On Tuesday, January 17, 1893, twenty-nine year old Brita Johansdotter¹, wife of Anders “Andrew” Dalin², and mother of two children, Johan and Helena, awoke knowing that the following Sunday she would leave her home in Hudiksvall, Sweden – for the last time.

Her first destination would be Göteborg, a seaport on the west coast of Sweden, where she would board a ship headed for North America.

After four long years, she would finally join her husband who emigrated in January of 1889.

But I suspect that her very first thoughts that morning were of her two children. Johan would not make the trip because he had died nine months earlier at the age of 4. And little Helena, who had just celebrated her first birthday only a few weeks earlier, would not make the trip  . . . because she was not Andrew’s daughter. And now the day had finally come when Brita had to face that reality head on.

Four years earlier, on January 5, 1889, Brita’s husband Andrew and his brother Eric left Hudiksvall to emigrate to “Nordamerika”.³ Prior to that date, Andrew and Brita had been living with Andrew’s parents, Lars Andersson and Brita Anderssdotter,⁴ since the time the couple married on October 30, 1887.⁵

On December 27, 1887, a son – Johan – was born to Andrew and Brita.⁶

Brita continued living with her in-laws after Andrew left. And several years later, she became pregnant – and obviously, Andrew was not the father of the expected baby.

Surprisingly, Brita stayed on with her in-laws during that time ⁷ and her daughter Helena was born on December 31, 1891.⁸

The new baby was baptized several months later on February 27th and the “Dopvittnen” (baptismal witnesses) are listed as Per Olof Olsson, his wife Karin, son Johan Olof, and daughter Emma Christina – the same family with whom Helena went to live when her mother emigrated a year later.⁹

Three and a half months after Helena’s birth, Brita’s four-year-old son Johan died on April 1, 1892, of a lung inflammation.¹⁰

And now the day had arrived – January 17, 1893 – when Brita had to face the reality of leaving her one-year-old daughter behind. The emotional pain must have been unbearable.

Most of the information above was discovered during research I conducted over several months last year, primarily from records located at ArkivDigital.

The records I discovered regarding Johan were not a surprise, as my father told me about him years ago. But he did not tell me about Helena – and I suspect he never knew about her.

Once the pieces of the story came together, I had many questions . . .

• Who was Helena’s father?
• How did her in-laws react when they found out Brita was pregnant by another man?
• Why did they let her continue to live with them after she became pregnant?
• Is it possible that one of the three males living in the same house with Brita was Helena’s father?
• Is it plausible that one of the three males living in the same house with Brita was Helena’s father?
• Did Brita stay in touch with Helena, or anyone else who might have been willing to tell her about Helena?
• What happened to Helena? And does she have any surviving descendants?
• Did Andrew know about Helena?
• Other than the relatives in Sweden, did anyone in the family know about Helena?

Many questions.

In Part 2 of this story, I’ll cover Brita’s overland trip from Hudiksvall to Göteborg.

SOURCES

This is Part 3 of “Who is the woman in this photo?” Click here to read Part 1 and here to read Part 2.

Once again, here are the three photos I sent to Maureen for review prior to our phone consultation.

Maureen’s Analysis

First, I’d like to say how much I enjoyed my chat with Maureen. She was very friendly and generous with her tips and observations. I would recommend her to anyone who might need a professional to take a look at their family photos.

• Maureen estimated that Photo #1 was probably taken around 1890. And she made a comment that she thought the boy in the photo looked ill, which is interesting considering Johan died when he was only 4 years old – and Maureen knew nothing about that fact prior to the phone call.
• Having already established that Brita is probably the woman in Photos #2 and #3, Maureen agreed that the woman in Photo #1 is probably Brita Dalin. Her assessment was based primarily on the woman’s large eyes, which she said were quite visible in both Photo #1 and Photo #3, and only slightly less obvious in Photo #2 due to the glare from the glasses she is wearing.
• On an interesting side note, Maureen asked if I knew how Johan had died. I told her that I had only recently located a birth record for Johan but not a death record. The morning after we talked, I made another search for his death record and located it at Ancestry.com. He was four years old when he died in April of 1892 and the cause of death was listed as “lung inflammation”.¹ In addition, Maureen commented that Brita looked very sad in all three photos. And I agreed.

• Maureen also thought Photo #3 looked like either a passport photo or perhaps a photo taken to finalize her citizenship. I have not yet located any record to show that she traveled to a location requiring a passport nor have I located any citizenship documents, although her husband Andrew filed a “Declaration of Intention” to become a citizen in 1918.

Oh, and then a funny thing happened. You know, one of those “How in the world did I not see this before??” kind of thing.

As I was reviewing the back of Photo #2 for this blog post, I noticed there were six medallion-type images that contained references to several locations and dates, as well as several words that resembled the phrases “Silver Medal” and “Bronze Medal”. After running a few of these phrases through Google Translate (Swedish to English), it appears the back of the photo contains images of six medals that were awarded to the photographer in various years, including 1879, 1882 and 1889² – which means, of course, that at least Photo #2 must be dated after 1889.

And then for fun, I cropped head shots of all of Brita’s children (from two different photos) so I could compare them side by side. The birth order of these children is as indicated in the photo.

Do you think the little boy on the left is the sibling of the four children on the right? I think the lips of the three boys, and possibly Freda, are similar. And Johan, Cid and Osma all seem to have high foreheads.

In conclusion, the discovery of the death record of Johan finally puts to rest the story my father told me so long ago – about his grandparents Andrew and Brita who immigrated to the United States, and how they had a son named “John” who was born in Sweden but died when he was a young boy.

And here I want to say a great big “Thank You!” to Maureen for her assistance in helping me fill in the pieces of this family story.

Next, I plan to search Swedish records for more information about Andrew and Brita and their birth parents.³

Copyright (c) 2016, Lark M. Dalin Robart

FOOTNOTES