Category: Karl Adolf

The mystery

Johanna worked at an inn in Torbjörntorp north of Falköping at the end of the 1860s. I am pretty sure that’s where she met Karl Adolf’s father, whoever he was.

The owner of the Inn was Adolf Ruckman. The son of a minister who’d been forced to resign for drunkenness, Adolf started out as a bookbinder, became a singer and an actor, and then an inn keeper. His sister and her husband owned Viken, the property outside of Falköping where Johanna and her family lived when she was young.

I have no idea what kind of relationship Johanna had with the Ruckman family. But she did name two of her children after two of the ten Ruckman kids: My grandfather, Karl Adolf, and his younger sister Elma Georgina.

An aside

            Karl Adolf’s father-in-law Carl Viktor Nilsson (1846-1926).

This is Carl Victor Nilsson, who became Karl Adolf’s father-in-law and from what I’ve heard his stand-in father. I don’t know much about Carl Victor, but I do know that he kicked his own son off the boat (maybe more than once) for being drunk. It looks to me as if you wouldn’t want to have messed with Captain Nilsson.

A year onboard a sailing ship?


Kilmory of Glasgow, Karl Adolf’s first yearlong trip. 

My grandfather, Karl Adolf, grew up on a tiny soldier’s farm, and died a sea captain. He left the home of his mother and stepfather in Toresund, Sörmland, to become a sailor out of the Stockholm Seaman’s House in 1890. He was 19 years old. The coming months he worked on ships that criss-crossed the Baltic sea. When his mother died in late September of 1891 he came home.

A little more than two weeks later, on Oct. 16, 1891, he left Hamburg onboard the Kilmory of Glasgow. He disembarked in Glasgow on Aug. 30, 1892. For the next decade he had similar year long contracts on ships based on the British Isles and in Germany. They sailed between ports in Europe, North America, and the far East. On one of the trips he met his future father-in-law, a captain from Oskarshamn, Sweden. Karl Adolf officially moved from Toresund to Oskarshamn in 1903.

Johanna

The first time Johanna moved away from her family to work was in 1862. She was 18 years old. She moved to Slättäng, in Sandhem southeast of Falköping. Two roads met in Slättäng and there had been a local court and an inn there for a long time. It seems Johanna was a maid at the inn. We can’t know for sure what kind of work she did, but likely household jobs like cleaning and/or kitchen work. She gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Olivia, on Feb. 13, 1864. The little girl died in May the same year.

My grandfather Karl Adolf was born in Falköping in 1871, and his sister Elma Georgina in Stora Malm in 1875. Johanna moved around Falköping several times with her father and younger sister Ada during those years. I haven’t been able to trace all her moves. Even tho Elma is noted as having been born in Stora Malm some distance away I haven’t been able to find Johanna in that parish.

Former staff lodgings at Horns säteri, Överenhörna.

After Johanna’s father Anders died in September of 1875 Johanna and her two children moved to Horns säteri, in Överenhörna. That’s where Johanna met Josef Larsson Kratz, who she would later marry.

More accomplished researchers would probably not give up before they’d been able to trace Johanna’s every step across Sweden. For one thing, there might be clues as to who Karl Adolf’s and Elma’s fathers were in the household records. I’ve decided to let the mystery be, for now.

Josef Larsson Kratz, soldier

My great grandmother Johanna married in 1878. She was 33. By then she had given birth to four children. One girl, Augusta Olivia, had died as an infant in 1864. My grandfather Karl Adolf was 7, his half sister Elma Georgina was 3. Hulda Josefina, who’s father was Johanna’s new husband Josef Larsson Kratz, was a few months old.

Starting when she was a teenager Johanna had worked as a maid in many places. Johanna and Josef met when they were both working at a large farm in Sörmland. Josef was 20 years old, and in the fall of 1878 he became a soldier. He was given a small croft, Löfnäs soldattorp, close to lake Mälaren outside of Mariefred. Everyone moved.

The remains of Löfnäs soldattorp, Toresund, Sörmland. The second Mrs. Kratz lived here until the 1930s.

Josef Kratz was the last soldier at Löfnäs. My father’s older sister, who was born in 1907 and knew her father, Karl Adolf, well, said that soldier Kratz was “not kind”.

July 10, 1871

      Trädgårdsgatan, Hästtorget, Falköping, in the 1930s.

My paternal grandfather Karl Adolf (or, later in life, Carl Adolf) was born in Falköping. Skaraborg, Sweden, on July 10, 1871. At the time his mother, grandfather, and teenage aunt were living in a small house in Trädgårdsgatan at Hästtorget. I’m guessing he was born at home.

In the 1870s Hästtorget, or Hästbacken as it was known, was right outside town. It was, and still is, a large, open, sloping, area. In the old days it was used for markets. ‘Hästtorget’ translates to ‘horse square.’

From Trädgårdsgatan you have a clear view all the way across town to the mountains on the other side. I am sure in the 1870s the interior of a small old wooden house was dark, cramped, smelly, and dirty. But the view. I hope it lifted some spirits.