Just like any tree in my garden my familytree needs some trimming at times. And with that I don't mean cutting of branches (unless I discover someone is in the tree that shouldn't be there of course). I see it as giving the exsisting tree a little bit of extra care. Like now, after the release of the 1940 census, adding that information to the persons that are in the census. Or when I find a database or function on a webpage I haven't seen before, doing lookups on the people in my tree that it applies to.
A couple of days ago, I found a people finder at the Minnesota Historical Society homepage I hadn't noticed before. I typed in the names of my relatives who emigrated to Minnesota and I got an interesting match. My great-grandmothers brother Anders Nilsson Rickard Holmer (known in the US as Andrew Richardson) showed up in the Minnesota Veterans Grave Index.
The dates wasn't exactly right, his death certificate say August 1 as his date of death and the VGI said August 4 (which happens to be the date he was buried). According to the little information I am able to see at the page his military service was during the Spanish-American war. It didn't take me many minutes to press the buy button and pay 9 USD. Now I am just waiting for this paper to arrive in the snail mail...
Andrew was one of the first emigrants I found related to me which has made him feel a bit special. He was born in Vinslöv 1858 and for six years (1875-1881) he lived in Kristianstad. (For at least a couple of years he was an artillerist.) I don't know if that qualified him for the Spanish-American war in some way, after all, in 1898 it has been seventeen years since he was a soldier in Sweden. There are great info about people who was in the war, like this homepage. Seems like most of the soldiers were in their twenties or early thirties. Anders on the other hand would have been 40 in 1898. Most annoying I can't find any Andrew Richardson in any list. At the time, he might have been in Idaho or Wisconsin.
Anyday now I will get that document and hopefully be able to add some extra information about Andrew Richardson. He never married and died in Aitkin, Minnesota in 1928. He was buried at Pine Grove Cemetery.
