Let me start by explaining the Header at the top of this site. Adolf’s brother, Axel, sent Adolf a postcard addressed to the Scandinavian Sailor’s Home, West India Docks, London E. The postcard is actually called: Guess Their Secret. If anyone can find a date on the card, please let us all know. Even with my glasses on, I cant see what the faint writing is in the place where the stamp should be.

Axel wrote his and Adolf’s names on the characters in the postcard, but, interestingly, he chose the older character as himself; Adolf was a year older than Axel. I wonder what the secret was that Axel was telling Adolf?

Documents from the Swedish Archives confirm that Grandfather Berg was born Adolf Wilhelm Bergman on the 3 April 1877 in Gothenburg (Göteborg).

Somewhere between leaving Gothenburg and seeking naturalisation in Australia in 1911, Grandfather changed his name to Alfred Berg.

The photo above is taken from a family portrait of the Atkinson family in 1915. More of the family information will be presented on other pages of this site.

According to Grandfather’s Application for Naturalisation, he arrived in Australia (Sydney) in September 1902, having travelled from New Zealand on the steamship, Monowai.

The document suggests that he lived in:

• Kalgoorlie – 5 years (1902-1907)
• South Australia – 1 year (1907-1908)
• Brewarrina – 6 months (1908/1909?)
• Wellington – remainder of the nine years since arrival in 1902 to 1911 (possibly up to 2 years)

There seems to be no record of Grandfather either as a crew member or passenger on the Monowai from New Zealand to Sydney, in September 1902. Investigation of records either side of September failed to find any Bergman or Berg. Further investigation of the remaining months of the year, and other ships, will be pursued, as will variations to the spelling of Grandfather’s name (Berg/Bergman and variations of these)./

A search for Swedish Census records revealed an interesting record that suggests an Adolf Bergman, born 1877, was working in Gothenburg as a Warehouse Assistant in 1910. Another record in 1900 lists him as living in an Orphanage, but the same Census shows that Axel and Signe were living with their mother. Grandfather would have been thirteen at the time so there seems no logical explanation for the difference in living arrangements. The 1910 document uses the word ‘Conscripted’ as a heading – which fits with the Swedish military enforcement at the time.

A recent document paints a very different picture. Adolf Wilhelm Bergman appears in a moving-in moving-out parish record that states he moved in on the 6th January 1886, three months before his ninth birthday. The moving-out section is blank against Grandfather’s name, but it is found in another document, reporting his age to be fourteen when he moved out of the parish.

I was told as a child that after Grandfather’s father’s death, the children were raised in a Lutheran orphanage. Documents suggest that Grandfather may have been alone. Other census records show Axel and Signe living with their mother.

If Grandfather left the orphanage when he was fourteen years old, did he stow away on a ship leaving Gothenburg? Stories told by my father would corroborate that theory. Grandfather was only young when he left Sweden and sailed the world many times before settling in Australia, having initially stowed away on a ship from Gothenburg.

According to his naturalisation application in 1911, Grandfather was twenty-five when he arrived in Australia. The postcard sent by his brother, Axel, places him in London and working on ships prior to then, but when? Where else did he go? Did he follow the lure of gold to California, and then Australia?

Until we find the missing links, we can only speculate, but I will continue to search. As more genealogy sites digitise records from our ancestral past, I am hopeful that one day we will be able to map out Grandfather Berg’s journey from Sweden to Australia.