52 Ancestors Year 2 #4: Magnus Jonasson, Hemmansagaren

     Magnus Jonasson is my third great grandfather and we share a birthday, although he was born 224 years before me.  Magnus was born 26 Dec 1790 in Linneryd, Kronobergs Lan, Smaland, Sweden.  He was the son of Jonas Danielsson and Catharina Jacobsdotter. In 1823 he moved to Dadesjo where he married Elin Svensdotter on 16 May 1823.  They had a son and three daughters , the youngest of whom was Anna Magnusdotter, my second great grandmother. Magnus is listed as a hemmansagaren, or a free farmer who owned his land.  His farm was called Rydholm and he also is noted as "Magnus pa Ryet".  So perhaps he had a second home near the first one.  When my grandfather visited Sweden in 1957 Magnus' house was still standing and he took a photo of it.  However, when my sister and I visited in May 2014, the house was no longer there.  We did find a barn marked "Rydholm" and a sign for "Ryet" and the area where the house had been. Magnus died at age 75 on 13 Mar 1866,  Elin outlived him by quite a few years, dying on 4 Feb 1896, age 92.

     My grandfather's father, Adolph Peterson, was close to Magnus when he was growing up. He told a story of almost being hit by a tree that Magnus was chopping down but rescued by his grandfather just in time.  My grandfather's cousins in Sweden, also descendants of Magnus, told him that he wore velvet knee breeches with pewter buttons and had a brother in France.  I found another descendant in Sweden who had done a very good family tree and asked him about this.  He told me that as far as he knew there was no brother in France.  My thought is that he would have been 28 when Charles Bernadotte became King of Sweden from France, possibly in the Army, possibly had close friends in the army who were French, "brothers" in that sense.  I have yet to find any military records or anything else that would shed light on this. I did find that French Military Uniforms at the time did include knee breeches in some areas. Or perhaps he was just an eccentric dresser!

     That is all I know of Magnus at this time.  His son Jonas Petter and daughter, Karin, both produced a number of descendants some of whom my grandfather visited in 1957 and two of their descendants my sister and I met in 2014!