Repslagare

[Marianne Arvidsson]

Hej! Kom i kontakt i höstas med en dam i USA vars släkt kom fran Växjö och hon berättade nedan historia:
 
Gäller hennes morfar som hette Gustav Petersson och som var repslagare i Växjö.  Mormodern, mamman i huset dog 1882 och lämnade fadern ensam med 4 unga döttrar. Se nedan för resten av historien. Om det är någon som har mer information, vidarebefordrar jag det med glädje till Barbara Chasse i Maine.
 
Se nedan för ett utdrag ur hennes email till mig:
I'm sending you an excerpt from a family book I wrote for my children and grandchildren.  The Nina is my grandmother and the Lill is my mother.  We grandchildren loved to get Grammie to talk about her early life in Sweden.
 
 
Nina Elizabeth Peterson began life in Wexio, Sweden, on August 26, 1873.  Her mother died when Nina was nine years old, leaving the father with four girls, all under the age of twelve.  While Nina was in her early teens, Gustav married the young woman he had hired to keep house for the family, filling Nina with resentment.  When the unhappy girl was about fifteen, an aunt visiting Sweden from the United States, offered to take her back to America.  Nina accepted the offer, never again returning to Sweden.  Bitterness prevented her from telling much about life in the homeland, only bits and pieces coming out occasionally.
Gustav had been a rope maker, involving the girls as helpers in the process.  Done outdoors, and in the frigid Swedish winters, this assignment became an almost cruel chore for the youngsters.  Their hands swelled from the cold as they soaked the rope in icy water.  If their performance didn't satisfy Gustav,  he wasn't above whacking them across the knuckles with a stick, a few times causing the skin to break.  How often this happened, she couldn't say, but it left a stinging memory with Nina.
Two of her sisters ended up in America: Alma in Chicago, Illinois, and Emy in Brockton, Massachusetts; Selma never left Sweden.
Nina described her schooling in Sweden as a rather simple training in homemaking, scheduled two or three days a week, involving such subjects as sewing, knitting, crocheting, tatting, and needlework.  Boys attended separate schools where the emphasis was mostly on carpentry.
Nina's grandchildren delighted in persuading her to relate tales of childhood Christmases in Sweden, the season starting on December 13, with the Feast of the Lights and lasting until twenty days after the feast itself.  Families all participated in feasting and celebrating for days, each household both entertaining and visiting.  The women kept tables filled with foods especially prepared for the holidays: smorgasbords of roasts of meat and poultry, smoked fish, cheeses, and butter cookies, among other luxuries relegated only to this special holiday.
Children hung stockings in hopes that St. Nicholas would be cognizant of exemplary behavior records, and would fill the hand-knit foot warmers with cookies, fruits, and nuts.  (The threat of a stick for one who had been more naughty than nice between Christmases helped keep wayward behavior to a minimum.)
Men and boys cut fir trees from their farms and brought them in for women and girls to decorate with dolls fashioned from yarn or cloth, and hand-carved wooden facsimiles of animals, sleds, or carts.  Lights were real candles which required diligent supervision, the possibility of a fire consuming the entire house being a distinct reality.  Family members took turns staying back as guards when others went on the house-to-house visits.
Once on American soil, Nina did housework to support herself until she met and married Joel Erastus Taylor while still in her teens.  As newlyweds the young couple lived with Joel's parents at the state farm in Brockton, Massachusetts, which the older Taylors managed.  Here Lillian Augusta Taylor was born to Nina and Joel on December 27, 1892.
When Lill was eight, the family moved to North Berwick, Maine where Joel Jr. was born when Lill was ten.  Shortly after that, they moved to Skowhegan, where life for Lill was in sharp contrast to that which her children and grandchildren would come to experience.  At the age of ten, she took her first job in the ice house.  Domestic refrigeration for households which could afford it consisted of ice cubes measuring twelve- to twenty- inches, purchased by housewives and stored for short periods in wooden ice boxes in the homes.  Women monitored pans placed on the floor where water from the melting ice collected, unless they wanted to mop up the overflow from their kitchen floors.  Men >from the ice company guided horse-drawn pungs onto frozen surfaces of lakes and rivers, filled them with larger cubes of ice sawed by hand with strenuous effort, and transported them to the ice house in town where additional sawing reduced them to smaller chunks.  Packed in sawdust these  smaller cubes survived, thanks to the bitter cold winters. until warm weather created a need for them.
Nina had no ice box, but Joel built a closet with screening across the back, shelves inside, and a screen door for the front.  This occupied a spot in the dirt cellar where cool air could circulate around food placed inside.  On a hot day, Nina might send Lill to the ice house to buy a small piece of ice to place in a pail for keeping milk and butter cool.  Winters in Maine provided deep freeze facilities in boxes hung outside of kitchen windows, on porches, or in other unheated enclosures.
Life for this family provided few, if any, non-essential departures from the home.  They didn't go out often at night, as there were no street lights except right in the city.  If they did go to a neighbor's house, an adult carried a lantern.  Occasionally by daylight they got a train ride, maybe to a summer picnic at Lake Marannacook.  Horse drawn wagons or sleds provided hay rides as a popular amusement.
Indoor plumbing did not exist, so outdoor facilities for the processes of elimination existed either in the barn, or in a separate little building known as the outhouse.  (One man's job was to clean these out twice a year!)
The chief methods of preserving foods were storing them in salt and water, drying them, or smoking them.  Salt brine kept cucumbers as pickles.
The only commercial pickles available were sold >from large wooden open barrels at the grocer's.  Farmers made their own salt pork after butchering pigs they had raised.
Houses were cold in winter, and Nina set up beds in the dining room, nearer to the kitchen stove than the upstairs bedrooms were.  The cold was especially a problem where bathroom functions were concerned.  Nina and Joel had their own solution, crude as it might seem.  He carved a wooden ring to place on top of the two- or three- holer in the barn, sanded and varnished this to render it washable, and hung it behind the kitchen stove to keep warm.  When a customer was finished in the barn, he or she brought the frame back to Nina, who washed it within an inch of its life, hanging it back for the next user.  Warm buttocks took precedence over propriety and sanitary considerations.
For amusement, boys in overalls and girls in dresses accompanied mothers to picnics.  Once or twice a summer they'd get to ride around the lake on a double-decked steamer of moderate size, or they might ride in horse-drawn streetcars to Lakewood at nearby Lake Wesserunsett for summer theater productions at a cost twenty cents for the show and the three or four mile ride.

[Maud Svensson]

Nina Elisabeth f. 26/8 1873 i Växjö stadsförsamling, döpt 7/9 av Hörberg, dotter till repslagaren Carl Petersson och Fredrika Linn?r, Gamla Palmelund, hänv till sid 1184 i husförhörslängden. Moderns ålder: 26 år.
Dopvittnen: Arrendatorn J. Petersson på Östrabo, studerande A. Petersson ibidem, cigarrmakaren J.M. Petersson, skomakaregesällen J. Palmér (födelsebok).
 
Repslagare Carl Petersson från Gamla Palmelund och Fredrika Elisabeth Linn?r från No 72 vigda 8/10 1872 i Växjö stad av Hörberg. Han född 1845, hon 1847. Giftomannabevis från hennes fader skomakare C.M. Linn?r.  
 
Syskon till Nina:
Alma Sofia f. 21/3 1875, Gamla Palmelund
Selma Gustava f. 29/3 1876, Gamla Palmelund
Syster Emmy f. 16/4 1882, Julalyckan (sid 1705) (Källa KGF:s databas - ej kontrollerat med födelsebok).
 
Fredrika Elisabeth Linn?r död 17/4 1883 i Julalyckan, Växjö stad. Ålder: 36 år och 20 dagar. Dödsorsak: Lunginflammation med delirium. Begravd 22/4 (dödbok). Har inte funnit var hon föddes.
 
Änklingen, repslagaren Carl Petersson f. 23/10 1845 gifte sig 26/11 1885 i Växjö stad med pigan Christina Charlotta Johansdotter f. 1/7 1861. Bådas bostad Julalyckan. (KGF)
 
De fick följande barn, alla födda i Julalyckan:
Anna Birgitta f. 7/10 1886  
Elsa Birgitta Karolina f. 4/2 1890
Elsa Kristina f. 15/11 1891  
(KGF)
 
Folkräkningen 1890:
Hemförsamling:  Wexiö Stads  
Hemort:  N:o 10 Julalyckan  
Karl Petersson, f. 1845 i Kongelf, Repslagare  
Kristina Charlotta Johansson, f. 1861 i Wexiö  
Nina Elisabet, f. 1873 i Wexiö  
Alma Sofia, f. 1875 i Wexiö  
Selma Gustava, f. 1876 i Wexiö  
Syster Emmy, f. 1882 i Wexiö  
Elsa Brigitta Karolina, f. 1890 i Wexiö  
 
Folkräkningen 1900:
Hemförsamling:  Växjö stad  
Hemort:  Lägenheter norr om staden n:o 10 Julalyckan  
Carl Petersson, f. 1845 i Kungälv Göteborgs- och Bohuslän, Repslagare  
Christina Charlotta Johansson, f. 1861 i Växjö Kronobergs län  
Syster Emmy, f. 1882 i Växjö Kronobergs län  
Elsa Christina, f. 1891 i Växjö Kronobergs län  
Carl Gustaf Fröman, f. 1868 i Ramsele Västernorrlands län, Repslagarelärling  
 
Den enda av systrarna jag hittar i Emibas:
Post 257575
Carlsdotter, Alma Sofia
Hemmadotter (ogift kvinna)
f. 21/3 1875 i Växjö, Kronobergs län (Småland)
Utvandrad 26/9 1891
från Nr 10 Julalyckan, Växjö stadsförs, Kronobergs län (Småland)
till Amerika
Källa: Husförhörslängd, s. 2061
Emibas emigrationsakt: Växjö stadsförs G 1891 032
 
Den enda Selma Gustafva Petersson f. 1876 i Växjö jag hittar i folkräkningen 1900 finns detta år i Boden, Överluleå, piga hos 1:ste stationsskrivare Hugo August Benchert med familj, enligt SCB-utdrag av husförhörslängd.

[Marianne Arvidsson]

Hej Maud!
Tusen tack!! Jag ska vidarebefordra ditt svar till Barbara Chasse i USA. Hon kommer att bli överlycklig!!
Kära hälsningar
Marianne