Pĺ svenska
|
|
KISA EMIGRANTMUSEUM - THE MUSEUM OF EMIGRATION IN KISA
 | Kisa Emigrantmuseum, Café Columbia - The Museum of emigration in Kisa |
|
"The Museum of Emigration in Kisa exists to preserve the memory of the first large group of emigrants from Sweden to the USA and the people from Östergötland and Northern Smĺland who followed them. This first group left from Kisa and was led by the then 55 year old farmer and master builder Peter Cassel from Bjerkeryd in the parish of Kisa. He had been strongly influenced by the radically minded pharmacist Carl Gustaf Sundius. Sundius had educated himself in Germany and whilst there had become acquainted with the liberal ideas of "the land of freedom". He campaigned enthusiastically in Kisa for his views and became good friends with Peter Cassel. Cassel had also read the Norwegian Hans Gassman´s articles from Aftonbladet and Captain Polycarpus von Schneidaus´letters from Wisconsin to his half sisters in Mjellerum Farm, which was the neighbouring farm to Cassel´s Bjerkeryd. All these influences gave Cassel a positive impression of the free country in the West. Together with his family and a few friends, a total of 21 souls, he left Kisa early on a May morning in 1845. They travelled first to Gothenburg, where they were joined by a further four people. In Gothenburg they boarded the brig "Superb" which took them to New York; a journey that took eight weeks. Cassel´s group of 25 people eventually settled in Iowa and founded the first Swedish colony in the area. They called it New Sweden.
In 1846 Sundius started Sweden´s first emigration bureau in what was then the Kisa Pharmacy and what is now Café Columbia. Copies and orginals of Peter Cassel´s enthusiastic letters to Sundius and Cassel´s brothers-in-law and brother were distributed at the Kisa market. These letters and Cassel´s letters to the newspaper Östgöta Correspondenten, aroused enormous interest in emigration. Between the years 1845 - 1915 1.361 people emigrated from the parish of Kisa".
 | Kisa Emigrantmuseum - Interior |
|
"The museum collection consists mainly of gifts and items loaned by relatives of emigrants, letters, photos, genealogical details of emigrants and books on emigration. The museum is administrated by the Department of Cultural Affairs in Kisa.
It is mainly these American letters, which were collected when the museum was founded and later on enlarged by completions/gifts, that are the basis of the Swedish part belonging to the project EMILE.
In 1921 the Swedish American Dorothea Florén returned from America and opened a café in the house which she called Café Columbia. She had no idea that the house had once housed an emigration bureau".
Copy: Ing-Marie Wallin/Gunnel Asp, Kinda municipality
Photo: Ing-Marie Wallin
Sources:
A guide to the Museum of Emigration in Kisa/Translation: Vic Howard
|
|
