The documents, letters, personal items, and resources Paul Rennord researched of his Swedish and Norwegian ancestors between the years 1982 and 2001. This collection is a compilation of the documents, letters, personal items, and resources Paul Rennord had accumulated of his Swedish and Norwegian relatives and ancestors between the years 1982 and 2001, as well as information on Scandinavian history and culture, and ranges from the 1600’s to the 1990’s.
The earliest documents, those from the seventeenth century, are church records from the parishes of Aamot and Ørre Rendal in Norway. The largest part of the collection is the series of family letters collected and kept by Paul’s grandmother, Anna Louisa Lind and his mother, Evangeline. This compilation of letters includes the family of both his mother and his father, Arnold Rennord Schreiner. The Schreiner and Rennord families, who make up the first part of the compilation, appear to have a history connecting them as early as the 1700’s. The Schreiners, according to Paul Rennord’s research, were a family of carpenters who originated from Germany and settled in Norway sometime between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Arnold Schreiner moved to the United States in about the 1890’s and then married Evangeline Lind in 1913. The Schreiners in the United States officially changed their name to Rennord in 1918.
The second part of the collection consists of letters from Evangeline’s Swedish family. Her mother, born Anna Louisa Gustafsdotter in 1844, had two husbands, first Jonas Alfrid Johnson and after his death she later married Swan Lind. The collection includes the letters of the families of both her husbands, as well as the family of her father, Gustaf Isaksson. These letters range from 1869 to about the 1970’s. Also included are the correspondence between Paul Rennord and his relatives from Norway and Sweden.
