Month: March 2018

Signe Emilia, prison warden

Ada Hedberg’s oldest child was her daughter Signe Emilia. Signe was born on July 13, 1878. Her parents had married the same year, at 23 and 24 years old. Ada’s husband worked for the railroad in Falköping, and when Signe was born they lived in the railway station.

The family moved to Göteborg in 1883.

On Dec. 12, 1900, when Signe was 22 years old and she had six younger siblings, she moved out of her parents’ home. Her new address, entered in abbreviated form in the household record, was the old women’s prison in Gullbergsbro, Göteborg. She was employed as a warden, and the job came with lodgings.

                        Spinnhuset, Gullbergsbro, c. 1898. (Göteborgs stadsmuseum.)

There was more than one prison in Göteborg at the time, and this particular one held the most severely sentenced female convicts from all over the country. The women inmates had been sentenced to four years or more of forced labor. The majority of them had been found guilty of murdering a child.

In 1909 the prison was closed and the inmates transferred to institutions in two other cities. Signe chose to follow those of the inmates who ended up at the women’s prison in Landskrona. Signe worked as a warden there until she married in 1912.

Letchworth village, Thiells, NY.

On Sept. 15, 1915, Alice M. Boov married William N. Kemp in Spring Valley, Rockland Co., NY. Alice used her mother’s maiden name for the records, and her parents are listed as Ada Hedberg and Alfred F. Boov. William is a ‘laborer’, and Alice’s is ‘doing housework’. They live in Thiells, NY.  It’s a first marriage for both of them.

A volume of ‘Documents of the Senate of the State of New York’ published in early 1916 includes The Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Managers of Letchworth Village. In it, Alice’s name appears:

At least during 1915, maybe longer, Alice Boov has worked as Matron of Cottage C, at Letchworth Village in Thiells, NY.

Created by William Pryor Letchworth, Letchworth Village was, according to an article in Hudson Valley Magazine, “a self-contained and self-sustaining village of small cottages on a working farm, which would allow residents a more humane and productive lifestyle under the care of the leading researchers and physicians of the day.”

The patients “were grouped into three then medically accepted but now cringeworthy types of “feeble-mindedness” – “idiot,” “imbecile,” and “moron” – based on IQ. According to their abilities, they helped farm, plow, care for animals, cook, sew, and clean, and were provided vocational training in carpentry, shoe repair, welding, and other useful skills.”

There are horror stories about this place. The patients were used as guinea pigs for the polio vaccine and in other clinical trials. The facility was closed in 1996, and the photos of the buildings are haunting. Online you will find information about tours of the abandoned asylum, as well as of a nearby cemetery with “graves about the size of a child.”

Alice Maria Bååv

Alice Maria Bååv, Ada’s daughter, Cintra’s older sister, and my grandfather’s first cousin, left Göteborg for Hull on the S/S Runo on March 17, 1913. From Hull she took the train to Liverpool, and then she left for New York from there.

Alice arrived in Ellis Island on March 30, 1913 onboard the Celtic of Liverpool. She was 5 feet and 7 inches tall, had a fair complexion, brown hair, and blue eyes. She gave the address of a friend, Ingeborg Olsson: 33, W. 12th St., NYC. The old notes are hard to read, but she seems to have had $75 with her. She was of good mental and physical health. She was 25 years old.

From where Alice’s family were living in Bangatan, Göteborg, they could have taken a short walk to the quay, and seen Runo sail away. They lived so close they would have heard and smelled the ocean everyday, before and after Alice left.

Monday July 13, 1896

These are notes made at Ellis Island when the S/S Island, the ship that had left Göteborg on June 23, 1896, arrived. Passengers are listed as having embarked at Fredrikshavn on the Danish coast across from Göteborg, but we know that some of them had been on the ship since Göteborg. The Swedish passengers are at the top of the page. They are listed in the same order as they were on the manifest taken in Göteborg.

The page is torn where Elna G. Nilson’s name would be, right below Gustaf Larson. Following her line to the right we can see her final destination, New York. Most of the young men are listed as farmhands, and the young women as servant girls. I’m guessing Elna was another servant girl.

Elna had traveled in the aft, rear, of the ship. She brought one piece of luggage. On this part of the page alone four people are listed as having died on the voyage across the Atlantic. The first digit indicates the date, July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. The second digit is a code for the cause of death. I haven’t been able to figure out what they mean.

My father has told me that his father, Elna’s brother Karl Adolf, was a seasick sea captain. I get seasick too. I wonder what three weeks on a ship across an ocean would have been like.

I hadn’t figured out that Elna’s name had disappeared in the worn fold of the piece of paper hadn’t it been for more experienced researchers. It seems obvious to compare the names on the list created when they departed from Göteborg to the list that was taken down when they arrived at Ellis Island. But I didn’t think of that. Instead I cursed. The records are well organized, but you never know. The paper trail is important. I needed to know that Elna arrived in New York, or else I would have lost her.

For a very long time this note was the last I knew of Elna’s whereabouts. She disappeared in New York, into what I imagined was a hot summer day, or a warm summer’s night.

From DNA land

Another attempt at describing my ancestry based on DNA. There is a portion of Eastern European that’s making me increasingly curious.

Posted in DNA

Monday June 22, 1896

This is the ship manifest listing the names of those traveling from Göteborg to New York on June 23, 1896 on the S/S Island. One of the passengers was Elna G. Nilson from Österåker, Södermanland. Elna was my grandfather’s younger sister. Before emigrating she had been working as a maid on a farm in Österåker. She had been baptized Elma Georgina, but most records have her name is spelled with an ‘n’, Elna.

Elma was born without a known father, but unlike her brother she didn’t use their stepfather’s last name, Kratz. In Sweden in those days you could chose a last name for yourself, no questions asked. Elma picked Nilsson for reasons we will never know. Maybe she knew who her father had been, and wanted to use his name. Maybe she named herself for a friend. Either way, as a teenager she clearly didn’t want her stepfather’s name.

On June 22, when the list was created, they hadn’t yet left Göteborg harbor. Anticipating their lives in America one change had already been made: All names ending in -son have had one ‘s’ eliminated. Andersson has become Anderson, Larsson is Larson, and Elma Georgina Nilsson Kratz is now Elna G. Nilson.

All that aside, tho, look how young these emigrants were: 16, 23, 17, 18. Elma was 21.

Cintra

Cintra* Harriet Bååw (the spelling of their last name varies: Båf, Båv, Bååv, Bååw, or Båw), Ada’s and Johan Alfred’s youngest daughter, was born on April 9, 1898, in Göteborg. She died at the Sahlgrenska hospital on Nov. 2, 1918. She was 20 years old, and one of the millions of people who died in the 1918 pandemic. Her occupation was listed as ‘kontorist’, doing office work. Maybe she was a typist.

The family, the widowed mother and the unmarried children, lived in Bangatan in the Majorna neighborhood. The building isn’t there anymore, but I know exactly where it was. Close to the harbor and close to where I lived for a few months in the mid 1980s. Göteborg is a windy and rainy city, and right there, where Bangatan meets Karl Johansgatan, it can be especially unforgiving.

              Bangatan, Majorna, Göteborg, in 1910.

Cintra Harriet was buried on Nov. 7, 1918. The estate inventory was taken in March the following year, and it lists her mother, three brothers, and three sisters as beneficiaries. It’s noted that two of the sisters are married. The one unmarried sister is a teacher. One of the sisters has emigrated to the US and lives in upstate New York with her husband, a Mr. Kemp. His title is given as ‘draftsman’, but I don’t think that was true.

There is no money for anyone. Ada Bååv and two independent witnesses signed the estate inventory on March 6, 1919.

* In 2018 there are 12 women in Sweden named Cintra. 8401 Swedish women are named Harriet.

Maja Christina/Mary C.

Cedar Township, right outside of Fairfield in Jefferson Co., Iowa, is where Johanna’s older sister Maja Christina ended up with her family. Maja, b. 1842, had married Anders Gustaf Grof in 1860. In 1870 they left Sweden for the US with their four children.


Cedar Township, Jefferson Co., Iowa, 1905.

The old map shows 140 acres belonging to A. G. Groves. That’s Maja’s husband, Anders Gustaf. Grof has turned into Grove, or Groves. A little to the west of their property there are 103 acres belonging to Elmer Grove. That’s their son, born in 1874 in Lockridge, Jefferson Co. There are also 100 acres belonging to C. J. Groves. That’s their son Karl Johan, or Charles John. And, there are 40 acres belonging to Groves & Groves. Father and son? Or two sons?

Maja and Anders, or Mary and Andrew, their Anglicized names, had 12 children. Eight boys and four girls. Many of them continued to farm. All of them were given Swedish first names that they made American.

Eurogenes

Here it is, the breakdown of my “origins” according to gedmatch.com. Once you have your DNA data you can upload it to the service and run a range of analyses.

What this graph shows is how similar my DNA is to the DNA of people in the database who are from these regions. It’s important to realize that we don’t get our “origins” in any absolute sense. Still, I am somewhat surprised by the results. I have Eastern European, Western Mediterranean, West Asian, and American Indian similarities and I have no idea where they come from. I’m guessing the American Indian is really Sami ancestry, but beyond that, no clues.

Posted in DNA

DNA

My strongest match on Family Tree DNA is a man living in Oskarshamn, the city where my dad’s mother’s family, and my dad and his family, all lived. Ironically, tho, I think we are related through my mother’s mother’s family, some of whom came from the same area. The relationship is not particularly strong, about four generations back. So far I haven’t been able to identify the exact common ancestor.

I did the autosomal test on FTDNA. It’s the ‘family finder’ test, and it shows your shared DNA with everyone who’s been tested. I chose FTDNA because it is the most common test in Scandinavia where I have the majority of my ancestors. Recently, however, I’ve realized that I also have a lot of connections in the US. I’ve submitted a sample to Ancestry to hopefully catch some of the people who I wouldn’t be able to reach on FTDNA. Results should come back in a couple of months…

Posted in DNA