At the BHHA, we are constantly rediscovering history due to the unique nature of our collection. For example, many of our Colony papers are in 19th century Swedish. So finding someone who can translate this type of Swedish is difficult. Then,once you find someone, it is a time consuming process to translate 1850’s Swedish to 2016 English. Today’s technology is not very much help because the popular programs (like Google Translate) are set up to translate modern day Swedish to English not historic languages. So, translating these documents is a never ending but rewarding process. Every time that a document is translated, it adds to our understanding of our past.
One document that has been recently translated is “A Reminiscence of Jonas Olson, given by himself in the 90th year of his long life’s experiences.” Jonas Olson was one of the Trustees of the Bishop Hill Colony and thus played a large roll in the development of Bishop Hill. The BHHA thanks Kerstin Lane and her colleagues for translating this document for the first time. A translation of this document can be seen in our Archival Items section or by clicking on the following link: http://bishophillheritage.org/about/archival-items/
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