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.

Maria Christina/Mary C.

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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.

Cedar Township, Jefferson Co., Iowa, 1905.

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.

Anders Svensson Hedberg

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The father of my great grandmother Johanna, Anders Hedberg, laborer, died in Falköping on Sept. 21, 1875. He was 64.

The estimated total value of his belongings was 90 kronor, around $10.

The estate inventory states that his daughter Maria Christina’s whereabouts were “unknown”.

From the bird’s eye view of the internet, we know that Christina and her family had emigrated in 1870. In 1875 they were living in Cedar Township, Jefferson Co., Iowa.