How interesting Rockzmom!

Did your grandmother ever explain why they decided to emigrate?
I mean, there can be lots of reasons why someone does that... They don't look poor to me at least. Maybe it was politically or religiously motivated? Perhaps one of the people in the picture is your great grandparent, or great-great grandparent?

From the European perspective, when we think of people who emigrated to the USA prior to say.... 1 st World War, we think of people who quite simply put was poor and oppressed - maybe close to starving - and looked for an opportunity to start over somewhere where they'd have better possibilities to get ahead...

Or else, people who were religiously persecuted because they had some non-standard Christian views, or they were a political/religious minority that was persecuted.

It's really fascinating when people both sides of the Atlantic do family research and find out what interesting links exist.. I have some very relatives (don't know them) who own a small sugar plantation in Georgia, and some others who live in the state of Utah, I think one of them is a teacher. In both cases it was the Americans who tracked down my grandfather. Neither was very stereotypical of a Swedish emigrant to the USA - supposedly most went to Minnesota and became farmers. But not mine! Funnily enough my other grandfather tried to do some research into a relative who moved to the USA, but was not able to find out what happened to him.