From all of us to all of you
Dear greetings from a century ago, from an ancestor who refuses to be forgotten.
One hundred years ago, my Swedish ancestor in Missouri wrote a letter to her niece in Gotland, who was a 12-year-old-girl when her aunt left for America in 1892.
This letter arrived in May 1924. By then, the girl was a woman, 44 years old, and her mother — my great-great-aunt, her sister, Maria — had died earlier in the year.
The letter-writer in America wasn’t feeling so great herself. She wrote the four-page letter in her native Swedish, a language she’d been slowly losing over the 32 years that she’d been living in a landlocked place far from her island homeland in the Baltic Sea.
But, as this letter shows, Sweden was never far from her mind. She expresses a sense of shame that she hadn’t written and that this spring had been a wet one. She sent a dollar so that the family could put a rose on her mother’s grave.
That niece in Sweden kept this note until her death in 1962, when it passed to her daughter, whose daughters kept it until May of 2024, when I took that epic ancestry trip with my mom, sister and niece earlier this year.
At the family reunion smörgåsbord, we feasted with these newly found cousins. My relative, the genealogy-loving dad who found us in the first place, took me aside and handed me a fragile piece of paper.
“This belongs to you,” he told me.
It was one of the last letters home. And it was my job to translate it.
I dabbled on this project for the rest of the year, laboring over the century-old script and foreign spellings of words that were already mostly unfamiliar. But I finally wrapped up the project and sent it out via snail to the extended family in both countries as part of my kinkeeping efforts for the year. But the letter was too beautiful not to share here.
In it, we meet a 69-year-old woman who was born in one country and would die in another. We learn that she sent a dollar so her only surviving sister could buy flowers for their mother’s grave.
It turns out that my great-great-grandmother’s prayers were answered: God gave her six more years to watch her daughter, Esther, marry and have two children. They went on to have children of their own. Those children had children, who had children, and all along the way, they kept alive her name: Lina.
Over the past decade, this branch of the family tree has been reconnecting on both sides of the Atlantic. In May, we visited two sets of sisters and cousins who had lost touch over the past century.
It’s been an incredible journey to be separated by an ocean and united by the grief of missing home.
That is what I’m reflecting on this holiday. Thanks for your support for this place where I can tell stories like these that illuminate my journey but also hopefully speak to yours, too.
Happy holidays, and may your well and chosen ancestors be celebrating with you.
Addie
Springfield, MO
May, 24, 1924
Dear Beda and relatives,
I first want to thank you for the dear letter in which I see that you are in good health, which we have God to thank for. I am not so good, but I am getting pretty old, so I can’t think I would be better. I have such a bad stomach, so I have to be so careful with what I eat. I am sorry for the sadness that your mother left behind when she died, but we can thank God she is no longer suffering. She is happy where she is now. I wish I could go and meet her soon. I have always thought that would be a dear meeting because we would never see each other in this world.
I have missed my dear sister Maria’s dear letters since she couldn’t write them herself. I still have the last letter. It was difficult to read, but it was just as dear. I'm so glad I sent money to sister Stava so she made coffee for your mother in January. She had our brother August and his wife Albertina with her, so they drank coffee with her while she was alive. Stava said she was so weak then that she couldn't help herself. I know it was hard that you couldn’t be there with her when she died, but it's better for you to remember her alive than dead because we can imagine that being sick for so long changed her. It was probably best that she came to Visby because you couldn't have nursed her when you had your little children to look after.
I saw that you had moved to another place. I hope that you have success and have health, that is the best that I can wish you. I can swear the widow Anna has been home now for two weeks, she will go back on Sunday. She is so big and fat. I had a letter from Fredrik this week. He is good. I have three of my children here in town and the other three are gone. None of them are married. I'm so bad at writing so please excuse my spelling. It has been so cold and rainy here this spring. I can't remember it being this kind of weather since I got here.
I sent a dollar to Stava so she could buy flowers for your mother's grave. Anna and I went to put out flowers on the family graves last Sunday. We had roses and peonies. I will write to [my niece] Lina as well, so, I have to stop for now. If I am allowed to live and have my health, I will write again. I can thank you for the Christmas card I received. I'm ashamed that I haven't written before, but I've been so poorly that things weren’t going well.
Many dear greetings from all of us to all of you, but first and last you are greeted by me.
Your aunt,
Lina
What a gorgeous family heirloom! I love this story so much! I love how open your heart is, Addie. And kudos to you for your commitment to learning Swedish. As always, it's a delight and honor to know you.