Fresh Start - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 1

As soon as I saw the prompt, Fresh Start, for Week One of Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, I thought of my father's grandparents who were all immigrants.  Although I have some idea of what prompted most of them to come to America, only Carl Johan Anderson, my paternal grandmother's father, left us this information in detail.

Arthur William Matthews, my paternal great-grandfather, came from England in about 1865. He grew up in poverty and lost his mother at an early age. He was about 21 when he arrived in New York but I don't know anything about his life in England beyond that.

Ada Merritt Hobbs, my paternal grandfather's mother, was Arthur's second wife. She came to America, also from England, sometime after 1871. She was 13 when her parents died in 1868. She and her three siblings were eventually taken in by a maternal uncle in Pennsylvania.

Mathilda Alfina Johanson is more of a mystery. Although she grew up in the same parish in Sweden as my great-grandfather, her family does not seem to have been nearly as poor. Did she come to America for economic opportunity, to follow her sisters, for adventure or to follow Carl? I may never know for sure.

And that brings us to Carl Johan Anderson. Carl was the youngest child of Anders Swensson and Anna Katrina Mannsdotter. He was six when Anders died and Anna went to work as a farmhand and seven when he and his sister were also forced by their economic circumstances to go to work.

After five years of working and living in a glassworks, Carl went to live with his sister, Josefina, and her new husband, Per Johan Bengtson. There he was able to get some schooling as he apprenticed under Per Johan as a shoemaker. Still so poor that it took him months to save for one decent suit, he longed to leave Sweden for the economic opportunities in the United States. Eventually, a group of his friends secured loans and then loaned him the money for his passage. He arrived in Connecticut in April 1888 with one dollar left.

1888 was still difficult for Carl. He found work at a silk mill, was laid off, found work as a shoemaker and finally was rehired in December by the Cheney Silk Mill where he would eventually become a master velvet weaver.  In 1890, Mathilda arrived in the US with one of her sisters and a friend, but they would go first to their own sisters in Illinois. Later that year, Carl wrote and asked Mathilda to come to South Manchester, which the three ladies did, and in August of 1893, Carl and Mathilda were married.

The newlyweds were very fortunate that Carl had found work with the Cheneys, for they were excellent employers, truly concerned with the well-being of their workers. Carl and Mathilda rented their first home from the Cheneys and although I don't know the specifics of their home, I learned during a tour by a local historian that the Cheneys were different from many factory owners in that these properties were well-kept, comparatively spacious and every home had a porch or a yard.

After the birth of two sons, Axel Henrich Waldemar in 1894 and Elmer Carl Ragnar in 1896, Carl and Mathilda purchased a lot of land from the Cheneys, secured a mortgage from Manchester Building and Loan and built themselves a two-family home on Garden Street which they moved into on February 22, 1900. Being a duplex, as Axel called it in an audio-taped interview of Carl, the Andersons now had another source of income from the home, taking in borders. In 1905 the family grew again, when my grandmother, Dagmar Alice Viola was born.

All three of Carl and Mathilda's children graduated from high school. Axel went to business school and became a successful businessman, Elmer followed in his father's footsteps becoming a foreman in the dye house at the Cheney mill and Dagmar worked as a stenographer before her marriage in 1931.  All four of Carl and Mathilda's grandchildren were college graduates.

Carl worked at the mill for 50 years, retiring in 1938 when his eyesight was no longer good enough for such detailed work. He and Mathilda lived together in their home on Garden Street until she fell ill in 1953 and in 1954 the home was sold and Carl moved to a retirement home closer to Axel and his family.

Although the Swedish economy improved and continued to improve over the years following Carl's immigration to the United States, I am confident that coming to America provided the Fresh Start Carl so desperately wanted and provided more economic opportunity than he would have had in Sweden.

I did not have time to provide detailed citations for this post but in brief: Information about Arthur Matthews and Ada Hobbs comes from an autobiography by my grandfather, Howard Matthews, Arthur and Ada's youngest child. Information about Mathilda comes from a family history compiled by professional genealogists in the 1960s and from a brief letter written by Mathilda. Information about Carl comes from a letter that he left for his descendants, from an audiotaped interview by his son Axel and from a walking tour of the Cheney Mills hosted by the Manchester Historical Society and given by a local historian. None of the materials are published, but I have copies in my personal collection. Photos are also from my personal collection and were inherited after the death of my father, Stephen David Matthews. He was the only child of Dagmar Alice Viola Anderson. If you have any questions, please feel free to write to me via the Contact Form on the right of this blog.