long time no see
Alice Maria Bååv Kemp died in July of 1970, in Chicago. She had lived in the United States since the spring of 1913, almost 57 years.
Alice’s name appears alongside her husband’s on documents between their 1915 wedding and her husband’s death in 1939. After 1939 her son, Walden, is listed as the head of household. Alice is listed as a widow. I don’t know if she ever worked outside the home after she married. The notes for her on the censuses say housework, or “at home”. She left no other marks.
On Sept. 12, 1918, when William Kemp registered for the WW1 draft (even if they didn’t think of it that way then) he was working as an assembler at the Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co. in Buffalo, NY. Below is an 1918 Pierce Arrow Model 66, sold by Sotheby’s. Asking price $650,000-$750,000.
William Nelson Kemp, carpenter, died on Jan. 6. 1939. He was 52.
His death certificate states that he had been born on Jan. 14, 1886, in Delaware, Penn., that his father’s name was Edward, and that Edward had been born in Manchester, England.
At the time of William’s death the family lived in Palatine, Ill. Alice Bååv Kemp was 50 years old. Her son, Walden, was 23.
By 1930 the Kemp family was living in Chicago. They had moved from North Collins to Buffalo, New York, in time for the 1920 state census. At that time William Kemp worked as a landscaper and a gardener. In the 1925 New York State census he is listed as a machinist.
In Chicago in 1930 William is working as a carpenter. The family lived at 5964 Paulina Street in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. Today a one bedroom apartment at the same address will cost around $1500/month to rent.
Alice Maria Bååv gave birth to a boy on June 17, 1916 in North Collins, New York. North Collins is south of Buffalo, NY., and close to Lake Eire and the Canadian border. The little boy’s given names were William Walden.
Alice’s husband, William Nelson Kemp, had been born in Pennsylvania in 1887. His father was an immigrant from England, and his mother was from New York state.
Ada Hedberg’s daughter Dagny Gunhild was born on Feb. 5, 1886 in Göteborg. She was number four of seven siblings.
Dagny was a teacher, and she also helped create programs that brought inner city kids into the countryside for long summer vacations.
As a young woman Dagny became a member of Göteborgs Kvinnliga Diskussionsklubb (The Göteborg Female Discussion Club), and in 1932 she was elected to the board of the Göteborg branch of Svenska Kvinnors Vänsterförbund. These organizations were founded in the 1910s, and their initial mission was to work for women’s right to vote. They continue to work for gender equality, women’s rights, and peace, to the present day.
In December of 1928 Dagny gave a talk to introduce the topic for the night at Göteborgs Kvinnliga Diskussionsklubb, “Should the same retirement age be applied to male and female public employees?”.
Dagny was also an active member of national organizations for teachers.
Dagny never married. She died at 88, on July 7, 1974. Since 1925 she had owned a house at Storängsgatan in Änggården. Her mother, Ada, lived with her.
In 1951 the city of Göteborg honored Dagny with a medal for her contributions as an educator.
Signe Emilia Båf married Johan August Pettersson Haller on Dec. 3, 1912. Their son Bengt Arnold was born in Göteborg on May 24, 1915. He died on Dec. 17, 1923, from the measles. He was 8.
Johan August died in Örebro on Oct. 2, 1946. He was 65.
Signe died in Göteborg on May 25, 1965. She was 86.
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.
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, 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.