The Swan August Swanson Family Album
This is an electronic version of the exhibit "Scandinavians in the Upper
Midwest" designed in conjunction with Augustana College Theatre performing Kingdom
Come, a play based on Norwegian emigrant journals and O.E. Rolvaag's acclaimed novel, Giants
in the Earth. The photographs portrays the family of Swan August Swanson, an emigrant
from the parish of Rödeby in Blekinge, Sweden and his wife, Anna Walborg Hoffner,
daughter of Danish immigrants who settled in Ogema, Wisconsin.
Biographical sketch of Swan
August Swanson
View the photographs
About the Collection: The photographs and biographical information on Swan August Swanson and Anna Valborg Hoffner are a part of the Col. Ernest R. Swanson Papers retained by the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College. Col. Ernest R. Swanson was the third child of Swan and Anna and he compiled a extensive family history after retiring from a military and civil career as an engineer. Col. Swanson was the first Commander of the Aeronautical Chart Service in St. Louis and held there the primary responsibility for providing the United States Army with maps of Europe during W.W.II. As a civil engineer, he invented several important photographic instruments that were crucial for the development of today's copier machines.
This page was last updated 11/24/03
sag@augstana.edu