Elin, Maria, and Ernst

Sisters Maria and Elin Karlsson, 1915

"After Kalle then comes my mother. Her full name was Elin Matilda

Elin at 23 in 1915

Karlsson. We always called her Mama. Mama was a strong woman in every way. She had been working for herrskap as they used to call it, fine folks, so she had learned a lot of different things. When anyone was sick in the neighborhood, they’d call on Mama to come and see if they needed to go to the doctor or tell them what they should do. I remember that Mama wasn’t quite as jolly as her brothers, but she used to laugh a lot when us kids were putting on antics. She had dark hair which she combed and braided. No woman in those days had short hair. She braided it and put it up in a bun. Mom and Dad were always Lutheran, and so we grew up learning the Lutheran way, mixed up a little bit with the Pentecostal way because Hildegard was a Pentecost too, and we all lived together. Midi never became Pentecost and neither did Linnea. Papa, Midi and Linnea, they were Lutheran all their lives. Mama was very modern for her day. When people started to learn to can things, she took to it. They had such primitive apparatus to

Elin and Thor

can food with at the beginning there, but Mother, she canned cherries and vegetables and whatever she could get there on the farm. I think Mother was maybe a little more stern than dad and she was probably there all the time when we were naughty. I think she probably gave us a swat on the bottom at times but I can’t remember any real spankings, as such. I will come back to Mama more times here.

Then Mama had one sister and that was Maria. Maria married a man named Aron Patriksson, and the two of them and Mama and Papa were all married at the same time in Grönede in 1917. In those days, a married woman always had to have a black dress for dress up, to go to church or parties of any kind, and they

Maria and Aron

couldn’t afford to buy – and it wasn’t so common either to buy -- white wedding dresses. They each had black dresses and white veils.  Aron was a cabinet maker and they lived in a town named Rimforsa, about three Swedish miles from Kisa, so that was almost four miles to us. We loved Maria and we loved to go there and visit. As we got older, sometimes two of us were put on a train. We’d go on a train from Kisa to Rimforsa where they met us. Maria and Aron had four girls: AnnaLisa who was the same age as Brita, Karin who was a year older than Sara, Maj who was a year younger than me, and Siri who was a year younger than Margaretha. I think those cousins are the ones we visited with most because they were so close to our ages.

Next in Mama’s family was Ernst. Ernst had polio when he was young and

Ernst in 1915

one leg didn’t work quite as it should. He would walk with one hand in his pocket to support that leg. He would kind of throw it forward a little bit. He never was married but he was a good machinist. Everyone around hired him for different things when they needed something built or created from scratch."