Nils Peter Lif and Lovisa Johansdotter and their kids in Nebraska some time in the late 1880s. The family had arrived in America in 1885 from Vimmerby, Sweden. Nils Peter was my third cousin three times removed.
Nebraska settlers
Month: October 2019
Sven Johan Hedberg
Sven Johan Hedberg, born in 1839 in Dala, Skaraborg, Sweden. Master blacksmith in Falköping. Older brother to Johanna Hedberg, my grandfather’s mother.
Simpler Times
Old Nelson (I’m guessing his given names had been Nils Johan) was my first cousin, three times removed. We’re related through Johanna Hedberg’s father. (Putting that in there as a note to myself.)
Private First Class Ralph Victor Freburg
This is my 4th cousin once removed, Private First Class Ralph Victor Freburg, born Sept. 27, 1915 in Bertrand Co., Nebraska. Ralph arrived in France with the 3rd Armored Division on June 24, 1944, and was killed in action on Aug. 17, 1944 in Ranes, Basse-Normandie, France. His family buried him in the Prairie Home Cemetery in Holdrege, Phelps Co., Nebraska. When he signed his draft card in 1940 he had been 6’2″, weighing 185 pounds.
Ralph’s grandfather Anders Victor Andersson had immigrated to Illinois in 1877. He was born in Kristdala, Sweden, in 1850 and died in Nebraska in 1918.
Spreckels, Calif.
A distant relative through long-time missing great grandfather Johan Adolf Abrahamsson moved to Spreckels, Calif. in the 1890s to work on the sugar factory that dominated the town back then.
Spreckels is still agricultural. And Central California is very pretty.
And, as we know, better with Coke.
Haunted House
Dutch Ed, the northern Montana pioneer, seems not to have recovered from his wife Olive’s death. The five children were raised by Olive’s parents and siblings in Iowa, and didn’t have much contact with their father. Ed took to gambling and drinking.
There are claims that the house he built for Olive became haunted. Footsteps were heard from upstairs, doors blew open, and sheepherders were said the have disappeared.
Dutch Ed’s second wife left him. He died in 1945.
Olive and Ed’s second daughter, Helen, lived until 1999. She died in Santa Ana, Calif. and was buried alongside her younger brother Jack who died there in 1995.
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.
PS. The “Dutch” part of Ed’s nickname came from the English miss-translation of the German word for ‘German’, Deutsch. So, the Pennsylvania Dutch are really of German descent.
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.”
Maria Christina/Mary C.
Cedar Township, right outside of Fairfield in Jefferson Co., Iowa, is where Johanna’s older sister Maja Christina ended up with her family. Maja, b. 1842, had married Anders Gustaf Grof in 1860. In 1870 they left Sweden for the US with their four children.
The old map shows 140 acres belonging to A. G. Groves. That’s Maja’s husband, Anders Gustaf. Grof has turned into Grove, or Groves. A little to the west of their property there are 103 acres belonging to Elmer Grove. That’s their son, born in 1874 in Lockridge, Jefferson Co. There are also 100 acres belonging to C. J. Groves. That’s their son Karl Johan, or Charles John. And, there are 40 acres belonging to Groves & Groves. Father and son? Or two sons?
Maja and Anders, or Mary and Andrew, had 12 children. Eight boys and four girls. Many of them continued to farm. All of them were given Swedish first names, but as grown-ups they used American versions of those names.