It all started with some curiosity and a package sent off to Ancestry DNA. And it’s become a heartwarming story of women on two continents finding family that neither knew existed.

Bradford’s Kristin Kessel Asinger has spent the past few days showing her Swedish cousin, Mira Klintrot, around the area.

Asinger explained the family connection came about when she received her test results — “My origins primarily come from Sweden, England, Northwestern Europe and Norway, pretty much as expected.”

She had received a message through Facebook from Klintrot, saying the company suggested they were related. Klintrot asked about Asinger’s heritage. “I am from Sweden with Norwegian grandparents.”

Asinger said, “I let her know that my mom’s mother Karin Hansson was from Vollsjö in southern Sweden and my mom’s father, Anders Hilding Olsson was from a city named Säffle located in Värmland.”

The men pictured, Anders Hilding Olsson and Bo Jard Ivar Karlsson, are possibly brothers.

Olsson, they discovered, was the common ancestor. Klintrot said that was the name of her great-grandfather. The two chatted online briefly, and then fell out of touch for two years.

In 2022, Asinger went to Sweden for a cousin’s reunion on her maternal grandmother’s side of the family. She started to wonder more about Klintrot and their connection.

“The DNA match showed that Mira and I are first or second cousins and that our DNA matches more strongly than how my mom’s first cousin Karen and I are related,” Asinger said. “How can I be so closely related to someone I have never heard of before? The dates and names that Mira and I gave each other did not match up. Anders Hilding was born in 1901, Mira’s father was born in 1923.”

That couldn’t be the same person. So for two years after that, the women wrote back and forth, trying to determine their familial relationship.

“We kept coming up with dead ends, but were determined to figure it out. Last summer my cousin Ulrika and I traveled to Stockholm to meet Mira and her husband, Dag, and we believe that we finally figured it out,” Asinger said. “I asked during our lunch ‘Is it possible that Anders Hilding is your dad’s father and that your dad and my mom are brother and sister?’ We were silent, just thinking this through and then dug out photos of both of them to find similarities.”

Klintrot’s father, Bo Jard Ivar Karlsson was an only child, born April 29, 1923.

“In 1923, a family tragedy involving their abusive father led 22-year-old Anders Hilding, his three siblings and their mother to flee Sweden that October on a ship bound for the USA to start a new life in Jamestown, N,Y.,” she continued. “I believe that Hilding knew that he had a child in Sweden and he felt he had no choice but to leave his girlfriend and baby behind due to the circumstances.”

Klintrot explained the story from her point of view.

“It all began long ago when my father, Bo Jard Ivar Karlsson, found out that the woman he thought was his mother, was his grandmother. My father was born in April 1923 as a son to an unmarried mother (Anna Evalda Jansson).

“My grandmother was very secretive about who my father’s father was. I once heard her mention a man named Axel Andersson but my mother did not believe he was the father and especially not when my grandmother added that he had gone to America. My grandmother said he had left in June 1923.”

With help from her niece and her niece’s husband, Klintrot found Axel Ingvald Andersson. She and her husband came to the U.S. to meet his family, but learned he likely wasn’t the father, despite having said he was.

When Asinger went to see her, Klintrot recalled, “We both cried from seeing and hugging each other. I felt she was my long missed younger sister. We talked and laughed, having a great time together as if we had known each other for a long time.”

Researching their connection, the two started looking at family photos.

“We started to look at an old picture of her grandfather, Hilding, when he married her grandmother, Karin. We put that picture side-by-side of a picture of my father at approximately the same age and, wow, there was a great similarity between the two! Could it be that her grandfather on her mother’s side was my grandfather on my father’s side? If so, who was Axel and why did he acknowledge paternity for my father?

“When Axel left for the U.S., a sister was still in Värmland. My sister met with a relative to the sister and found out that Axel had staged his own death, possibly to avoid being caught due to debts. The family received a letter saying that Axel had tragically perished. Did Axel and Hilding know each other in Värmland?” Klintrot suggested.

They didn’t find answers, but they did come up with some speculative possibilities.

She continued, “According to the place names in the Bibles they each received when they fulfilled the Christian confirmation, it seems as if they were living close to each other. Was it possible that they agreed on Axel taking responsibility for the paternity if Hilding was willing to write the letter that was sent to Sweden declaring that unfortunately Axel had died from illness when he reached the U.S.?

“These are questions unanswered till this day and hopefully we will find out what really happened.”

Asinger shared more of her family’s story.

“My mom’s parents met in Jamestown at a dance in a Swedish church. Anders Hilding moved to Bradford to be closer to my grandmother, Karin, and worked many years for W.R. Case Cutlery & Sons as a cabinet maker. My mom, Ann Olson Kessel, was born in 1939 and grew up as an only child. She always wished she had siblings and would have loved to have known that she had a brother in Sweden.”

She said, “With DNA matches and historical documents, we will find more answers.”

Klintrot has been in Bradford for several days, exploring “many places in the area where our grandfather, Anders Hilding lived, worked and is now buried.”