New Find for the Hallin Family

I found a new resource at http://www.emiweb.se/ that has a listing of many Swedish emigrants. It is searchable by surname, first name, birthdate, birth parish, emigration parish, emigration date, etc.... I did a search for the surname "Harlin" and came up with a Johan Walfrid Harlin who was born in 1894 in Resele, Västernorrland. Hmmmm...I did a quick check in my database and sure enough, there he was. He emigrated from Sweden in 1914 and was my grandpa's first cousin. I didn't even know he came over! Eventually I found from census records and WWI draft cards that he lived in Itasca county, Minnesota. I was then able to find an obituary for John Walfred Hallin (as he was later called) and found out that he was married, had a young son named Oliver Walfred, and was a veteran of WWI. He was killed when he was cutting trees. The best part of finding Walfred was that I now know the identity of "Walfred Hallin" from a photo that my grandpa has. He thought it was his brother Walfred, but we knew that since he died at age 10 it couldn't be him. I later thought perhaps it was mislabeled and it was actually his uncle Otto Edvard Harlin who drowned at age 18 in Sweden. Now that I found cousin Walfred Hallin, I knew who was really in the photograph!

Walfred's only son Oliver fought in WWII and was killed in Manila, in the Phillipines. My grandpa was actually over there in 1945 when Oliver died. He wishes he knew that Oliver was there so he could have tried to see him, or at least have seen his grave after he died.