Stories from the Royal Library of Sweden about Bishop Hill

The unique voice recordings from Bishop Hill – how did they end up in the Swedish Royal Library’s collections? 

On December 7th the Bishop Hill Society in Sweden and the Royal Library of Sweden will present an evening seminar about the famous phonograph wax cylinders from Bishop Hill.

Peter Wickblom was born in 1810 and immigrated to America in 1846. His story about crossing the Atlantic was recorded in 1904 by Jonas  Berggren, a clever farmer who constructed his  own copy of Edison’s phonograph.

During the evening the story will be told of how the phonograph wax cylinders were found and came to Sweden, but also of Bishop Hill, which is a unique part of  Swedish-American history.

Featured will be  Sören Hallgren, photographer and Bishop Hill expert,  Finn Isaksson, who was present when the wax cylinders were  acquired at auction, Ingela Utterström and Bengt-Olof Ågetoft, program officers for the Swedish Royal Library’s collections of sound and motion pictures.

David Isaksson is the moderator.

The lecture is a joint program of the Royal Library of Sweden and the Bishop Hill Society in Sweden.  For more detail, check out http://www.bishophill.se