
100 years earlier, Johan Danielsson Jernhatt, a patriarch of the Degerstrom clan was 10 years old. His was the last generation of the family to use patronymics, so as adults his children selected various surnames including Degerstrom, Degerlund and Ek, plus two sons who kept using patronymics with Johansson.
Our family history includes living relatives in Sweden descended from Johan Danielsson Jernhatt as discovered and confirmed in 2003 by researcher Leif Persson of Stockholm, Sweden. The ship name and photo shown here from the 1881 voyage from Sweden to Maine was discovered by Jim Degerstrom in 2010.
One of the first additions to this new website will be family listings of over 2500 family members as compiled by Ed Degerstrom from information collected since 1995. Help us grow. Comments, additions, or corrections are welcome from any and all friends and family members.
Posted in 
Tags:
Congratulatons to this great website! I’m glad I could help you with this research, and it has also given me a lot of new information about my mother’s family history.
/ Leif
Thank you for your comment, Leif, and a special thanks for the Swedish connection. It is exciting to separate documented facts from oral history and be able to connect with relatives in Sweden. Your discovery of family members in old Swedish documents and translation to English is amazing research like finding buried treasure!
I just found your website while searching for my ancestors. I am the great granddaughter of Emma F Degerstrom. She married my great grandfather Nelson Nelson in Monson, Me On Feb, 24,1883. They had a son Gustave Adolf Nelson who married my grandmother Martha Gethin from Somerville, MA. I currently live in Waterford, ME. I loved reading about my ancestors in your website. Thanks for all the hard work.
Hi, Joan. Thank you for the compliments and comments including the additional details. We are definitely related and our Degerstrom line goes way back 450 years traced to the year 1560 in Sweden. We would enjoy documenting the details for as much of the Degerstrom-Nelson family tree as you can provide. Email us from any page of the main site.