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| Lower right are Abraham Carlsson and Anna-Brita Johannesdotter |
Abraham was born in March 1805 in Vastra Harg Parish in Ostergotland County, one of 5 children born to the crofter Carl Carlsson and his wife Lena Abrahamsdotter. A crofter is a small-scale tenant farmer, one who probably just made a subsistence living for his family. Abraham's future would not have been any better than his father's since there was no land to pass on in this family.
Abraham married Anna-Brita Johannesdotter in 1826. She was one of 7 children born to Johannes Carlsson and his first wife Brita. Anna-Brita was just 6 years old when her mother died. Johannes married a second time and had 3 more children. Even though this family had one maid and one farm hand and were seemingly better off than Abraham's family, with 10 children, and a small parcel of land, none of these children, and certainly not a daughter, would have had any hope of living a better life.
Now adults, Abraham, a crofter, and Anna-Brita, his wife, had 8 children, their third being my second great grandmother, Anna-Maja Abrahamsdotter. A poor family with many mouths to feed. Still, it appears that the family was surviving, and as the older children left to become servants or farm hands, fewer mouths were left in the home to feed. They could have made it. But something happened that changed the direction of this family.
Roughly translated from the Death Book in Vastra Harg, 1849:
The crofter Abraham Carlsson who lived in Bjorklund, born in Vastra Harg in 1805. Married in 1826 with surviving widow Anna Brita Johannesdotter. He had with her 3 sons and 5 daughters, who all are alive. Tuesday the 17th of April, the man went to Linkoping together with his 14 year old son and a widow from Haggeboa in Nykil to sell something (illegible handwriting). During the journey, he complained a little about pain in the stomach. About 1/4 mile from home on Thursday afternoon he said to the son and the woman the oxen need to rest and he needs some food. He fell at once down on a stone on the ground with a bit of bread in his mouth and he died in the same moment. Since his condition and circumstances on the journey and those in the town where he was staying, as stated in writing and under oath signing, there was no reason that the death caused or hastened without his own or other people's fault, he was buried without investigation. Reason for the death: Stroke
Isn't that an interesting way to determine a cause of death? Because it doesn't look like anyone killed him or that he killed himself, it must be a stroke.
Abraham was just 44 when he died. He left a wife and 8 children, the youngest being just one year old. By 1850, the eldest 5 children had left, although various children came back to the home for short periods, probably to help their mother. But in the end, Anna-Brita and her youngest child Lovisa were turned out of their home, living for a time in the parish poor house, but in some records simply being recorded as persons without a permanent residence. We know from an earlier post (August 12) what this probably meant for these two homeless women.
Anna-Brita died in 1880 at the age of 73, penniless and homeless. My great-great grandmother Anna Maja Abrahamsdotter married the crofter Carl Magnus Andersson in 1856, and they left for America in 1885 with their 5 children. Certainly a better life for this next generation, and even though the Andersson family was not wealthy, each of the 5 children, including my great-grandmother Elin Andersson Linn, lived a much more comfortable life than they would have had in Sweden.
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