Gustafva Brodd and her siblings

Gustafva (Johansdotter) Brodd was my great-great-grandmother, the mother of Clara Elizabeth Brodd. She was born 1840, married Anders Gustaf Brodd in 1869 and came to America in 1875. For seven years, she and her husband and children lived in Carbon, Wyoming. Then they moved to Nebraska in about 1882 and she died there in 1930.

Gustafva was orphaned at the age of 13, and spent her teenage years in the care of the church, along with her two younger twin brothers August and Johan (aka J.W.). She had an older sister Maja Cajsa and three older brothers, Anders Peter, Karl and Svante, all of whom had already left home by the time the younger children were left orphaned.

Thanks to my ArkivDigital subscription and some research tips that I picked up in Lindsborg, I have finally been able to trace all of Gustafva’s siblings as they moved about Älvsborg and Skaraborg in Sweden and for some of them, to the United States.

My research was complicated by a few oddities:

• Anders Peter’s birthplace is variously listed as Varegården, Hol, and Siene (all are close to each other). The family did move to Hol (also spelled Hool) for one year, but the rest of the time the Johansson siblings were raised in the Bergstena parish.
• Svante’s birthdate was mixed up with one of his co-workers when he moved to another farm, and the error was carried forward for the rest of his life! I know I haven’t confused him with some other Svante because one of his brothers shows up on his same farm at a later date and is explicitly identified as his brother.
• The parishes of Lena, Bergstena, Långared and Fullestad have intermingled records and the siblings all lived on various farms within these four parishes. It gets really confusing – the parish priests did not list them in the moving-in and -out registers when they moved to one of the sister parishes.

It was obvious as I was tracing their movements that these kids kept in touch with each other and often lived and worked together as young adults.

• Maja Cajsa had a mostly stable life, living at Flaskhall farm in Långared parish for over 60 years. Her first husband died. When she remarried, she remained on the Flaskhall farm with her second husband. At various times, each one of her six siblings lived with her or on nearby farms. Clearly, she was doing what she could to see that her younger sister and brothers got gainful employment.
• When Johan (J.W.) left the care of the parish, he lived with an uncle, Andreas Andersson, his mother’s brother.
• Anders Peter was the first to venture northward into Skaraborg. In 1856 he found work on a farm in Härlunda parish. Eventually he married Fredrika Johansdotter of the Vilske-Kleva parish.
• Karl also moved to the north, settling in the Marka parish which is not too far from Vilkse-Kleva. He lived there throughout his life.
• Gustafva was the next to venture to this part of the country and moved to the Espås estate in the Hornborga parish (near Broddetorp), where she met her husband Anders Gustaf Brodd.
• Anders Peter and his family moved to the Hornborga area too, and lived there for three years. Johan (J.W.) lived with him for a couple of years during this period. Anders Peter and his family then moved back to the Vilske-Kleva parish. He was a miller and lived at different mills (“qvarn”) until he emigrated to America with his wife and children in 1892.
• J.W.’s twin brother August has a couple of mysterious aspects in his history. In his younger years, he always has a notation next to his name, “halt” which I believe is translated as “lame”. This notation does not appear in his later years. Secondly, there is a record of a marriage in 1873 but I could never find the two of them living together. He eventually married a different woman in 1880 and his supposed first wife moved away from the area in 1883. Not sure what that’s about!

J.W. was the first to come to America in 1869. He was followed by Gustafva and her family in 1875, and then by some of the children of Anders Peter and Svante (in the 1880’s), Maja Cajsa’s daughter Johannah (1884), and eventually by Anders Peter himself and his wife Fredrika (1892).

J.W.’s obituary from 1921 mentions a sister in Nebraska (Gustafva – correct), a sister in Sweden (Maja Cajsa had died by then) and a brother in St. Paul (Anders Peter, who had died 20 years earlier). The obituary did not mention Svante still living in Sweden. I’m sure this information was provided by J.W.’s children who may have been fuzzy on all the particulars.

The Johansson siblings were a mostly long-lived bunch. All of them married and had several children, so there is a potentially huge number of modern-day descendants from this family.

• August was the first to pass away. He died in 1890 at the age of 46; the cause of death was pneumonia.
• Both Anders Peter and Carl died in 1890. Anders Peter was about 70 and Carl was about 66; Carl’s cause of death was “chest pain” (a heart attack?).
• Svante was still alive in 1920 at the age of 84 (that’s as far as the records go for him).
• Maja Cajsa died in 1916 at the age of 89.
• J.W. died in 1922 at 78.
• Gustafva died in 1930 at the age of 89.

A created a chart (below) that shows where each of the siblings was living in each year from 1827 until 1930. I’ve color-coded the matching farms and parishes so you can see how they connected and re-connected, especially in their younger years. This map shows the locations of all of the parishes mentioned in the charts.

I have recently made contact with previously unknown descendants of Anders Peter (hi, Dick! hi Karen!) and J.W. (hi, Peggy!). This has been a fascinating project!