First Rescue
Pehr Jonsson Bloom was a Swedish shoemaker. He had a wife, Kerstin, a son, Jonas, and
three little daughters, Kerstin (Christine in America),
Margta, and Karin. They lived in the
Alfta Parish of Gavleborg—near the center of Sweden. It sounds simple, but his life was becoming
more complicated. Unbearable, even.
Sweden
has not been at war since 1806, when Peter was tiny. While he was growing up Sweden had faded into the
background of political and economic power among the countries of Europe. Sweden
was poor, illiterate and drunken. There were some positive changes happening,
though. Education was becoming more
available to the masses. This, of
course, led to increased literacy. Lo
and behold, the people began to want to study the Holy Bible for
themselves. A new religious movement was
vibrant in Peter’s home province of Hälsingland
around 1825, when Peter was a young adult, called Devotionalism, or Läsare (readers). The Läsare
would gather in private homes to study the Bible. (Public religious gatherings without official
clergy were highly illegal.)
Many of the Läsare
were disgusted by the corruption and alcoholism of the clergy. For example, one of Peter’s fellow
immigrants, a leader named Jonas Olson, witnessed a drunken priest conducting a
mockery of the Last Supper at a dance.
The Läsare wanted a purer
religion and a higher degree of reverence and piety. They were also active in the temperance
movement. Although they wanted change,
the Läsare were not yet separatists
from the state-sponsored Lutheran religion.
Things continued on in this uneasy impasse for seventeen years, when the
time was ripe for a hero to emerge. This
man’s name was Erik Janson, and he would change Peter’s life and the life of
his descendants forever.
It is unknown at what point the Bloom family became
Jansonists, whether they had been Läsare
for years and then followed Janson, or if they were swept up in his movement in
the 1840’s, when Peter was nearly forty.
In any case, they threw their lot in with his, so something must have
compelled them to make such a tremendous choice. Stay with me here while we learn a bit about
Erik Janson. Because Peter Bloom was one of his followers, the two have a
valuable shared history.
Erik Janson was an eloquent, dynamic man who had had a
profound religious experience. At age
26, while plowing in the fields, he suffered such a painful attack of his
chronic rheumatism that he fainted.
“On regaining consciousness, he
heard a voice saying: ‘It is writ that whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,
believing, ye shall receive; all things are possible to him that
believeth. If ye shall ask anything in
my name, I shall do it, saith the Lord.’
Eric Janson recognized in the voice a message from God, and, falling
upon his knees, prayed long and fervently that his lack of faith might be
forgiven him and that his health might be restored. On arising, his pains had disappeared, never
to return.”
This occurrence completely changed Janson and made him want
to learn anything he could about religion.
He read everything he could get his hands on but became frustrated with
religious commentary, finding solace only in the Bible. More study made him disagree with core
Lutheran beliefs. He began to preach stricter
adherence to the Bible, increased faith, and a return to “primitive
Christianity”.
In 1842, Janson heard of the Läsare movement and preached at many of their gatherings. He
gained many followers, attracting the negative attention of Sweden’s
Established Church. The Church took
harsh religious measures, denying any of Janson’s followers the sacrament. Jansonists were also denied the legal right
to testify in court, basically becoming defenseless against the law.
"As the influence of Janson increased, so also the number and hostility of his enemies. His followers were subjected to the abuse and insult of the rabble. Their meetings were disturbed, their houses pelted with stones, and their persons assaulted. But they praised the Lord who tried their faith by allowing them to be persecuted. They marched along the public highways at night and sang spiritual hymns, or gathered in front of the parsonages to pray for the conversion of their unregenerate pastors. When their conventicles were prohibited they assembled in the woods and in out of the way places to partake of the Holy Communion. Faint rumors of these midnight gatherings came to church authorities, and the spectre of a new peasant insurrection stalked abroad. Eric Janson…was charged with all sorts of atrocious crimes.”
Things came to a head in June of 1844. All along, Janson had preached against using
so-called devotional literature, such as the writings of Martin Luther and
others. He considered them to be
usurpers of the Bible. He decided to
stage a book burning. The burning drew a
crowd and caused general outrage. Janson
was arrested two days later, possibly in Langhed, Alfta Parish—Peter Bloom’s
hometown. He was eventually released
without any decrease in followers and back at the pulpit.
More book burnings, arrests, and persecutions were to
follow, until Janson became an outlaw with a price on his head. He hid out in the mountains of Alfta,
masterminded a mass emigration of his followers, and then escaped in 1846 to New
York and Illinois,
where he met up, as planned, with another Jansonist leader. They created a city in Henry County,
Illinois, and named it Bishop Hill, the English term for Janson’s birthplace, Bishopskulla.
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| Colony Church at Bishop Hill, built 1848. |
By this point Janson’s views had expanded considerably; he
considered himself “the second coming
of Christ”, that he would “far exceed that of the work accomplished by Jesus
and his Apostles.” For starters, he wanted to build a utopian community, a “New
Jerusalem” in America,
which would eventually expand to fill the earth. This would usher in the millennium, where
Eric Janson or his heirs would “reign to the end of all time.” (He should have stuck to reading the Bible.)
Megalomania aside, Janson did manage a mass migration from Sweden
to America,
really the first to do so. These brave
Swedes, (around 1,100) were fleeing their home country because they desired
religious freedom. Peter’s granddaughter
Martha confirmed this, years later, in writing that her mother’s family had immigrated
because “At that time there was much religious persecution in Sweden.” Because of this, we will deem Eric Janson’s
influence, drawing Peter Bloom out of Sweden
and bringing him to a free land, the First Rescue.
 |
| Original Nauvoo Temple |
America
provided a perfect situation for a community looking for religious freedom, or
so it would seem. At this point of the
narration I must interrupt and bring to light an enormous irony: The
Jansonists planted their religious city-on-a-hill in Henry County, Illinois, in
1846. Less than 100 miles to the west
lay another religious city, violently forced to vacate or be destroyed, THAT VERY YEAR. This religious persecution was sanctioned by
the government, or at the very least, not in any way prevented by the
government. It was Joseph Smith’s
beautiful Nauvoo, and the people were known as the Mormons (The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Joseph
Smith was martyred, shot to death in 1844.
Eric Janson would suffer the SAME fate in 1850, albeit at the hand of a
single man, not an angry mob. Janson may
have been a bit reckless (or ignorant?) to start a religious community in such
close vicinity to the violence at a time when prejudices were running high, but
he was lucky, and Bishop Hill was not really bothered. Janson’s religious community would formally
disband in 1860, its people morphing into traditional churches. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints remains, and is a vibrant, growing international church, numbering in
the 15 millions. (This author is descended
from members of both groups.)
Both Nauvoo and Bishop Hill have restored buildings from the
period and museums. You can visit the
two in a single day.
Second Rescue
The Mormons had a wonderful system for helping its converts
get to America
from Europe. It
was called the Perpetual Immigration Fund, and worked as a kind of rotating
loan that would pay for passage on ships, etc.
The Jansonists could have used such a thing. They were poor as a group, and had to take
passage on whatever floated, whatever room it had, passenger ship or not,
seaworthy or not. This sometimes meant
that part of a family would disembark while the rest of the family waited for
whatever became available, sometimes for years.
Peter Bloom’s family was able to travel together as a unit, but this
blessing was bittersweet, as we will soon see.
Peter and family left Sweden
in early fall of 1846, arriving in New York
in October. They would have been part of
the second or third wave of Jansonists to leave. The journey was harrowing, to say the very
least. The family would have sailed out
of the port city of Gävle (most of
the Jansonists left from here—and there was a “feverish excitement” to leave
because they assumed Sweden
would be destroyed for its wickedness!)
Looking at a map of Sweden,
you will see that it is no picnic to leave town. Unlike other immigrants, such as those coming
from Ireland or
Plymouth, England,
the Gävle, Sweden
travelers had to sail through the Baltic Sea, around Denmark,
through the North Sea, and then either through the English
Channel or North of Scotland through the Norwegian Sea,
passing Iceland
and Greenland.
(I’m not sure which route was taken.)
That sounds dreadful even in the best of circumstances.
And it was most certainly not the best of circumstances.
The first ship of Jansonists to leave Sweden
wrecked before even getting to Denmark. Another ship was lost completely, with about
50 souls aboard. A third ship was
shipwrecked off the coast of Newfoundland. And the colonists were constantly starving
or sick, stalked by the quick killing Asiatic cholera, THE plague of the 19th
century. At this point in our story the
timeline becomes a little unclear, but the bare, for-certain facts are these:
1. Peter left Sweden
with a wife and four children.
2. He was
shipwrecked off Newfoundland.
3. He
arrived in New York in 1846 with
a wife and two children.
Christine’s daughter Martha wrote in a short memoir that “Among the passengers on the ship the
Asiatic cholera broke out and my mothers’ two little sisters died of it and
were buried in the sea”. What a detail
for a six year old to live with and pass down to her children! (Note: It also made me emotional to realize
that Christine named her daughter Martha, the English form of Margta, her four
year old sister who perished. They were probably close playmates.)
 | |
| The "Yellow Jack" sometimes has a black circle or black checks. |
Asiatic cholera was a horrible pandemic that would affect
much of the world for decades at a time.
It was a bacterial disease affecting the small intestine that first
began in India.
Spread by contaminated water or food, it would
cause severe vomiting and a strange white diarrhea, sometimes even seizures,
leading to death by dehydration within a matter of a few days or even
hours. Ironically, abstinence from water
was thought to be a cure. Cholera still
kills hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in third world countries. Imagine being trapped on a ship (and probably
a rickety one at that) with such a plague.
It must have been horrifying. I
wonder if the captain flew the quarantine flag (as required) or if he looked
the other way.
Then came the shipwreck.
Martha’s memoir does not capture the full story. Martha’s brother Frederick adds this
detail. “On the voyage over they
suffered shipwreck and one of his [Peter’s] daughters was lost”. This statement makes it sound like one of the
daughters was lost during the
shipwreck (or it could just mean that she was also lost during the voyage and
the two facts were put into the same sentence).
This particular wreck did claim at least three casualties among the
Jansonist passengers, so Frederick Cooper’s version is entirely plausible. With that in mind, picture this scenario:
 |
| Somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland. |
What would cause a child
to die in a shipwreck when many other passengers, including the child’s parents,
survived? Wouldn’t a child be protected
by his or her parent? My two guesses
would be that the child was washed overboard, or I think even more likely, that
the people were actually in the water (with parents doing their best to hang on
to their children) and hypothermia set in.
Grim. I think I prefer the “lost
to cholera” version. We may never know
which is the truth.
We don’t know many of the details of the wreck. One source claims the ship was called the Betty Cathrine, but this could also
refer to one of the other two Jansonist ships that wrecked. Other sources say the wreck was the Caroline. If this was the case, we know the Caroline must have been repaired well
enough to bring Peter and his family the rest of the way to New
York, where they are recorded as arriving on that
ship’s manifest. The Caroline was also shipshape enough to
bring another load of Jansonists to America
in 1854. We don’t know what caused the
shipwreck, but that far north it could have been an iceberg, bad weather, or
even the rocky coastline.
Peter’s ship was wrecked somewhere near the coast of Newfoundland. I couldn’t find any newspaper accounts of the
wreck for that time period, particularly since I don’t know where on the coast
it wrecked, and also because that is a pretty rustic part of the world with not
a lot of newspaper coverage—it was
1846. Newfoundland
claims a huge number of the shipwrecks on the Northern Maritime Research’s
database, including an unsinkable ship named the Titanic.
And how do we know the wreck was somewhere near the
coast? According to Peter’s obituary, the
passengers were actually rescued by
fishermen and then taken to Newfoundland. I don’t know in what manner the fishermen
rescued them—if they pulled people from the water, or if they came upon a
sinking ship or lifeboats and provided passage, or if they somehow towed a
floundering ship to shore.
They may have been unaware of the danger, but if the captain
had been flying the quarantine flag, these fishermen were doubly brave, knowing
that they were putting at risk their lives and the lives of their families to
rescue strangers. Hopefully all the
lives of the rescuers were spared from the plague.
Third Rescue
This sad tale takes two more turns for the worse before it
gets better. When Peter and the
remainder of his family arrived in New York,
they had two children. By the time they
reached Illinois, their
thirteen-year old son had also died; I’m assuming that the cholera carried over. Since the Jansonists traveled on the wondrous
Erie Canal and then across the Great Lakes,
odds are very good that Peter’s son Jonas was buried “at sea” in the Great
Lakes.
| Travel on the Erie Canal. |
Peter, Kerstin, and their lone little six-year-old daughter Christine
arrived in Chicago and then
traveled on foot or by wagon to Bishop Hill.
It was an extremely difficult winter with little food and rough shelters—communal
dugouts, tents, and cabins. Many died,
so many that there were new bodies to remove almost every morning. They were
buried in mass graves. Kerstin, around
age 38, worn down by grief and the physical difficulties, was one of these
deaths, probably killed by cholera, joining her lost
children. She is most likely buried in
an unmarked mass grave at Bishop Hill. There are no lists of the dead from that
first winter.
 |
| Rendering of the early habitations at Bishop Hill. |
Like her children who had been buried at sea, Kerstin was
wrapped in a sheet.
At this point Peter must have thought his life was
over. He had no more desire to remain at
the Bishop Hill colony, whether caused by grief alone or by disillusionment
with Janson’s so-called utopia and America
in general. He also had probably been
weakened by sickness and starvation himself.
What happened next was really a miracle, a case of angels among us. He was rescued
and because of the Good Samaritan kindness of others, I am an American today.
I love the few tender details in his granddaughter Martha’s account.
Many of the people of the colony died there [at Bishop Hill], among them my mothers mother.After they were there a while my grandfather took my mother by the hand and started to walk to New York City to go back to Sweden. When he went as far as Layfayette, Ill. [only about ten miles from Bishop Hill] he became so sick he went into a barn and laid down on the hay and the owner found them there early one morning. He took them in the house and his wife doctored him till he was well. He stayed there with Ira Reed and his good wife for a few years and, being a shoe maker, he made shoes and Ira Reed drove around the country and sold them.Later my mother and her father went back to Bishop Hill and he married a Mrs. Johnson who had a boy Peter, and two girls, Ann and Kate. Later a boy was born to them, Fred Bloom. Grandfather bought a farm close to Bishop Hill and spent the remainder of his life there. He lived to be eighty three years old. [Actually eighty one.]As my mother did not enjoy her step mother nor step sisters very much she did not stay long at one time with them. She lived between times with Mrs. Reed, who taught her to be a good housekeeper and all kinds of needle work. She later went to Peoria to work, where she met my father, Thos. Cooper, and they were married there when she was seventeen yrs old.
Ira Reed of Layfayette (yes, the locals really pronounce it
that way) and his wife Maria were younger than Peter. When Peter basically collapsed in their barn
Ira would have been around 26. They
would have had a little two-year old boy named Robert. Ira’s farm as shown on the 1850 Census was a
sizable 3200 acres, but interestingly, after years of working with Peter, he
claims his profession as “shoemaker”. By
1850 Peter had moved back to Bishop Hill to start his second family. Mrs. Reed really did serve as a foster mother
to Christine—the little “orphan” is present in the Reed home in 1850 as
Christine “Peterson” (remember, she is “Peter’s” daughter) from Sweden,
age 8. She must have looked small, she
was actually 10.
It seems that Peter’s story has come to a happy end, and
Christine grew up, married, and had a family of her own, ironically spending
much of that happy time on a boat. (Her
husband Thomas ran a fleet that shipped produce to Chicago.) There is one more rescue, however, that I
wanted to include here.
Fourth Rescue
Whenever it is time for me to choose a new research subject,
I make it a matter of prayer. I believe
that we are closer than we think to those who have gone beyond the veil. I remembered vaguely the sad story of Peter
Bloom’s children and began to feel increasingly drawn to them and their
story. I found myself thinking about
them often. I believe that this
intensifying interest is caused by the subjects themselves—they WANT to be
found. As a member of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I also believe that the members of this
little torn-apart family wanted to have the chance to be reunited once and forever. For that, though, I needed to know their
names.
As I learned more about Swedish research and started combing
the histories of Bishop Hill I began to despair that we would never know the
names of Christine’s mother or her siblings since those names were not included
in Martha’s memoirs. Since they died at
sea (or in Kerstin’s case, were buried in a mass grave) we have no record of
their death. I did not know the name of
the ship they traveled on to be able to check for ship’s manifests. And they came from Sweden! The land
of Peter Petersons and John
Johnsons! Christine’s death certificate is not to be found, which should have
listed her mother’s maiden name. What
few living relations there are do not have any record (or photos, which would
have been nice) of this family. I did
not know the all-important name of the home parish in Sweden,
only having Christine’s birthday and Martha’s incorrect guess that her mother
was born in Stockholm. I checked the holdings at the Family History
Library in Salt Lake
and found nothing. I was really
stuck.
There was one general reference book about Swedish
Immigration that caught my eye, but I was sure it would be too general.
Finally, I threw a hail Mary and wrote an email to the
Bishop Hill Heritage Association, at least hoping that they would have
more information about Peter’s shipwreck.
Not so much the shipwreck, but they did have a file on Peter
John Bloom. And vital statistics on his
entire family, as taken from the parish records in Sweden.
Some of the information they sent me was taken from a
certain general reference book about Swedish Immigration, the same one that had
caught my eye. It would have been my
next step.
I am certain that Peter and his family wanted to be rescued
one more time.
Source List
Biographical and
Genealogical Record of La Salle County,
Illinois. Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1900. Internet
Archives. http://www.archive.org : 2014.
Dowell, Cheryll, Bishop Hill Heritage Association. Report to Jaclyn Day, 6 Oct 2014.
Galva, Illinois. Galva
News. 27 March 1884.
Heagy, Martha J. (Cooper).
Manuscript. April 1842. Privately held by Ebert Heagy, Fairfield,
Montana, 2014.
Illinois. Stark
County. 1850 U.S.
census, population schedule. Digital
images. FamilySearch.org. http://www.familysearch.org : 2014.
Issakson, Olov, and Read, Albert (translator). Bishop Hill, Illinois: A
Utopia of the Prairie. Stockholm: LT Publishing House, 1969.
Johnson, Eric. Svenskarne i Illinois. Chicago, Illinois:
Tryckt Hos, 1880. Internet Archives. http://www.archive.org : 2014.
Mikkelsen, Michael A.
“The Bishop Hill Colony: A
Religious Communistic Settlement in Henry
County, Illinois.” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and
Political Science, Tenth Series, No. 1, (January 1892). Google
Books. http://www.books.google.com : 2014.
Northern Maritime
Research. http://www.northernmaritimeresearch.com
: 2014.
Olson, Ernst W. The Swedish Element in Illinois: Survey of the Past Seven Decades. Chicago: Swedish-American Biographical Association
Publishers, 1917.
Olsson, Nils William. Swedish
Passenger Arrivals in New York, 1820-1850. Chicago:
Swedish Pioneer Historical Society, 1967.
Setterdahl, Lilly.
“Emigrant Letters by Bishop Hill Colonists.” Western Illinois
Regional Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, (Fall 1978). Internet
Archives. http://www.archive.org : 2014.
Wikipedia. http://www.wikipedia.org
: 2014.
Notes
First Rescue
1. shoemaker: Martha J.
(Cooper) Heagy, (MS, April 1942), p. 4; privately held by Ebert Heagy, Fairfield, MT, 2014. Martha
was the granddaughter of Peter John Bloom.
2. names of wife and children:
Cheryll Dowell, Bishop Hill Heritage Association, report to Jaclyn Day,
response to inquiry on Peter John Bloom, 6 Oct 2014.
3. Alfta parish: Dowell,
response to inquiry on Peter John Bloom.
4. increased literacy: Lilly
Setterdahl, “Emigrant Letters by Bishop Hill Colonists”, Western Illinois
Regional Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 1978); Internet Archives (http://www.archive.org : accessed 6 Nov 2014), p. 124.
5. Devotionalism in Hälsingland: Michael A.
Mikkelsen, “The Bishop Hill Colony: A
Religious Communistic Settlement in Henry County, Illinois,” Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Tenth Series, No. 1
(January 1892); Google Books (http://www.books.google.com
: accessed 6 November 2014), p. 13.
6. Läsare: Setterdahl, “Emigrant Letters by Bishop Hill
Colonists,” p. 124.
7. gatherings illegal: Ibid.
8. Jonas Olson’s account of corruption: Mikkelsen, “The Bishop Hill Colony”, p. 12.
9. “On regaining consciousness…”:
Ibid., p. 17.
10. return to primitive Christianity:
Ibid., p. 20.
11. Janson’s preaches to Läsare : Ibid., p. 19.
12. denied right to testify: Ernst
W. Olson, The Swedish Element in Illinois: Survey of the Past Seven Decades, (Chicago,
Illinois: Swedish-American Biographical
Association Publishers: 1917), p. 40.
13. arrested in Langhed, Alfta:
Eric Johnson, Svenskarne i
Illinois (Chicago, Illinois: Tryckt Hos, 1880), p. 25. Internet
Archives. ( http://www.archive.org :
accessed 11 November 2014). Assisted by
Google Translate!
14. mountains of Alfta:
Mikkelsen, “The Bishop Hill Colony”, p. 24.
15. Bishopskulla: “Bishop Hill, Illinois”, Wikipedia
(http://wikipedia.org : accessed 12 November 2014).
16. Janson’s expanded views:
Ibid., p. 25.
17. first mass migration: “Bishop Hill, Illinois”, Wikipedia
(http://wikipedia.org : accessed 12 November 2014).
18. 1,100 immigrants: Mikkelsen,
“The Bishop Hill Colony”, p. 28.
19. “much religious persecution”:
Heagy, (MS, April 1942), p. 3.
Second Rescue
1. poor as a group: Olov
Issakson, Bishop Hill, Illinois: A Utopia of the Prairie, (Stockholm: LT Publishing House, 1969).
2. fall of 1846: Nils William
Olsson, Swedish Passenger Arrivals in New York: 1820-1850, (Chicago: Swedish Pioneer
Historical Society, 1967), p. 118. Entry
for Peter Jonsson.
3. third or fourth wave: Mikkelsen, “The Bishop Hill Colony”, p. 29-30.
4. Sweden would be
destroyed: Ibid., p. 28.
5. three shipwrecks: Olson, The
Swedish Element in Illlinois, p. 41.
6. left with four children: Peter’s obituary says he lost three
children on the journey (one survived).
“Peter J. Bloom,” obituary, Galva
(Illinois) News, 27 March 1884. Transcribed by Cheryl Dowell,
Bishop Hill Heritage Association, report to Jaclyn Day, response to inquiry on
Peter John Bloom, 6 Oct 2014.
7. shipwrecked off Newfoundland: Ibid.
8. New York with two
children: Olsson, Swedish
Passenger Arrivals in New York: 1820-1850, p. 118. Entry for Peter Jonsson.
9. “Among the passengers”:
Heagy, (MS, April 1942), p. 3.
10. Margta was four: Dowell,
response to inquiry on Peter John Bloom, 6 Oct 2014.
12. “on the voyage over”: Biographical and Genealogical Record of La
Salle County, Illinois, (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1900), entry
for “Frederick G. Cooper”, p. 404. Internet Archives. http://www.archive.org
: 2014. This article contains several factual
errors but does mention some facts that can be confirmed elsewhere.
13. Betty Cathrine: Olov Issakson, Bishop Hill, Illinois: A Utopia of the Prairie, (Stockholm: LT
Publishing House, 1969).
14. Caroline wreck: Setterdahl, “Emigrant Letters by Bishop Hill
Colonists,” p. 126.
15. three casualties: Ibid., p.
126
16. Newfoundland claims: “Newfoundland
Shipwrecks”, Northern Maritime Research
(http://www.northernmaritimeresearch.com
: accessed 30 November 2014)
Third Rescue
1. arrived in New York: Olsson,
Swedish Passenger Arrivals in New York,
p. 118. Entry for Peter Jonsson.
2. son died before Illinois: “Peter
J. Bloom,” Galva News, 27 Mar 1884. The obit
mentions that Peter lost three children in the crossing but we know that only
the two younger daughters died before New York.
3. canal and Great Lakes to Chicago: Mikkelsen, “The
Bishop Hill Colony”, p. 29.
4. dugouts and tents and cabins: Ibid.,
p. 30.
5. new bodies every morning:
Ibid., p. 30.
6. mass graves: Olson, The Swedish Element, p. 44.
7. Kerstin died: “Peter J.
Bloom,” Galva News, 27 Mar 1884. A letter from
the Bishop Hill Heritage Society confirms that her death was probably caused by
cholera.
8. no lists of the dead: Dowell,
Bishop Hill Heritage Association, response to inquiry on Peter John Bloom.
9. wrapped in a sheet: Olson, The Swedish Element, p. 44.
10. “Many of the people…”: Heagy, (MS, April 1942), p. 3.
11. Ira Reed’s family: 1850
U.S. census, Stark County, Illinois, population schedule, p. 429 (handwritten),
dwelling 275, family 312, Ira C. Reed and Christine Peterson; digital image, FamilySearch.org (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed
30 November 2014); citing NARA publication M432, image 00052.
12. Peter’s second family: Heagy,
(MS, April 1942), p. 4. Peter married a
Mrs. Mary Johnson in 1850.
13. Christine lived on a boat: Heagy,
(MS, April 1942), p. 4.
Fourth Rescue
1. Stockholm: Heagy, (MS, April 1942), p. 3.