Moffats in Sweden How a Scandinavian-American Unexpectedly Joined the Clan

By Jeff Benson, Minneapolis, MN USA

This article is reproduced from the Clan Moffat Newsletter Autumn 2009 (Vol 3 Issue 7)

There’s no telling the surprises that may be lurking in one’s family history. This narrative tells how I came to discover a 17th century Scottish ancestor named Robert Moffat in… Sweden?!

My parents were always proud of their respective ethnic heritages and made of point of passing that information on to their children. I have thus long known that my mother was half German, half Norwegian and my father’s ancestors all came from Sweden. My mother knew a couple distant cousins in Norway and one of them even came to visit us in America. The idea of maintaining a living link to distant relatives in another land fascinated me. While I knew very little about my great-grandparents, I decided that someday I was going to find out more about these ancestors.

I eventually went off to school at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. The college was named after patron Charles Macalester, a philanthropist with ties to Clan MacAllister. “Mac”, as the school is affectionately known, has always maintained an affinity for Scottish tradition. It has its own bagpipe band and for many years hosted an annual Scottish fair and highland games on campus. It was at Mac that I gained appreciation and respect for the Scottish people, their illustrious history and lively customs. I was even sometimes envious of those who could claim Scottish ancestors. But being of strictly Scandinavian and German stock, I never once considered this to be a possibility for myself.

In 2001 I finally began my long-delayed family research, after being inspired by a series of newspaper articles. The author’s genealogy research led him to connect with distant relatives in Sweden and culminated with a visit to “the old country” to see the places his ancestors once lived. This was an experience I too desired to have.

Throughout 2002 I laid groundwork in U.S. records and by fall I was ready to “cross the pond.” I had heard about a company called Genline (1) that provided on-line access to original Swedish parish records and was eager to try it. In October 2002 I signed up for a one-month subscription to Genline’s service. It was a revelation. In 30 days I found nearly all the direct-line ancestors for one branch of my father’s tree, dating back to the late 1600s. I was hooked.

I should now explain a few things about Swedish naming practices. Before 1900, the vast majority of Swedish people used patronymic names. For example, suppose a Swede named Anders had a son and called the boy Nils. The boy’s full name would be Nils Andersson (“Anders’ son”). Likewise, if Anders later sired a girl named Maria, she would be known as Maria Andersdotter (“dotter” is Swedish for daughter). Another Swedish tradition of the period was that a woman who married rarely changed her surname to match her husband’s and then only if the husband had a true family name, not a patronym.

Studies have found that before the late 1800s less than 3 % of Swedes used a family surname. Swedish genealogists are usually resigned to unearthing a vast array of ancestors bearing typical –son and –dotter surnames. Therefore, it was of great interest to me when early in my research I found an ancestor with the family surname, Hellgren. I soon learned the Hellgrens were a middle-class family whose men were frequently army officers and other professionals. I eventually traced my Hellgren line back to a 5th-great grandfather named Robert Niklas Hellgren (born about 1705, died 1763). Robert Niklas was a sergeant in the Swedish infantry. But here the trail went cold. Try as I might, I could not find Robert’s birth in parish records (nor has it turned up even today).

Fortunately, by dint of other sources I soon found likely candidates for the parents of Robert Niklas: Börje Hellgren (patronym, Nilsson) and his wife Maria Moffat. It made sense that Börje Hellgren (born about 1677, died 1717) was the father. Börje served as a sergeant in the same regiment that Robert Niklas joined some years later. But this still left the question: who was Maria Moffat? I puzzled over her for some time. Separation of social classes meant she must have come from at least a middle class family. No ambitious young officer of the period would deign to select a mate from a lower class. But Maria’s surname was perplexing. I knew the surname Moffat could be found in Scotland. But why would a Scottish woman turn up in the hinterlands of Sweden, not far from the Norwegian border, married to a Swedish army officer? The idea seemed too farfetched. Eventually, I decided that Moffat sounded “vaguely Swedish” to my ear and that the surname must have arisen independently in Sweden.

That was how matters with Maria Moffat stood until one day in late February 2007. For years I had been a faithful reader of the Swedish genealogy message board, Anbytarforum. On that fateful February day, researcher Ingalill Lundgren created a new thread in Anbytarforum’s family names section: Moffat (2). The message Ingalill posted contained information about several members of the Swedish Moffat family, including Isabella Maria Moffat, married to Börje Hellgren. The posting also included the names of the probable parents of this family: Captain Robert Moffat and his noble-born wife, Elisabeth Rutensköld. Later posts by other researchers added more information about Robert Moffat and Elisabeth Rutensköld.

Armed with this new evidence, I quickly found Maria Moffat’s death record in the parish of Kila in Värmland province. Maria died at Robert Niklas Hellgren’s residence of Björkås on 25 April 1742. The Kila parish death book recorded her name as Maria Isabella Mofatt. Tax records (3) show an Isabella Maria Mofatt (or Mophatt) living at Björkås between 1724 and 1736. In 1737 the tax entry for Björkås lists both Robert Hellgren and Karl Hellgren. Börje Hellgren and Maria Moffat had a son, Karl Gustav, born 1711. The connection between Maria Moffat and Robert Niklas Hellgren was now fairly well established, despite Robert Niklas’ missing birth record.

And what of Maria Moffat’s alleged parents, Robert Moffat and Elisabeth Rutensköld? Here we are forced to rely more heavily on secondary sources for information. The vast reference work of Swedish nobility written by Elgenstierna (4) has an entry for Elisabeth Rutensköld that mentions her husband, “kapten… Robert Moffat, av skotsk adel”, or translated, Captain Robert Moffat, of Scottish nobility. Unaccountably, the Moffat name had come from Scotland after all! (My wife says this explains my affinity for Scotch whisky.)

But how did Robert Moffat end up in Sweden? The reasons turn out to be interesting but ultimately not mysterious. In 1618, the conflict that became known as The Thirty Years War erupted on the European continent. Sweden joined the war on the side of the Protestants in 1630, largely in defense of her interests around the Baltic Sea but also for ideological reasons. Sweden’s King Gustav II Adolf (commonly known as Gustavus Adolphus) was a brilliant military commander. His successes on the battlefield attracted attention all across Europe. A great number of Protestant Scots, both noble and common, enlisted with the Swedish army in Germany to fight against the Catholics. Robert Moffat must have been one of them. Muster rolls of the Närke och Värmlands regemente (the infantry regiment formed of men from the Swedish provinces of Värmland and Närke) show Robert Moffat holding various commissioned officer ranks, starting at ensign in1642 and peaking at captain in 1658. He may have joined the regiment as early as 1636.

After The Thirty Years War, the Swedish government granted lands and titles to foreign-born commanders in gratitude for volunteering their services to the crown. Robert Moffat evidently was offered and accepted such compensation. He was known to have lived at Väsby (marked in on the map below) in the parish of By in Värmland province (near the northern shore of Lake Vänern and the town of Säffle). Between 1666 and 1671, the By parish church accounts book (5) contains several references to “Ädel [noble] Capitein Robert Moffat” (some of the few mentions we have of him in Swedish primary sources). Robert married Swedish noblewoman, Elisabeth Rutensköld sometime in the mid-1600s. Elisabeth was the daughter of Sten Pavelsson (knighted Rutensköld, diamond shield, in 1645) and Catharina Wagner. Robert and Elisabeth may have had nine or more children. The following individuals bearing the Moffat surname have been found in various records of the period and are likely children or grandchildren of Robert and Elisabeth: Sten, Robert, Göran (Jurgen), Lars, Alexander (Zander), Margareta, Isabella Maria, Hedvig Beata and Anna. One should note that two of these names, Robert and Isabella, were considered “foreign” and quite rare in Sweden during this period.

In 1666, Robert Moffat retired from the army. The history of the Värmland regiment (6) contains a curious and rather lurid anecdote concerning him. In 1665, Moffat was ordered to the fortress Varberg on the west coast of Sweden. While at Varberg, he was accused of engaging in adultery with a married woman, Karin Helgesdotter. The woman evidently killed her husband by poisoning him. Moffat was tried before a military court (adultery was a serious crime in those days) and sentenced to death on 5 Nov. 1666. However, Elisabeth Rutensköld filed a petition for mercy and asked the court to consider both her husband’s thirty years of army service and also that if the sentence was carried out she would have to support their nine underage children. Despite the seriousness of the crime (clemency was very unusual in such cases), Moffat was granted a reprieve but forced to resign from the regiment and likely also pay a large fine.

According to research by Professor Steve Murdoch at the University of St. Andrews (7), Robert evidently was invited into Swedish nobility about 1660. However, he never managed to complete all the steps necessary for entrance into the Swedish Riddarhuset (House of Nobility) before his death. His patent for naturalization dates from 1665. He applied for a birth brief with the Scottish Privy Council in August 1672 (8) and it was granted later the same year. Moffat apparently sailed for Scotland in 1672 or 1673 (to complete preparations for his ennoblement?) and was reported missing in autumn 1673, presumably drowned in a shipwreck on his return to Sweden. Elisabeth Rutensköld wrote (9) a letter to Queen Hedvig Eleanora, dated 19 August 1674 (figure 2). Within, she noted that Scottish merchant George Galbraith had written that her husband had been granted his birth brief and was thus confirmed as Scottish nobility. Elisabeth was at that time caught in a dispute with her brother, who claimed that because her husband had not proven his nobility Elisabeth should be denied her inheritance. Proving Robert’s Scottish nobility was important to her as well. Before his death, Robert also wrote about this matter on her behalf (figure 3). I have not discovered the outcome of the dispute. Elisabeth was still living in 1693 but it is not known when she died.

The lingering question is now, who was Robert Moffat? Based on his service in the Swedish army one can hazard a guess he was born between 1610 and 1620. That he was evidently of Scottish nobility suggests he was son of a clan chief or another clan leader. Based on existing evidence, it is not clear where he fits into known Clan Moffat ancestry.

As it happens, the Moffat lands of Grantoun and Reddings were lost in 1628. One can easily imagine a young noble, suddenly landless and without hope of regaining the ancestral property, who, while casting about for a purpose, is inspired on principle to take up arms and help wage a religious war or perhaps just to find fame and fortune. Whether this was the case may never be known. But I look forward to collaborating with other researchers in hopes of finding the answer.

Time Line For Robert Moffat's Life

This may not work with the AOL browser. Click on the time line and drag left and right to see more dates. The top band is events related to Robert and the middle band Swedish political events of the time.

Sources:

(1) Genline.com (http://www.genline.com/).

(2) Moffat surname thread on Anbytarforum message board

(3) Transcriptions of mantalslängder (taxation records) generously provided to the author by Ingalill Lundgren

(4) Den introducerade Svenska adelns ättartavlor med tillägg och rättelser, I-IX. Elgenstierna, Gustaf.

(5) By parish, Värmland, parish church accountings book LI:1 (1642-1726). R. Moffat entries found and transcribed by Elsa Sjödahl.

(6) Värmlands regementes (Närke och Värmlands reg:tes) historia. Nordensvan, Carl Otto. Excerpt translated by Hans Högman.

(7) Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern European Biographical Database, University of St. Andrews, Institute of Scottish Historical Research.

(8) The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 3rd series, volume 3, page 573. Brown, P. H., ed.

(9) Swedish National Archives, documents concerning Elisabeth Rutensköld and Robert Moffat. Electronic copies provided by Ingalill Lundgren.

View Väsby Location in a larger map