Note About Old Swedish Names
So, if my name is Olson, why are many of my ancestors named things like Bengtsson and Arfvidsson? In old Sweden (things have been Americanized since then), children took the name of their father, followed by "son" or "dotter." For example Arfvid's son would have the last name "Arfvidsson" while Arfvid's daughter would have the last name "Arfvidsdotter."This trickled down from generation to generation. In modern times, and when Swedish people would emmigrate to America, last names became fixed and women would take the name of their husband. That is why we very rarely, if ever, see anyone named "somethingsdotter" while there are dozens of variations of "somethingsson."
Women kept their maiden name when they married, however, since children were always given the father's name, all of the "-dotters" eventually disappeared.
In the older names, there is an extra "s" before "son." In more recent names (around the mid 1800s), the extra "s" was dropped. That said, you occasionally still people named "Johnsson" or such. Go figure.
In our family's particular case, Olof Larsson had a son named Anders, who was Anders Olofson. Anders came to the United States in 1870, where his name was Americanized into Andrew Olson.
While we're on the subject of names, "-son" is typically a Swedish name while "-sen" is typically Norwegian.