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.
This is Eskil Lorentz Bååv, my paternal grandfather’s first cousin. My grandfather died in 1933, and after that no one knew, or spoke of, his original family. I discovered the Bååv family through the Swedish church records. Eskil’s mother was Ada (1855-1951), my grandfather’s maternal aunt. Ada was 16 when my grandfather was born, and I’m pretty sure she helped take care of him. Both Ada and her sister Johanna, my grandfather’s mother, worked as maids from when they were young. “Maid” (piga) was a catch-all title that referred to female domestic and farming workers.