Memories of Farfar

In the front row, left to right, we have Hildegard, Helena Sofia, Ragnar,
Johan August, and Linnea.
In the back row, left to right, stand Ivar, Midi, Thor (Mom's dad) and Folke.
Mom's note on the back says that this was taken around 1912
and that Helena Sofia died about two years after this was taken.

"But maybe I should go back to Dad’s family a bit. There was Farfar (Johan August) and Farmor (Helena Sofia). The first child they had died in infancy. I don’t know if he died at birth or how old he was, but it was a boy and they called him Maximillian. Then there was a girl named Midi; that was dad’s oldest sister. And then there was Dad, and Ivar, and Folke, and Linnea, and Hildegard and Ragnar. They had eight kids in all but seven were alive. They all lived in Kjettestorp. And the year they bought Kjettestorp, I remember my dad saying they didn’t have enough money to buy horses so they plowed the field with oxen. 

Farmor was not well. Farfar took her to all kinds of doctors and tried everything. I’m not sure what was the matter with her, but she died in her 40s. Ragnar was 12 years old when his mother died and that was in 1914. Farmor, of course, I have no memory of because she died before mom and dad were married. When I grew up, Farfar and Midi and Hildegard and Ragnar all lived with us in Kjettestorp.

To tell of the different members of the family now, there was Farfar. He was always dressed in black boots up to the knee and pants tucked inside, some kind of wool pants, and a vest and a pocket watch with a chain attached to a buttonhole and a coat over that and a hat, of course.  

Johan August Boberg and Gurli, around 1930

I remember he loved kids. In summer time, I remember how he was sitting out in the yard watching us kids play, and I remember my little sister Margaretha. The way I saw her, she was such a mama baby. We were playing outside and if she ran and fell down, she would stick her head up and look around and if she saw a grown up, she would start screaming until they came and picked her up. Well, Farfar sat out there and she started screaming because she saw Farfar. Farfar would say, “Come on over here and I’ll pick you up” so Margaretha would get up and go over and lay down at Farfar’s feet, and he picked her up and chuckled and laughed. 

Farfar lived upstairs in a room, Farfar and Ragnar, and he had a radio, a crystal radio with two earmuffs but I can’t remember that more than two children at a time could come up and listen. Well, we were six kids and then there was Folke i Sur too. He was a neighbor kid but he was like one of us; he was always there. There was a children’s program on occasionally and Farfar would let us listen to it, but there were only two earmuffs, so we had to take turns. Just think if the kids today had to take turns to look at TV -- How would that be?  Well, I remember Farfar as a kind, generous man who always seemed to be in a good mood. He was very kind to my mother. He had a cat named Jämmerlund -- otherwise no cats came in the house, they were barn cats -- but Jämmerlund, he came in. Jämmerlund that’s just about like “complaining Smith,” if I was going to translate it.  He was always meowing. When Farfar sat down to eat, then the cat started meowing, and Farfar stuck little bites down to the cat. Even if Farfar was eating an apple, the cat would eat apples. He died when I don’t think he was 70 yet, late 60s. He had a heart problem, and I was 10 years old when he died." 

Notes: There are some people in Mom's stories who are referred to by their first name and then the farm where they lived, like Folke i Sör here. Sör would have been the name of the farm where Folke lived and the letter i is the Swedish word for "in" or here it means "from."  She did this often with some more common first names. 

Thor & Elin

"My father's name was Thor Johan Reinhold Boberg and my mother's name was Elin Matilda Karlsson. My mother and father had met when they were in confirmation. My mother was from Västra Eneby, but she was working for a family in Kisa named Jungkvist. They owned the grocery store, and they lived in a big house, one of the oldest houses all built of wood. The name of the house was Svea. It was three stories. On the bottom floor, they had the grocery store. On the second floor, they had living room and probably the parent’s bedroom and kitchen and probably the woman who was hired to look after all the other girls working there had her bedroom there. On the top story were the younger maids, and the kids and they had a playroom for the kids up there or a sitting room whatever they called it.  Well, my mother was very young when she first came there to look after the kids, and I believe that when confirmation started, she couldn’t go to her home parish of Västra Eneby, it was too far, so she went to Kisa, and so Mom and Dad met when they went to confirmation.

 Mother and dad were married on October 17, 1917 in Grönede, Kisa. She wore a new black dress when she was married because there wasn't money enough to have a white dress that you would only wear once, and every woman had to have one nice black dress for proper occasions.  When mother and dad were married and moved in there, in Kjettestorp, there were two of dad’s sisters and one brother and Farfar living there and Farfar’s old parents lived in a house in the backyard. That was just a one-room house and Midi and mother looked after them, cooked for them and took care of them, so that was a big household my mother was responsible for all of a sudden. Both my mom and dad were 25 years old when they were married."

Hos Mormor i Grönede

Helena Sofia is sitting down and her sister, Anna Lovisa, is standing
behind her.  The photo was taken around 1885.

"I think I should start from the beginning. In the middle of the 1800s, 1850 or so, there was a couple named Boberg that lived in Grönede. That was my Farmor’s parents. Farmor’s dad had two sisters and they owned this farm together, but farmor’s dad and mom were running the place, farming it. My grandmother (Farmor) was Helena Sofia. She had one sister named Anna Lovisa, and she was the Farmor to Marge Paulsen and Bubs Olson and Fancher Johnson too.  Helena Sofia, in her younger years -- she must’ve been born somewhere in the 1860s -- she decided that she wanted to go to America so she packed her big -- what we called koffert -- suitcase of sorts and went to America. Well, she disliked it so much in America and she had a hard time learning the language, so she just earned enough money to take her back home, and she went home.

When she came home, there stood her sister Anna Lovisa all packed and ready to go.  My Farmor begged her sister not to go. “You’re not going to like it. You’re going to be lonely.” She had all kinds of excuses why her sister should not go, but Anna Lovisa would not listen. She went and she never made it back, not even for a visit. 

So then there was Helena Sofia to help her parents. They were getting old, and it was harvest time, and they couldn’t see their way to do all the work -- the three of them -- so my Farmor, Helena Sofia, she said to her parents, “I’m going to Gröndalen and ask Johan August if he will come and help us to harvest.” So he did and he liked it so much that he stayed. Grandmother (Farmor) and Johan August were married. When they married, then Helena Sofia’s dad asked Johan August to take the name Boberg. His last name was Karlsson, but he switched over to Boberg because there were no boys in the family, and the old man had had a brother, but he was not married and had no kids, if I understand that right, so that would have been the end of that Boberg family.

As time went on, my dad and all his siblings were born in the house in Grönede; that house has later been taken down; it’s not there anymore but they were all born there. In 1911, I think it was 1911, they bought Kjettestorp Norrgård because the old father, Farmor’s father, had died, and I don’t know if farmor’s mother was dead too, and the sisters then wanted their part, and my Farfar, Johan August and Helena Sofia, they bought Norrgård in Kjettestorp. In Grönede, my morfar, my mother’s father, bought Grönede, so mother and her family moved in where dad and his family had moved out." 

This photo was in one of Mom's albums labeled "Hos Mormor i Grönede". This means  "With Grandma in Grönede". Mom is on the far left and her sister Margaretha is on the far right. Maybe a Swedish cousin can identify the other girls?

A couple of Swedish notes:

Swedish is very specific in the words used to identify family members. Far = Father. Mor = Mother. Bror = brother. The suffix -ster identifies a sister. You can see how these words are put together to tell us exactly how a person is connected. For example, instead of simply saying Grandmother, they say either Farmor (father's mother) or Mormor (mother's mother). The two that are a little different refer to aunts. "Moster" means mother's sister or the person married to your mother's brother. "Faster" identifies your father's sister or the person married to your father's brother. And so on :)

The other thing you might not be aware of is that farms in Sweden have names that can go back hundreds of years. If you search the name Grönede, you can find records that go back to the 1500s. The other farm name that you'll hear mom mention is Kjettestorp. She was born in Norrgård or the northern farm within the larger farm of Kjettestorp.

This photo was in one of Mom's albums labeled "Hos Mormor i Grönede". This means  "With Grandma in Grönede". Mom is on the far left and her sister Margaretha is on the far right. Maybe a Swedish cousin can identify the other girls?