Sunday, October 20, 2013

Blacksmiths going west, part 2: The new country


This two-part article was first written (in Swedish) for a Swedish family history journal. In the first installment, we followed the lives of Gustaf Elg and Maria Sofia Bork in Sweden, leading to their decision to emigrate. Part 2 is partly based on American archives, but mainly on material and photos from the family historian Todd Lindahl, grandson of Franz Gustav "Gust" Elg..

In January 1892 emigration agent August Larsson, with offices at Götgatan 7 in Gothenburg, responds to a request from Gustaf Bork, Ferna Mill, about the cost of a one-way trip to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, United States of America.

August Larsson is the general agent for the Inman Lines Royal English & U.S. Mail Steamers, one of the major emigrant lines. At this time, emigration has developed into a major industry. The Inman Lines´ modern steamers regularly make the journey between Liverpool and New York in six days, and the shipyards are building ever more modern vessels to meet demand. In New York, Ellis Island has just opened, a giant terminal where the immigrants are examined before they are released into the new country.

August Larsson´s letter is a pre-printed standard form, supplemented by hand-written answers to the passenger's specific questions. From this we learn that the journey from Gothenburg to Fergus Falls will cost 189 kr - but out of this the boat trip Gothenburg - New York is only 75 kr. We can also see that Gustaf asked about the cost of upgrading to second class, and that his wife can bring her knitting machine without having to pay customs on arrival.

On April 1, 1892 the family board a ship in the port of Gothenburg to begin the journey. Direct service to to the U.S. is still a couple of decades into the future: The first leg of the hourney is a boat trip to Hull in England, and from there they travel by train across England to Liverpool, and the Inman Line´s pride and joy, the s / s City of New York.

The Inman Lines´ “City of New York”

The City of New York was a modern ship, built in Scotland in 1888, where she was baptized by Lady Randolph Churchill, famous socialite beauty and mother of Winston Churchill. She was the first large ocean steamer with twin propellers, which meant that she did not have to be equipped with sails as backup (breaking the propeller shaft was not uncommon on the first large steamers ..). In the autumn of 1892, she sets a speed record from the U.S. to Europe with 20.11 knots. 560 feet long, she can take 1740 passengers, of which 1000 - mainly immigrants - in steerage.

The party consists of Gustaf and Maria Sofia Elg, with daughters Emma, Johanna, Alma, Sofia, Frida and Ellen and son Frans Gustaf. The party also includes son Johan Wilhelm (John) Elg,. who had traveled back to Sweden in February to help the family on the journey, but also to fetch his bride to be, Johanna Karolina Winkler.

On the same ship is Harald Axel Söderkvist, a former seaman, born in Södertälje, but residing on Svartensgatan in Stockholm. His destination is also Fergus Falls, where he will later marry Gustaf Elg´s daughter Emma Elizabeth. It is an interesting mystery how a blacksmith's daughter from the deep forests came to know a nine years younger sailor from Södertälje?

Their destination, Fergus Falls, is an outpost in western Minnesota, on the border between a moraine landscape of forests and lakes that reminded of home, and an endless ocean of prairie grassland that stretches westward.


Barnesville, with the railroad shops in the distance

A few miles north is Barnesville, with railroad workshops where the brothers Elg found jobs. The railroad was now part of the Great Northern Railroad, the northernmost of the great trans-continental railroads, and railroad construction reached its final destination, Seattle, in 1893. By 1890, the city of Barnesville had grown to 1069 people, and had repair shops and a roundhouse. At one time, the railroad employed 75 to 150 men, largely immigrants from Germany, Sweden and Norway. By the turn of the century there were five hotels, five churches, two breweries and the City Hall and Opera was newly built. In 1907, the railroad shops were moved to Devil´s Lake, North Dakota, and the golden era of the railroad in Barnesville comes to an end.

In 1901, the Elg family moves to Brainerd, another major railroad junction along the Great Northern RR, a little further east. Two of the brothers, Aaron and John Elg, try their luck as merchants, and between 1901 and 1904 they run the "Elg Bro's Store," a food / general store in Brainerd. Their success as merchants is limited, and in 1904, they are forced to sell the store. Aaron goes back to the railroad workshops, while John is listed in the 1905 City Directory as a clerk at a competing general store, "K.W. Lagerquist" (also Swedish owned).


The Elg Brothers Store. John and Aaron in the center.

Elg Brothers letterhead

Emma Elizabeth, now Mrs. Soderquist, stays in Fergus Falls, where Harold has become foreman of the linemen at a telephone company. As true Americans, the family buys their first automobile in 1902.

 
Harold and Emma with son Herbert show off their new automobile

Sisters Johanna / Hannah and Alma become housekeepers for Mr Rank, a director of the Great Northern Railroad, in St. Paul. In her old age Alma becomes deaf and blind, and sister Hanna learns to communicate with her by writing on the palm.

Alma, Emma and Hanna Elg

The youngest sister, Ellen, became the first telephone operator in Fergus Falls. One day, one of the city's merchants arrived at the telephone exchange to receive a call. Ellen pointed to the phone booth, and the man, who had never seen a phone before leaned against the door and called out "hello?" at the door handle. In 1912 Ellen travels with her family in the automobiles to Minneapolis. There are no road signs on the small dirt roads, and people along the road do not know where they lead, because you take the train if you need to travel. Whenever they encounter a horse cart, they must run off the road and shut the engine. The trip takes four days, with several flat tires. Today, the route takes less than three hours, on 178 miles of highway.

Aaron and Adolph in the D&IR shop

Three of the brothers, Adolph, Aaron and Gust (Franz Gustaf) eventually move to Two Harbors, a small town on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. Here they are employed in the workshops of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad, a road pulling heavy iron ore trains to the docks in Two Harbors. And this is where – a century later - I meet Gustaf´s grandchildren, and take part of their history. Two Harbors also had a radical labor movement with several Swedish agitators.

 

Gust (top right) on the running board of D&IR #70

 

The Elg family, gathered in Brainerd, October 1906

Gustaf Elg dies in 1909 in Brainerd, 75 years old. His wife Maria Sofia survives him by almost 20 years. The oldest daughter Emma Soderquist dies in 1915, Harold moves further west to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and remarries, but after his second wife passes away, he is reunited with his former brothers-in-law-in Two Harbors. At 70, Aaron Elg makes a trip to Sweden. He was traveling alone and we do not know the purpose of his journey. He returns to New York on Aug. 26, 1931 on the Swedish American Line´s "Kungsholm".

 
Gustaf Elg, with Emma, Harold and Herbert. Notice the picture on the wall behind Gustaf!

 

The picture enlarged: A painting based on the photo of Liljendal which Gustaf and Maria Sofia brought to Minnesota (see part 1). Liljendal is the place where Gustaf became a blacksmith, and where Gustaf and Maria Sofia met and married.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Blacksmiths going west, part 1: Life in Sweden


 
This two-part article was first written (in Swedish) for a Swedish family history journal. In this first installment, we will follow the lives of Gustaf Elg and Maria Sofia Bork in Sweden, leading to their decision to emigrate.

-oOo-

The 19th century´s industrial revolution was made possible by new and more efficient methods of producing iron and steel, and demand for these products skyrocketed. But the new technology also came to mean the end of the wood-fired furnaces and forges that for 200 years had provided the world with iron from Sweden.

The Industrial Revolution also laid the foundation for the mass emigration to the United States, and many blacksmiths chose to emigrate, rather than to seek work in the modern industrial mills.

This was also the case for my Elg family, with roots in Säfsnäs / Gravendal (and going back to Finnish slash and burn farmers who first settled in the area around 1600). At least 20 Elgs emigrated to the United States, and I have contact with about 40 descendants, from Maine to Seattle and Los Angeles

In the early 1800s, a number of blacksmiths from our Elg family moved a few miles west, to Liljendal in Rämmen parish. This is also where most emigrants have roots. In this story, we will follow one of these emigrant blacksmith families. The family's life in Sweden is traced from parish records and other historical sources. The family's fortunes in America is partly based on American archives, but mainly on material from the family historian Todd Lindahl, grandson of Franz Gustav "Gust" Elg.
 
 

Liljendal abt 1860.
Gustaf and Maria Sofia brought this photo to Minnesota.
Todd Lindahl collection

Gustaf Elg, blacksmith


Gustaf Elg was born in 1834 in Gravendal, the youngest son of my great-great-grandfather Lars Elg (1789-1853) and Lisa Gråberg (1792-1873). Lars Elg was a master blacksmith, and introduced what was known as the German method of forging at Gravendal. An older sister of Gustaf, Christina Elg (1820-1902) also came to emigrate, but that's a different (and interesting) story.

At the age of fifteen, Gustaf moves to Liljendal in 1849, where he begins to learn the blacksmith profession as a helper to his older brother, Johan Elg (1817-1896). In 1852 Gustaf moves again, this time to Gustavsström, Gåsborn, to continue his training with another brother, master hammersmith Peter Elg (1814-1890).

 
Gustaf Elg and Maria Sofia Bork
Todd Lindahl collection

Two years later, Gustav moves back to Rämmen, to work as an assistant to master blacksmith Jan Bork at Heden, an annex to the Liljendal mill. In 1856, at age 22, his apprenticeship is over, and Gustaf marries Maria Sofia Bork (b. 1838 in Liljendal). Maria Sofia is the daughter of Jan Bork's deceased brother Petter Bork (1812-1851) and Lisa Stålberg. (While there were a number of Elg-smiths in Rämmen parish the Bork family was even more numerous, and I have found several marriages between the two families).

Gustav is now an assistant master, the master blacksmith´s number two man, and leads the crew when the master is not in place. At least in the early years, the couple lives with Maria Sofia's family, where her mother has remarried the 15 years younger assistant master Olof Jonsson Roth. Marrying a blacksmith's widow, and taking responsibility for supporting the family, was not an unusual way for a blacksmith apprentice to obtain the resources needed to advance to assistant master and master blacksmith.

In 1864, after fifteen years of training, Gustaf could finally call himself a master blacksmith. In Liljendal Maria Sofia also gave birth to six of the couple's total of 14 children: Emma Elizabeth (b.1857), Carl Gustaf (b. 1859), Aaron (b. 1860), Johanna (b. 1862), Francis Edward (b. 1865), and John William (b. 1866). Francis Edward died only 17 months old.

Rönneshytta, Lerbäck


In 1867, after three years as a master blacksmith, Gustaf moves with his growing family to Rönneshytta in Lerbäck parish in Närke. The move also includes helper Erik Johan Elg, a son of Gustaf´s brother Johan who once trained Gustaf in Liljendal. Rönneshytta delivers pig iron to the nearby Skyllberg mill where the iron is processed in a newly built rolling mill.

At the Skyllberg mill, Maria Sofia's brother Olaus Bork is master mechanic since two years, and is responsible for an ambitious expansion program. He will eventually build the narrow gauge railroad connecting Skyllberg to the outside world, and is a master mechanic for 32 years (see http://elgfamily.blogspot.se/2013/09/a-railroad-builder-in-family.html ).

In Rönneshytta three children are born, Adolf Fredrik (1868), Alma Justina (1870) and Lambert (1875).

Emigration begins


In 1876 it is time for the family to move again, this time to Fagersta Mill, Västanfors. The oungest son, Lambert, dies shortly afterwards, just 17 months old. Three years later, the first step on the way to America is taken, as the eldest son Carl Gustaf Elg emigrates, 20 years old, in July 1879. Two years later, his brother Aaron moves to Eskilstuna as an apprentice at Bolinder Munktell, but soon he follows his brother's trail, and emigrates to the U.S. in August, 1882. Both brothers find work in railroad workshops in Minnesota.

In 1884 daughter Emma Elizabeth leaves the nest. She travels to Gävle to become kitchen maid to Colonel Carl Bror Munck. Munck is not only commander of the Helsinglands Regiment, he also belongs to King Oscar II's staff, and his wife is lady in waiting to Queen Victoria.

Aaron is visits Sweden in 1885, presumably to discuss further emigration plans. Next year brothers Johan Wilhelm and Adolf Fredrik also emigrate.

Two of Olaus Bork's sons, Carl Gustaf and Leonard Bork, also emigrate to Minnesota, in April 1887. I have written about Carl Gustaf´s tragic death in a previous article ( http://elgfamily.blogspot.se/2013/09/a-railroad-builder-in-family.html ) Leonard returns to Sweden and Skyllberg after his brother's death. Adolf stays a year in Montana before moving back to Minnesota. Possibly he brought with him the remains of Carl Gustaf Bork, as he is buried in Barnesville, Minnesota.

 
Hannah and Adolph Elg, at Carl Gustaf Bork´s grave in Barnesville, 1939
Todd Lindahl Collection
 

The family is not yet ready for the big leap. While Johan Wilhelm and Adolf Fredrik emigrate to Minnesota Gustaf Elg moves his family one last time in 1886, now to Ferna Mill, Gunnilsbo, Västmanland. While at Ferna a decision is reached, and sometime 1891 - 1892 Gustaf writes to an emigration agent to inquire about the cost of moving the family to Minnesota.

 
The blacksmith shop at Ferna, abt 1880

-oOo-

In a following article, we will follow the family across the Atlantic, and their life in the new country.