The sixth meeting of the Andersson Family Reunion was held in Falkenberg, Sweden in July, 2004. It is the third time I have attended. The first was in 1998, also in Sweden, and the second was in 2001 in the Washington, DC area.
The Andersson Family Reunions were
indirectly the result of some research by Claes Håkan Jacobson (shown here with
a photograph by John Anderson). Although not related to the group, he was
responsible for starting the Andersson family reunions. In 1984 he engaged in a
research project to study the work of the Swedish-American photographer John
Anderson. Anderson had a trading post near the Rosebud Sioux reservation in the
1800's. He became very friendly with the indians, and received many gifts from
them. He also traded for things. His collection finally became large enough to
open a museum. The museum contents were eventually bought by the Government and
are available for viewing today in South Dakota. Anderson also produced one of
the most important collections of indian photographs in the country.
Claes has published a book (now
available in English) that contains a large collection of photographs along with
the history of the life of John Anderson. While doing his research, Claes
discovered that there were living descendents of John Anderson, in particular
Arthur and Elisabeth Culver in the USA and Anders Andersson in Sweden. He
contacted them, provided information about their interesting ancestor, and
encouraged them to get together for a reunion. 
When I was on my first trip to Sweden in 1997, I knew nothing about my mother's relatives or the connection to John Andersson. I knew only that my mother's parents were from Tvååker. Some internet research had led me to visit Inge Svensson, a retired Tvååker resident. One evening Inge invited Anders Andersson over for coffee. Anders brought out a genealogy chart that had columns listing various members of the Andersson family. One individual was shown with the notation `left for America' and the rest of the column was blank. This was my mother's father. The connection was made and I returned to Sweden in 1998 to attend a reunion.
Now, in the summer of 2004 I was headed back to meet again with some of my Swedish släkt (relatives).
