White Creoles in Sweden

[angmcp]

I was recently given a tidbit that an Swedish ancestor of mine was a "White Creole".
I have her birth recorded in Sweden but am wondering if her parent/grandparent might have actually been a "White Creole".
Has anyone heard of this? I did a bit of Googling, as it's new to me, but still don't know much.

Thanks!
Angie

[Lesley Robertson]

I think, from the little I could find, that you'll have to establish where she (and maybe her (g)parents) were born/living. Do you have reason to think that one or more of them were from the West Indies?

[thewideeyedowl]

Hi Angie

This seemed rather intriguing so I have been having a ferret with search engines, and it looks as if there might be some tenuous connection with France. Read on:

Wikipedia is the obvious starting point. It has a good article on 'Creole' and describes all the many different groups to which the word can be attached. (I had always, misguidedly, thought that the word denoted a descendant of a mixed race (master/slave) relationship in the Caribbean...well, ain't necessarily so.) Take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_peoples, and then look at the article on Louisiana - scroll down and you will find out why Napoleon decided to sell the area (see below).

The term White Creole seems to be the preserve of Louisiana and is used to denote the descendants of French settlers there before the Louisiana Purchase (1803), by which the US acquired Louisiana from the French. Nonetheless, the area remained very 'French' in culture, language and religion. Apparently, over two hundred years later, it still has a very 'French' feel. This was all garnered from this website: http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Bu-Dr/Creoles.html.

So this gets us back to c1800, which was when Napoleon was in his ascendancy in Europe. He created the French soldier Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte a Marshal of France, and this man was elected heir presumptive to the Swedish throne in 1810. In 1818, he became King of Sweden and King of Norway. Would it be too great a leap of the imagination to suppose that the new King brought folk he knew to his new home country, and might some have been from Louisiana? And if so, might not one of those folk been an ancestor of the ancestor you are researching?

Admittedly, an awful lot of BIG IFs there, but does it suggest any lines of investigation?

Swooping off,

Owl

PS Had drafted this yesterday evening, on a phone, and then inadvertently lost the entire post :no:. So I went off to roost.

[Pam Downes]

Wise old Owl (I class anyone over 30 as 'old'. :biggrin:). Even with a lot of 'ifs' sometimes truth turns out to be almost stranger than fiction.

I'd got as far as the Louisiana and French connection for the word Creole, but then got stuck.

Pam

[angmcp]

Hi Owl,
Thank you for your info. I appreciate the help!
Anything is possible at this point.

I have recorded the Swedish birthdates for this line of my family tree back to 1783 and 1778(the grandparents of the ancestor in question).I figure that the only way my GG Grandmother could have been a White Creole was if one of her Great Grandparents was Creole. That could be possible because I cannot find birth info. for any of them, to prove where they were born.
A relative of mine passed on some wiki info. about Saint-Barthélemy, in the Caribbean which was under Swedish rule for a period of time, thanks to Louis XVI trading it in 1784, but Sweden gave it back to France in 1878.
Maybe there’s a hidden connection there???

Angie

[angmcp]

This was the first I had heard of her being a White Creole. She was born in Sweden, as were her parents and Grandparents, so the connection would have to go farther back than that, I think.