Our Swedish Great Grandparents

Grandma Petzinger's Ancestors

Dad frequently spoke about his Swedish grandmother – he used to
recite how she said 999,999 in Swedish, and it went something like
this:  ”hutey hue husen, hu hemlock, hue.”  When Lottie, my
exchange student from Sweden, heard it, she said she had no idea what
he was talking about.....Ahhh, the mystery of family lore. But, his
grandmother really was from Sweden, that much is true! 




Some background on Swedish naming conventions – called
patronymics.  The use of last names was unknown – a child was given
a first name and their last name was simply their father's first name
plus ”son” or ”dotter” (daughter).  




So Dad's grandmother's (our great grandmother) name was Carolina
(sometimes Anna Carolina) born to Magnus and Anna Martha.  So
Carolina's last name, taken from her Dad's first name was
Magnusdotter.  She was born October 12, 1872 in a small coastal
village in southwestern Sweden called Kristianopel, in the county of
Blekinge.  




In the late 1800's the patronymic naming convention was phasing
out, being replaced with conventional last names being carried to the
next generation.  When Carolina emigrated to the United States, she
dropped the ”dotter” which was becoming obsolete and used ”son”,
making her name Magnusson.  




Her father, Magnus died in 1889, and according to the church
outgoing records, she left her church July 31, 1891 and according to
the ship's passsenger manifest, she was 19 years old, unmarried,
working as a maid, and traveled without family to New York, arriving
August 24, 1891 via Liverpool, England. There were a few other young
girls from her hometown that were also in the church's outgoing
records around the same time period, so she may have had companion
travelers.  Her older married sister had emigrated in 1888 within
days of the death of one of her children.  She, too, surprisingly
traveled without family but I have yet to find a trace of her in
America.



Carolina apparently settled in the
Lansingburgh area of Troy, New York where, within a couple of years,
she married Louis Stuart (Johann Ludvig Fredrik Stuhr) on August 16,
1893.  They had three children, Emil W. (born 4 Mar 1894 in
Bennington, Vermont– yes only 8 months after the marriage, but
could have been premature), Thora Sophie (born 4 Mar 1896 in
Lansingburgh) and Alma L. (born 5 September 1898 in Bennington,
Vermont).  The family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut in the early
1900's.



Louis Stuart died in 1935 in Bridgeport of bladder cancer, and
Carolina followed him a couple of years later in 1937, dying of
pneumonia.  They are buried in Lawncroft Cooperative Cemetery in
Fairfield, Connecticut.



I asked google to translate the English 999,999 into Swedish, it
gave this:  ”nio hundra nittio nio tusen.” Hmmmm, I can hear a
couple of words there that sorta kinda sounded like Dad's version -
”hutey hue husen, hu hemlock, hue.”!







Next post will be about our 2x great grandparents (parents of Anna
Carolina Magnusson), Magnus and Anna Martha.