Chilberg family
Swedish-American family
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chilberg (alternate spellings include Killberg and Kylburg) is a Swedish-American family that came from Knäred, Halland, Sweden, to America in 1846 with the boat Superb,[clarification needed] starting their journey in Gothenburg to arrive in Philadelphia.[1] This family were early American pioneers moving west, from Sweden, to Bergholm in Wapello, Iowa, with a short period in Oregon to finally settle in the Skagit Valley at Pleasant Ridge, La Conner, Skagit County, Washington.[citation needed] John Edward Chilberg later moved to Seattle as a child in the early 1870s.[2]
Prominent members
The oldest known family member was Karl Killberg, a parish clerk living 1695 in Hishult, Halland, Sweden. One account of the family's migration to the US states that the family settled in Seattle and owned a grocer and a knitting house,[3][4] the very first Scandinavian businesses in Seattle.[5] The success of the grocer, which was called Childberg Brothers, led to other business ventures.[5]
The most prominent members of the American branch of the family include John Edward Chilberg, the president of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909-1910.[6] John Edward was the grandson of Carl Johan Chilberg, who had come to the United States in the 1840s.[2][1] He got into shipping and became the secretary of the Puget Sound & Central American Steamship Co. in 1898 and president of the Seattle Shipyards Co. in 1906.[3] His uncle, Andrew Chilberg, served as the president of the Scandinavian American Bank of Seattle and in 1879 he became the vice-consul of Sweden and Norway.[2] John Edward Chilberg II, the grandson of John Edward Chilberg, was a very active American production designer and art director.
From the branches still living in Sweden, there was Johan Peter Killberg, who started the Killberg Book Stores in Ängelholm and Helsingborg.