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.”