William Atle Nelson, 1925-1944

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William Atle Nelson as a junior at Clinton High School in Clinton, Iowa, 1942.

From the Iowa State Memorial Union:

Private William Atle Nelson was born in Gary, Indiana on August 11, 1925 to Forrest A. Nelson and Virginia K. Kelly. He later lived in Galesburg, Illinois. William entered service on October 1, 1943 at Camp Dodge, Iowa. He served with Company K, 397th Infantry, 100th Division, Seventh Army. He had been in service one year, two months and four days before he was declared missing in action in France on January (should be Dec.) 5, 1944. After several months, the war department declared him to be killed in action.

From the WW2 Army Enlistment Record:

Term of Enlistment: Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law.

The dates are unclear, but William is said to have died during the Battle of the Bulge, Adolf Hitler’s “last major offensive in World War II against the Western Front”.

War photographer Robert Capa was embedded with U.S. troops during parts of the battle. This is one of his photos from December 1944.

We will never know what happened to William, or how he died. He was just a kid. Had he lived until he was 20 he would have seen the war in Europe end in May, 1945. But, he didn’t. He died at 19, in all likelihood cold and scared.

William was my seventh cousin. We are related through two brothers, Carl Månsson born 1720, and Nils Månsson born 1727. William’s grandmother Hilma Charlotta Nilsdotter emigrated from Döderhult in Kalmar county to Galesburg, Illinois in 1868. She was three years old. Hilma was the great great great granddaughter of Carl Månsson. My grandmother Herta Viktoria Nilsson was born in Döderhult, Kalmar, in 1884. She was the great great great granddaughter of Nils Månsson.

Through Carl’s and Nils’ great great grandfather, Carl Jönsson Sabelskjöld, William and I have a known shared history going back to the early 1500s.

The Sabelskjöld family website provides more information about Carl and Nils Månsson, and their family history.

If it was 1924 the kid was three years old

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This little Swede was my third cousin once removed, born in Standish, Lassen Co., Calif. in 1921. He died in Stockton, Calif. in 2004.

He was of the second generation born in the United States. His great grandfather was Örn Lars Andersson Svedberg, born in Gagnef, Dalarna, in 1844. His grandmother Carolina was born in Stora Tuna, Dalarna, in 1876, and died in Martinez, Calif. in 1960.

These people are relatives on my maternal grandfather’s side. Carolina was his first cousin once removed. My grandfather was a man very proud of his heritage, and one who lived in a constant battle with his curly hair. I can see in online pictures that those same hair genes arrived safe and sound in California.

Elma Georgina became Mrs. Elma Larson

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I was looking for Elna Georgina Nilsson Kratz, my grandfather’s younger half-sister, for a long time. She’s the girl who changed her last name to Nilsson for reasons we will never know.

Elna emigrated from Sweden to the United States, by herself, in the summer of 1896. I was able to trace her until she stepped off the boat at Ellis Island, but after that, nothing. I searched the records endlessly, until I found a marriage record where half the information was inaccurate. But, Elna Georgina are exceptionally unusual given names, and I was sure I had found the right young woman.

It turned out that Elna married Hugo Larsson from Hammarby, Sweden, in Manhattan in 1898. They had three boys: Hugo in 1899, Eric in 1902, and Henry in 1904. Elna’s husband passed away or abandoned the family sometime before 1916. I haven’t been able to determine how, or when, but in the 1916 New York City phonebook Elna is listed as Elma, widow of Hugo. ‘Widow’ may not be true, but it was more socially acceptable than ‘divorced.’

In 1900, after they were married, Elna and her husband Hugo lived on 135th street in the Bronx among immigrants from Sweden, Ireland, Italy, and Germany. In 1905 they lived on 246 East 125th street in Harlem on a block with immigrants from northern and eastern Europe, Finland, Norway, Russia, Germany. Hugo is listed as a carpenter, and their neighbors are housewives, laborers, dock builders, seamen, and book keepers. One woman is listed as having a profession, a dressmaker. Later the Larsons moved to #305 on the same street.

New York State Census, 1905.

Elna’s oldest son Hugo stayed with her until his early 30s, when he married. Anna, his wife, and Hugo never had children of their own, but they took in their niece Frances when Henry’s wife, also named Frances, died in the late 1930s.

Eric married Alice Youngson, and had two children, George and Alice, born in 1927 and 1929.

182 East 122nd street in Manhattan on Google street view.

In 1940 Elna lived by herself on 182 East 122nd street. Everyone on her block was white. Many were born in the United States, but there were also many European immigrants. Among her closest neighbors were people from Germany, Finland, and Canada.

In 1940 Elna was 65 years old, and listed as a laundress. It seems she started working, at least officially, when her oldest son Hugo got married in 1933.

Elna lived her whole life, as a wife, widow, and mother, on East 122nd and 125th streets in East Harlem. 125th street is now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The buildings where Elna lived on that street are not there anymore.

Elna died on April 12, 1956. She was 81.

I close my eyes and I see it

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I’ve loved Simon and Garfunkel for as long as I can remember. And, since I was a kid all through the 1960s, I think that’s actually, literally, true. They’ve always been there. They’re part of the image I created for myself of the United States. Simon and Garfunkel, Bobby Kennedy, the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, The Lucy Show, The Flintstones, ice cream and milk in a glass, and a hand-me-down dress I wore way past having grown out of it. The dress was made from blue and white searsucker, and it had red trim. It was American in every way possible, because it had been given to me by a family who had lived in the US for a while. Civil rights and Lucille Ball, a girl’s cotton dress. I was 7.

Why Twinkies? We thought it was funny

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There is a Fresh Air interview with John Oliver that they re-broadcast with some frequency. It’s from a few years ago.

In the last couple of minutes of that interview John Oliver tells host Terri Gross about working in the US, on The Daily Show, before he had a green card. Terri Gross incorrectly assumes that means John Oliver had been working on TV, right under everyone’s noses, while being undocumented.

So, John Oliver explains to Terri Gross the difference between a working visa and a green card.

In my experience, however many views Americans have on immigration, very few understand what visas (the right to cross a border during a certain time period, sometimes also the right to work in the foreign country), green cards (the right to live and work permanently in the US), and citizenship (the right to vote, and various duties to serve), really mean.

One of my colleagues became an American citizen some years ago, and to celebrate that event there was a little lunch-time party for him. Everyone was asked to bring a small “typically American” gift. My friend and I wrapped a box of Twinkies since the new American was something of a food snob. Someone else gave away one of his own pay stubs, adding, “Well, I guess it’s time for you to start paying taxes!”.

Really? You think people who are not citizens pay no tax, when they have regular jobs? If that was the case there would be fewer new citizens, I’d imagine.

In the radio interview John Oliver talks about traveling to London to renew his visa at the American embassy every year. One year the person interviewing him made a joke, stone faced, asking him for one reason why he should be let back into the US if all he was going to do was continue criticizing the country?

The point of this entire story is that at that moment, John Oliver said, his blood froze.

As an immigrant, or a foreigner, you are incredibly vulnerable. Even if you crack jokes for a living, there are times you’ll find jokes highly inappropriate, and your fear just takes over. Even if you are highly educated, or highly successful, you are still vulnerable. Someone behind a glass window gets to make the decision whether or not to stamp your passport, and there is very little you can do about it.

I did my interview for my green card at the American embassy in Stockholm. When I was done I was going to meet a friend for lunch. My sense of direction is poor under any circumstances, but even I know the difference between walking towards the city center, and walking away from the city, out onto a picturesque island. I had walked a mile in the wrong direction before I realized my mistake.

That could have been you, my dear

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I was visiting in Sweden a couple of summers ago, and had to get up early for an appointment. On my way back I passed through a park. It was still early, probably before nine, and the air was cool the way it is in the summer when you know the day is going to be hot.

There were a couple of blonde girls raking leaves in the park. They looked like volleyball players, tall, and strong. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing until I remembered that Swedish high school and college students often have summer jobs filling in during the regular staff’s summer vacation. (Swedish employees have around 6 weeks of paid vacation time, and usually take 4 of those weeks back to back during the summer.) Outdoor summer jobs are the best, because, well, you get to spend all summer outdoors. When I was growing up you’d only get the outdoor jobs through connections.

Right now I’m also remembering an affluent young woman, one of my students in Silicon Valley. She had grown up on a ranch in Morgan Hill, in the south end of the San Francisco Bay Area. As an undergraduate she spent a semester studying abroad in London.

When she came back to school in California I asked her about her time in London. It soon became obvious there was some part of her experience she didn’t want to name. It took some prodding, but finally she told me and her classmates that in London had been the first time she’d seen white people do manual labor. White people, looking just like herself, had cleaned, sold tickets to the Underground, worked in the supermarkets, and swept the streets. She’d never before experienced anything like it.

Making Oneself A Home

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Skeppstake from Skultuna brassworks. This candleholder was made for use on ships. Sitting on a table, or hanging on a wall, the part holding the candle will swivel to keep vertical should the ship move.

I’ve never brought a lot of things with me from Sweden, but I find that I can buy what want and need in the US. Buying used stuff second-hand I end up adopting what Swedes of previous generations have brought with them to America. Sometimes I feel like I am saving, rescuing even, the objects. I understand them. They will be safe with me.

Theodor Rudin

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I’ve taught at Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, Calif., for almost 20 years. Recently I’ve learned that when I started teaching there, someone I am related to (4th cousin once removed, if you want to keep track) was enrolled as a student. And it seems, according to Facebook, that he is still good friends with one of my colleagues.

Johannes Theodor Rudin, 1865-1920

Our relative-in-common is this guy, Johannes Theodor Rudin, who was born Sept. 10, 1865 in Oskarshamn, Sweden and died May 13, 1920 in Miflin, Alabama. He left Sweden in 1885, aged 19, and became a US citizen in Chicago in 1890.

Theodor was my great grandmother’s first cousin, and he must have made quite an impression on someone at some point. I remember hearing his name when I was growing up even tho by then everyone involved had been dead for decades.

Theodor worked for a while for the British corporation Mazapil Copper in Concepcion del Oro, Zacatecas, Mexico. Here the British Vice-Consul in charge of American Interests, who’s signature we can’t decipher, has basically sworn that Theodor was a good guy. Theodor was applying for a new American passport.

We also learn how to sign our letters when we really want to make an impression:

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

xxx

The fact that Theodor (who my family apparently talked about in the 1960s or 1970s) had emigrated in 1885, and they STILL didn’t talk about emigration, is baffling to me.

It seems Theodor had a reasonably successful life. He traveled, worked in different places, got married, twice, and had British Vice-consuls sign themselves ‘obedient servants’ on his behalf. But my family didn’t talk about emigration, at least not in front of the children, when I was a child. Shame is the only explanation that comes to mind.

American Whiteness

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Sigrid Lovisa “Minnie” Lif Lonn (1878-1971) (oldest daughter of Nils Peter Lif and Lovisa Johansdotter) gets married in Holdrege, Phelps, Nebraska in 1905. Minnie was my 4th cousin twice removed.

When I posted this photo on Facebook one of my former students asked, Should I put you in contact with the tribal folks they displaced?. That’s a good question. When I told her I wasn’t ready, she gave me snarky response. I can understand that.