Gustava, Stockholm, 1870-1882

Humlegården, Stockholm, 1880s. Gustava lived close to this park for many years.

Anna Cajsa and Johanna’s younger sister Gustafva left Falköping for Stockholm on Oct. 21, 1870. She was 18 years old.

Gustava gave birth to a daughter, Susanna Olivia, on Sept. 2, 1873 in Stockholm. At that time Gustava was living in Kalmar, Uppland, where she was employed as maid. She moved to Stockholm on Nov. 3, 1873, leaving Susanna Olivia behind to be raised as a foster child. During 1873-74 Gustava was employed in a household in Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s Old Town.

According to the Kalmar, Uppland, church records, in 1876 Susanna Olivia seems to have moved back to Stockholm. It’s unclear where she went.

The Stockholm population was exploding in the late 1800s. The Swedish church, the main keeper of records, couldn’t keep up and books were instead kept by local offices. It’s not easy to piece together Gustava’s life.

In 1878-1879 Gustava is listed as living in Östermalmsgatan, with a son born in 1877, Karl Anders. In 1879 she’s living in Grev Turegatan with three children, Ada Gustafva born in 1874, Karl Anders born in 1877, and Olga Karolina born in 1879. There is no sign of Susanna Olivia.

In 1879 she’s also listed as living in Bellmansro, with no children.

In 1881 she’s living with her future husband, Anders Wenngren, in Djurgården. No children are listed as living with them.

In 1882 she’s still listed as Anders Wenngren’s fiancé, and now they have two children in the house: Susanna Olivia, and Ada Gustafva. At this time the two girls would have been 8 and 9 years old. Three different addresses are given for them this year: One place in Linnegatan, and two different places in Nybrogatan.

Bror Johan II

Provisoriska barnbördhuset, c. 1890

On Oct. 4, 1873, Anna Cajsa Hedberg gave birth to a second son. She gave him the same name as his older brother, Bror Johan. He was baptized on Oct. 6.

Women who couldn’t afford to bring a midwife to their home were forced to give birth in a hospital, where the risk of contracting infections was high. Anna Cajsa gave birth at Provisoriska Barnbördshuset, a temporary hospital in the southern part of Stockholm where she lived.

On Oct. 16, 1873, Anna Cajsa died from barnsängsfeber (childbed fever or puerperal fever). She was buried on Oct. 19. She was 25 years old.

Bror Johan Theodor Hedberg, 1870-1872

Two of Johanna’s younger sisters moved to Stockholm. Anna Cajsa, b. 1848, and Gustafva, b. 1852. Anna Cajsa left Falköping for Stockholm in 1866, when she was 18 years old.

In 1867 Anna Cajsa lived in Katarina parish, in the southern part of the city. On Dec. 2, 1870, she gave birth to a son, Bror Johan Theodor.

Anna Cajsa must have been without means because the little boy was taken care of at Allmänna Barnhuset, a home for children. According to the established system, Anna Cajsa paid for the care by nursing other children as well as her own son. She is the only parent listed for Bror Johan.

On March 28, 1871, Bror Johan Theodor was placed with a family in Rosendal. They would raise him and receive a small stipend in return.

“Död” is Swedish for death, or dead. While in the care of the family in Rosendal, Bror Johan Theodor died on January 7, 1872. He was a little more than 13 months old.

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 broad base

For the past 20 years I’ve had discussions with students about what it means to be American. One guy described himself as an “American mutt”, and said “I don’t have deep roots, but being a mutt gives me a broad base”.

I’ve poured over my DNA results for a few weeks. Whatever service you use, they will give you access to your own results, and to the results of your matches. I’ve looked at images of my chromosomes, and compared them to those of strangers. I’ve skimmed hundreds of family trees, the Anderssons and Larsdotters of Sweden, and the O’Malleys and O’Briens of Ireland.

There are so many people in the world, and there are bits and pieces of so many strangers in each of us. Bits of chromosomes from our families and from relatives long gone and forgotten. Parts of my DNA was already in the cemetery here in Los Gatos when I moved here in 1995. Wild, huh?

Looking at the results of my DNA analysis has made me feel more human. I too have a broad base, wider than America. We all do. We’re connected. 99% of the time we will never know how we’re connected, but that only makes it more beautiful.

Posted in DNA

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.

From Sweden to San Francisco, to Saratoga, to a house in Willow Glen

I’ve been using DNA to try to narrow down the options for Karl Adolf’s unknown father, my mysterious great grandfather. I naively assumed that last names I didn’t recognize would jump out at me on the long list of matches, and that I pretty quickly would have some sense of where to look further. That has not happened.

I have a lot of semi-strong matches in Sweden, in the other Nordic countries, and in the US. From what I know about my family I expected that. But there are also strong matches in Finland I can’t explain. There are random strong matches in Poland, Great Britain, and Ireland. I’m guessing the fact that Karl Adolf himself, and my father’s maternal grandfather and his sons, were away at sea for years at a time might explain some of these unexpected relatives.

Because of Swedish naming traditions, if you go back 150 years pretty much everyone was called Andersson, Andersdotter, or Svensson. Family names weren’t commonly used until the end of the 1800s. Before then if your father was Anders Johansson, you became an Andersson or Andersdotter, not a Johansson or a Johansdotter. This makes it almost impossible to make assumptions about family relationships without studying a family tree further. You have to look at places of origin, and the names of other relatives. It’s time consuming, and difficult.

I haven’t found much. But, I have a match with woman in Washington state where I strongly suspect the link is the mysterious mr. Abrahamsson. For a fact she is related to a Johan Adolf Abrahamsson from Göteborg. And for a fact she and I are related. It remains to be seen if he is really the link, or if she and I are related some other way. I’ll need more matches, and cross referencing.

I do know, now, through DNA, that I have relatives buried in the cemetery in the small California town where I’ve lived for the past 20 years. Relatives of relatives who came to this part of California in the 1930s, made money on orchards, and built a house in San Jose that is still standing.

Death of Dutch Ed, pioneer

Liberty County Times (MT), 15 Mar 1945:
Funeral services were held on Wednesday of this week for John E. (Dutch Ed) Trommer, old-time settler of this section of the country. Trommer passed away Friday evening after only a very short illness, although his health has been failing for a number of years.
He was born in Colberg, Germany in April of 1859 and came to the United States as a young man, shortly after the Northern Pacific started their railway westward. He had been in Montana for 65 years. Among the first jobs he held after leaving the employ of the Northern Pacific was freight-boss on a freighting string from Fort Benton to Fort Browning.
Later he married a woman that had come to Montana to teach school. She was employed at the schools in Browning. After their marriage they came to the Lothair district and he settled there to make his home and operate a ranch. At the time the land was opened to homesteading he was operating a successful horse ranch north of Lothair. By squatter rights he obtained a homestead and has remained on it the rest of his life.
The most of his family has been gone from this country for considerable time. It is known that he had five children, 2 boys and 3 girls. One of the boys has been in Panama for a number of years. The whereabouts of the rest is not certain.
Interment was made in the local cemetery following services in the local Methodist Church.

Married: Aug. 29, 1898

Fairfield (IA) Ledger, Page 3, Column 8:
Trommer-Grove. Married, at the residence of the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Grove, six miles east of this city, Monday evening, August 29th, by Rev. Wm. J. Funkey of Fairfield Lutheran church, Mr. John E Trommer, of Chester, Montana, and Miss Zana Olive Grove.
The nuptial tie that made of twain one, was made at 8 p.m., in the presence of thirty-five or forty friends. After the ceremony and abundant and delicious [meal] was served, and several hours were spent in a pleasant, social good time.
A little after 12 o’clock, the bride and groom started for Fairfield, escorted by a large number of the guest, to take the train at 2 a.m. for the west. They expect to spend a day in Minneapolis and reach their home in Chester, Montana Friday or Saturday.
The bride is well and favorably know in and around Fairfield. She has been serving very acceptably as teacher in the Willow Creek Boarding school of Blackfeet Agency for the last six years. The groom evidently is a genial gentleman and successful business man. For several years past he has been engaged in stock raising and and owns a large ranch near Chester, Mon.
The many friends here of the bride and her excellent family will join in hearty congratulations, wishing them a long and happy life together. Besides several friends from Fairfield, there were present from abroad Miss Emella Bredline, Chicago, Miss Mary Nelson, Lockridge, Mr. and Mrs. Tall, Rome, and Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Grove, Stockport.

Mrs. Trommer has gone to her Heavenly home

Sandra Olivia was born on November 4th, 1868, in Marka, Skaraborg, Sweden. She was the fourth child and the first daughter of Anders and Maja Christina Grov. When she was about a year and a half, in the summer of 1870, her family emigrated to Jefferson County, Iowa.

In the 1890s, when Zanna Olive Groves was in her 20s, she worked for a few years at the Willow Creek Boarding School on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation west of Browning in northern Montana.

In Montana she met John Edward “Dutch Ed” Trommer, a German immigrant who had come west working on the Northern Pacific Railroad. Olive and Ed married on August 29, 1898, and filed claims for land close to Chester, Montana. They became sheep ranchers and quite successful.

In the fall of 1905 Olive was visiting her parents in Iowa, giving birth to her fifth child. From the Fort Benton River Press, Nov. 29, 1905:

From the Fairfield Daily Journal, Nov. 25, 1905:
“…. This community was shocked Monday evening to hear that Mrs. Ollie Trammer was dead. She had come from her home in Montana with her husband and children two months ago to visit her parents, Mr. and Mrs. A. G. GROVE. The husband had gone back and Mrs. TRAMMER and children remained. A little babe was born three weeks ago and the mother was apparently on the road to recovery. Monday she was bright and hopeful all day, planning when she would be able to return to her Montana home, but about six o’clock she was stricken with heart failure and in half an hour she had gone to her Heavenly home. Messages were sent to the husband and to a brother and sister in Colorado. The deepest sympathy of the entire community goes out to the bereaved husband and parents and to those who cared for her so faithfully and to the five little ones who so much need a mother’s care.”