Going back in time part 1

In the middle of June 2017, me and my mom made our first trip back in time.

We went to Åsenhöga Parish to look for old places where relatives once lived. There were some small roads and a lot of gravel roads that we had to go on to be able to get to the different places.

Bygget

Bygget during the early 1920's

Bygget was one of the obvious places to go. Several generations of the Lantz family were born and raised here. My mother also lived here between 1949 and 1952 with her parents Andrén and Kerstin.

The building was named Bygget already during the second half of the 18th century, most probably becuase they built a new building here (Bygget means construction in english). From the beginning it was called Lerbacken (Lerbacken means Mudhill).

The first soldier to be named Lantz at Bygget was Jonas Svensson, who is my great-great-great-great-grandfather. The year was 1785 and the month was December. He married Walborg Assarsdotter 4th December 1785 and then took over Bygget after his father-in-law Assar Moberg. Jonas was not directly short. Even today, people would say that he was tall. According to the Military rolls, he was 6 feet and 10 inches long, ie 203 cm.

Sven Gerhard Lantz

The last soldier at Bygget was my grandfather's father Gerhard and he was a soldier until 1896, about 5 years before the Allotment system was closed down in 1901. He bought the soldier's croft and the surrounding land after that. He got an education when he was 15 and became a carpenter and actually won some prizes for the furniture he made.

He got something like a chronic headache, which became so severe that he finally could not bear it anymore. A speculation is that it may have been a tumor of some kind that he had. He ended his life by shooting himself in the head with a shotgun on January 2, 1945.

The brothers Nisse (Nils) and Oskar (Also called Leonard while in America) in front of the big house that Gerhard and Emelia built in 1927.

Gerhard and Emilia in front of Bygget in the early 1920's.

1927, Gerhard and his wife Emelia had a larger house built at Bygget. It was their son Oskar (Leonard) who paid for the party according to rumors that I heard.

Soldiers croft 123 Håkentorp as it looked in 2017. Once it was at Bygget but now it's at Götarps Brunn.

Andrén Lantz

What happened to the old cabin after the new house had been built, you might be wondering?

Sometime during the 1930s, Gerhard's son Nils (Nisse) sold the cottage to Götarps Brunn to his brother Andrén's (my grandfather)'s great annoyance. Andrén did not think it was Nisse's business to sell that bulding. Nisse had taken over Bygget in 1934 after his father, Gerhard.

The cottage still remains at Götarps Brunn but is today converted on the outside as you can see in the picture above. From the beginning it was red with white knots as you can see in the first picture in this post (even though it's in black and white).

The building that Gerhard and Emilia had built in 1927 as it looked in 2017.

The big house on Bygget that my grandfather's parents had built still remains. From the beginning, the house was white, but Nisse, who lived here until his death in 1983, had it painted yellow. The house remained in the family until sometime in the late 1990s when it was sold to a couple of Danes. The forest around the building is still owned by a Lantz descendant.

//Daniel