Tveta Parish

[Schulte]

My wife's great-grandmother Sara Olsdotter was born in Bäck in Tveta parish in 1845.  In 1869, at the age of 23, she left Bäck for Norway.  Four years later, she immigrated to the United States, where her surname became Beckman, presumably based on her birthplace.
 
Can someone tell me about Bäck?  Where is it located?  What type of village was it in 1845?  How has it changed?  Was it, as I was told, once called Beck -- hence Beckman?
 
Many thanks, Greg Schulte, Great Falls, Virginia

[Anders Andersson]

Bäck is a very common village name, and since there are three parishes named Tveta (one in each of Stockholm, Kalmar, and Värmland counties) I'm not even sure I have found the right Bäck. I'm assuming here that you are referring to Tveta in Värmland county, since that's the only parish with a village named Bäck that I can find in the Rosenberg gazetteer.
 
Rosenberg is very brief here: Bäck in Vermland county, Näs hundred, Tveta parish. Village.
 
Fortunately, I was able to locate Bäck on sheet 10C Åmål SO of the 1:50,000 scale topographical Gröna kartan map series. It can be found in the north-western part of Tveta parish, west of lake Sjönsjö, along the road between Kila church and the city of Åmål, just 1-2 km north of the border between Älvsborg (now Västra Götaland) and Värmland counties. In case you have use for longitude and latitude, it's at 12?45'E 59?09'N. Maybe someone familiar with the lmv.se website can show a map image.
 
With no description in Rosenberg and only five small dots (houses) on the map, I can tell no more about the place. As for the name, the pronounciations of short e and short ä are very similar, and spelling has changed in general (usually from e to ä) of many names and words over the past century. Even if Bäck happened to be the common spelling already 100 years ago, it could be that Sara considered the spellings to be equivalent enough for her to pick Beckman for her surname (especially as that would make it easier to write in English). Today the spellings Beckman and Bäckman seem to be about equally frequent in Sweden.
 
The Swedish word bäck means brook (small creek).

[Gunnar Jonsson]

Just want to confirm that it is Tveta in Värmland you mean.
 
Sara and her twinsister Johanna was born the 2th of september 1845. Father Olof Olofsson, mother Maria Jansdotter. Sara emigrated to Oslo in Norway the 2th of July 1869.
 
I will try to put a map below.

[Gunnar Jonsson]

It work lovely :-)
 
I'll try once more.

[Greg Schulte]

Many thanks for the quick, helpful replies!  It is Bäck, Tveta, Värmland.  I used the lat/long to find the location on www.mapquest.com, but it doesn't show any detail.  Unfortunately, the map image didn't post on the website -- can you try e-mailing it to me directly?  I'm at gnschulte@cox.net.  Thanks again, Greg Schulte

[Gunnar Jonsson]

Well, now I've doing a much better thing. I scanned a map from the year 1890. The scanned map is appr. 2600 meters from side to side.
You find it here, the size is 308 kB.