From the South Australian Police Gazette

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Published on June 16, 1886: Charles August Carlson, age 39, height about 5ft. 6 in., fair complexion, a Swede, for, on the 10th instant, at Adelaide, deserting his wife.

In other words, this man, of Swedish origin, deserted his wife on June 10, 1886, in Adelaide, South Australia.

The man could possibly be my 2nd cousin 3 times removed Carl August Carlsson, born on Aug. 13, 1849 on the island of Öland. He was a seaman, and from the mid 1870s onwards his whereabouts are unknown.

(Technically this story is outside the scope of the blog, but Carl August from Öland is missing and I think we should worry. And, for all we know he might have ended up an immigrant to the US. Several of his relatives were seamen too and several of them drowned in faraway places. I hope Carl August didn’t drown, and I hope he didn’t desert his wife.)

Who gets to decide what is Really Swedish?

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Through interacting with Swedish-Americans, mostly online, I’ve learned that what is perceived as Swedish in the United States differ widely from what is perceived as Swedish by present-day Swedes. Descendants of Swedish immigrants to the US keep alive traditions that may have died out in Sweden long ago. Swedish immigrants also intermarried with other Scandinavians, and their descendants mix and match between the traditions sometimes unknowingly. One example: All Americans talk about lutefisk, not knowing that is the Norwegian word. (Swedish: lutfisk.) Lefse (a flatbread) is also assumed to be solidly Swedish even tho it’s mainly Norwegian.

Many Swedish American foods and practices remind me of my grandparents, all born at the end of the 1800s and the very early 1900s. Old fashioned cooking principles involved boiling the life out of both meat and vegetables and/or covering them in heavy flour bases sauces. My mother’s generation rebelled against much of this, and for good reason.

Customs or dishes common in Sweden today usually don’t make their way across the Atlantic. If they do, it’s in popularized or bastardized versions. Hygge (a Danish word referring to creating moments and spaces of laidback cosiness) and fika (the Swedish tradition of having coffee and conversation) are two examples.

All this means that the Swedishness of Swedish American culture feels old-fashioned and limited to a Swede of today. There are many possibilities for misunderstandings, contradictory interpretations, and arguments. Both sides feel strongly that their version is the correct one. I surprise myself by being quite invested in the discussions. My own Swedishness comes out more judgmental and argumentative than I’m really willing to admit.

Nebraska Institution for Feeble-minded Youth

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Bruce Jens Christensen, my 6th cousin, was born in 1941 and died at the Nebraska Institution for Feeble-minded Youth in Beatrice, Nebraska in 1966. I don’t know how or why he ended up there.

When I first noted his birth and death years I assumed he might have died in Vietnam. I was wrong. Instead I found yet another institution taken straight out of a nightmare.

Quoting from the mission statement of the Nebraska Institution for Feeble-minded Youth, their goals were to provide

“custodial care and human treatment for those who are feeble-minded, to segregate them from society, to study to improve their condition, to classify them, and to furnish such training in industrial mechanics, agriculture, and academic subjects as fitted to acquire”.

The Asylum Project also notes that,

By 1935, in order to assure complete separation from society, [Nebraska Institution for Feeble-minded Youth] resident’s graves were no longer marked with family names, but with numbers; families desired to disassociate themselves from their “defective” relatives by dehumanizing them.

A young couple I know had a daughter with Down syndrome earlier this year. In a Facebook post they say:

While the words certainly carried a heaviness with them at the time, due mostly to misconceptions on my part, within a few hours of receiving the news we were already talking about what a beautiful life she would have.

Parents aren’t expected, or forced, to find their children ‘defective’ anymore. Parents aren’t pushed to hide away their children at institutions. Parents are allowed to be happy, optimistic, and loving.

When I think if it I am sure that more than a couple of the students I’ve had at American universities would have been considered feeble-minded just a few decades ago. I didn’t know their exact diagnoses, and I didn’t need to know, or want to know. But what I saw was hard working kids with a-typical communication styles, who were supported by parents, teachers, and others.

A perfect day

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Santa Clara University Nov. 8, 2019.

The first year I lived in the California I thought to myself that every single day could have been a summer’s day in Sweden. Summer’s days in Sweden can be hot and sunny, or cold and rainy. But the trees and lawns will be green, and everything is generally pretty.

A California November day, like today: Sunny, 72F or 22C. Perfect Swedish summer. Guy on skateboard included.

CV Nilsson

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 My great grandfather, Carl Viktor Nilsson. Born Aug. 30, 1846 in Döderhult. Died Aug. 17, 1926 in Oskarshamn.

This is Carl Victor Nilsson, the father of my grandmother Herta. I don’t know much about Carl Victor, but I do know that he was a sea captain, and that he kicked his own son off the boat (more than once) for being drunk. It looks to me as if you wouldn’t want to have messed with Captain Nilsson, but according to a his great grandson, my cousin, he let the drunken son back on the ship pretty quickly.

Both of Carl Victor’s parents had deep roots in Kristdala north of Oskarshamn. Many of his relatives were related to each other in several ways, and as a result I have a disproportionally high number of DNA matches with Carl Victor’s line. Many of his emigrant relatives settled in the mid-west, in Kansas, Illinois, and Nebraska. But I also have mysterious matches on the Northeast coast of England, in the area of West Hartlepool, where Carl Victor apparently spent some time.

The Mothership

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A Swedish-American woman I know always talks about IKEA as The Mothership. IKEA is a place where Swedes living abroad get to reconnect with their roots, stock up on necessities, and feel the joy of being surrounded by your first language. I remember going through the showroom with an American friend once, and she was amazed that 1. all product names are actual Swedish words, and 2. all books they use for props are actual Swedish books. (I asked to buy one of the books because I wanted to read it, but was turned down.) I think she felt my knowledge of Swedish had gained her access to a secret world.

I love the smell right where you enter the warehouse part of the store. The smell of wood mixes with cinnamon from the cinnamon rolls they sell near the exit. In America, even if it’s at The Mothership, the cinnamon rolls are nothing like Swedish cinnamon rolls, tho. They are too large, too sweet, too covered in icing. But the smell of cinnamon seems pretty authentic to me. At that spot it smells of wood shop class (my favorite) and a Swedish bakery all at once.

Pro tip: Visit on a Monday and enjoy zero crowds.

I also like the efficiency, the utilitarian decor, and much of the design. And the meatballs. Also:
– Scent-free candles for us migraines sufferers.
– Spend a little time looking and you’ll find simple furniture that works anywhere. It’s OK to paint stuff if you’re looking for a particular color.
– Sign up for the newsletter and pay attention to limited series of design collaborations.
– Avoid shipping larger items. It’s totally unreliable and extremely frustrating.
– Shipping smaller items is cheap (around $10), and your stuff will arrive via FedEx. No problems there.

The Carlisle goal: “Kill the Indian, save the man.”

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In the 1890s, when Zanna Olive Grove (Sanda Olivia Grof) 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 the wedding announcement that was printed in the newspaper in Fairfield, Iowa, where she grew up, she is said to have been a teacher. That seems not to have been exactly true. According to Annual report of the Department of the Interior she was a laundress in 1895. In the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1896 she’s an assistant matron. She was paid $480 a year as a laundress and $500 as an assistant matron. There are also records that show that Olive claimed land under her married name, Olive Trommer, close to the Blackfeet reservation.

Supposedly (we can’t be certain, I found the photo online) a 1898 photo of Old Willow Creek Indian School, west of Browning, Montana. Students and teacher in classroom.

“Indian” boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native American children into mainstream American culture. There were many such schools across the country. The image below is from the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

The students of the Carlisle Indian School are amassed on the grounds of the school in March of 1892. (Photo by John N. Choate/Provided by Cumberland County Historical Society Photo Archives)

From a WHYY story:

The remains of about 180 children are buried on the grounds of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in central Pennsylvania — which was created to assimilate native children into white culture. 

Some of those bodies are now being reclaimed by families, and given proper burials.

From a Philadelphia Inquirer story:

/…/ from 1879 to 1918, [Carlisle] was home to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the flagship of a fleet of federally funded, off-reservation boarding schools. It immersed native children in the dominant white culture, seeking to cleanse their “savage nature” by erasing their names, language, dress, customs, religions, and family ties.

The Carlisle goal: “Kill the Indian, save the man.”

Tom Torlino, who was Navajo, as he entered the school in 1882 (left), and how he appeared three years later. (From the Philadelphia Inquirer story.)

The European whiteness, and the European Christianity, that my family members brought with them from 1800s Sweden had no problem uprooting children, scrub or beat their culture out of them, and make them white.

I knew it, but I wasn’t prepared for it to hit so close to home. Which is, of course, just another consequence of the white privilege I enjoy.

Anna E. Grove

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An unmarked newspaper clipping:

Miss Anna E. GROVE was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. G. GROVE, and was born in Jefferson county, near Lockridge, Ia., February 4, 1877. Here she grew to womanhood and here too she spent practically all of her life in an unselfish service and in caring for others. She gave at least twenty-five years in an unstinting way for the care of those whom she loved. First, she cared for her mother, and then upon death of her oldest sister, Mrs. Olive GROVE TROMMER, she cared for her five motherless children, the youngest of whom was but three weeks old at the time of the mother’s death. 

Three years ago she left Iowa and moved to Colome, S. D. where she resided until a few months ago when because of ill health she gave up her home and continued to live with her sister in the same village. Here she died on Friday afternoon at five o’clock, December 4, 1931, aged 54 years and ten months. 

She was a life-long member of the Lutheran church, the church of her parents, having been confirmed in the Lutheran faith at the age of 14. 

She was preceded in death by her parents, one sister Mrs. Olive GROVE TROMMER, two brothers, Charles and Joe GROVE. 

The following sisters and brothers remain to mourn her death: Mrs. Hannah DAVIS, of Colorado Springs, Colo., Mrs. Esther BRESLEY, Colome, S. D., William Axel, Ellmer and Ray of Fairfield, and Dr. E. G. GROVE, of Boone, Ia. 

Interment was December 7th, in Evergreen cemetery, at Fairfield. 

Anna was my grandfather’s first cousin. Her parents and older siblings had emigrated from Skaraborg, Sweden in 1870.

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.