The ancestor I’d most like to meet…

The ancestor I’ve most enjoyed researching, and the one I’d most like to meet is my great-great grandmother Gustafva Johansdotter.

This post is inspired by the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge.

Gustafva was born in 1830 in Västra Götaland county in Sweden. She was the fifth of eight children. Her family lived on a torp farm – this means they were very poor. They were provided a small house and a meager piece of land for subsistence farming in exchange for her father to provide labor to the landowner. When she was 10 years old, her mother died of “förkyln feber” (a fever associated with the common cold), and her infant brother died a couple of months later. 

In 1853, only Gustafva and her two younger twin brothers remained at home. Her father was no longer classified as a torp farmer – now he was simply an “inhysses” or lodger. The family was probably just one step away from the poor house when her father took sick and died from “kolik” (colic – some form of abdominal illness). Gustafva and her two young brothers were now wards of the parish. The records aren’t clear, but it’s likely they were taken into neighboring homes and had to work to earn their keep. After they came of age, they worked for wages on nearby farms. At times, they worked for or with their older siblings who still lived nearby. A previous blog post detailed the whereabouts of Gustafva and her siblings as they moved from farm to farm around Västra Götaland.

Gustafva eventually found work on a farm called Espås in the nearby Håkantorp parish. There, she would have met a farm hand named Anders Gustaf Johansson. Though Gustafva was 29 years old and Anders Gustaf only 21, they married on September 10, 1869. Anders Gustaf had been recruited as a soldier and as such, was required to be married. As a soldier, he was also required to take a soldier name to replace his patronymic name and he became Anders Gustaf Brodd.

The young couple was provided a soldier’s cottage in neighboring Hornborga parish. Three children were born to the couple while they lived in the soldier’s cottage. Meanwhile, one of Gustafva’s younger twin brothers, Johan, had emigrated to America and was enjoying success as a businessman and landowner. According to family lore, he encouraged his sister and her family to come to America and likely offered to pay their way. The problem was, Anders Gustaf had committed to twenty years of service as a soldier. Again according to family lore, Gustafva insisted on emigrating and eventually convinced her husband. One of Gustafva’s nieces came to help the family pack and prepare, you can read more about her here. And a previous blog post details how the family quickly left the country in 1875 to avoid his arrest on charges of desertion. 

The family met up with Johan (now known as J.W. Johnson) in Wyoming where Anders Gustaf worked for the coal mine in Carbon, Wyoming. Gustafva baked bread and sold it to the miners to earn extra income for the family. Two more children were born in Carbon – my great-grandmother Clara Brodd and her younger brother Carl Herman Brodd. Life in Carbon was probably pretty awful – in 2014, I took a field trip to Carbon with my mom, sister and daughter and we saw for ourselves the desolation and isolation of the now-abandoned mining town.

By about 1882, the Anders Gustaf and Gustafva had earned enough money to leave Carbon for good. All their hard work and risk-taking seemed to have paid off – they settled near Ceresco in Saunders County, Nebraska and took up farming. There they lived for the rest of their days.

I am intrigued by Gustafva because of the hardships she endured and yet by all accounts was lively and full of fun. According to my Aunt Jane,