Laura Mathilda Larsdotter, the mother of Selma Alvida Antonson and the grandmother of Bertha Benson, was born on June 14, 1836, at Erikstorp in Sexdrega parish, Sweden, five months after her father died. She left home at thirteen, worked as a maid, and followed her mother and brother to Svenljunga, where she married a farmhand who became a crofter. She was widowed at forty. She died in the Svenljunga poorhouse in 1885.
Laura’s story is told here backward, the way it was found. In Swedish research you start from a place where you know your ancestor lived and follow the minister’s notes from parish to parish. Laura married and had all her children in Svenljunga, but she was not born there. Each record below gives the clue to the one before it.
The Poorhouse
Laura died in Svenljunga on April 12, 1885, of lungsot, consumption, which today is called tuberculosis. The death register gives her name as Laura Mathilda Larsdotter and calls her ihjn., short for inhyseshjon, a poor lodger, at Fattighuset, the parish poorhouse.
She had lived there since 1878. Her husband, Anton Svensson, a crofter (torpare), or tenant farmer, at Alabäcken, died on March 11, 1877. A crofter’s family had no land of its own and lost their home when the crofter died. In the household examination book, the minister crossed out Laura and her four children on the Alabäcken page and wrote “Fattighuset” beside them.
On the poorhouse page Laura is entered as Enk., a widow, with her children: Augusta Matilda, born May 22, 1863; Gustaf Adolf, born December 29, 1866; Selma Alvida, born January 8, 1870; and Carl Rudolf, born July 29, 1873. Gustaf, Selma and Carl came to the poorhouse in 1878; Augusta, who was older and may have been working elsewhere, came in 1880.
When Laura died her children were 22, 18, 15 and 11. Selma stayed in the poorhouse until 1887, then went to work in the textile mills near Borås, and in 1895 she sailed for America. Her story is here.
Marriage in Svenljunga
Laura married Anton Svensson in Svenljunga on June 30, 1860. The marriage register calls him a dräng (farmhand) at Svenljunga Landbogården, born in 1833, and her a piga (maid) at the same place, born in 1836.
The banns register adds more. The banns were read on May 6, 13 and 20, 1860, for “the farmhand Anton Svensson from Svenljunga Landbogården and the maid Laura Mathilda Larsdotter, of the same place.” He was 27 and she was 24. Under Swedish law of the time an unmarried woman needed her guardian’s consent to marry. The consent column reads Modern genom äldste brodern And. Björklund i Svenlj. Landbog.: her mother, through her eldest brother, Andreas Björklund, of Svenljunga Landbogården.
So Laura was working on her brother’s farm when she met her husband. The household examination book for 1856–1861 shows the whole family together at Svenljunga Landbogården. Andreas Björklund, born January 21, 1822, heads the household with his wife, Brita Christina Redin, and their children. Further down the page is the widow Malena Svensdotter, Laura’s mother. Below her come the farmhands and maids, among them Laura Mathilda Larsdotter, born June 14, 1836, who moved in from Sexdrega in 1857 and moved out to Ahlabäcken in 1860. A note beside her records the banns with Anton Svensson.
Andreas had come to Svenljunga in 1848. His mother, Malena Svensdotter, born March 11, 1792, and his youngest brother, Per August Larsson, born June 13, 1834, followed from Sexdrega in 1849 and lived with him. The note beside Andreas appears to call him ägare och brukare, owner and farmer. Per August left in 1854 for Rydboholm, near Borås, the same place where his niece Selma would work in the weaving mill more than thirty years later.
Malena stayed in Andreas’s household for the rest of her life. In the household examination book for 1861–1872 she is still in his household, entered as the widow Magdalena Svensdotter, fattighj. (fattighjon, a pauper on parish relief), born March 11, 1792. The household had come down in the world. A note in the margin appears to read Inhys. på Ahlabäcken 64: from 1864 Andreas and his family were lodgers (inhyses) at Ahlabäcken, the same place where Laura and Anton had their croft. Andreas died on March 26, 1866, and his wife, Brita Christina Redin, is marked as a widow. Malena remained in the household, and her death is entered beside her name: 2/6 70.
Malena died on June 2, 1870, aged 78 years, 2 months and 21 days, which agrees with her birth date. The death register gives her name in its full form, Magdalena Svensdotter (Malena is short for Magdalena), and repeats that she was a pauper at Ahlabäcken. Selma, Laura’s third child, was then five months old.
In Sweden the minister kept a register of everyone who moved into the parish and everyone who moved out. The Svenljunga moving-in register shows Laura, a piga, arriving from Sexdrega on October 17, 1857.
Sexdrega’s moving-out register has her too, as Pig. Laura Larsdotter Björklund, leaving on November 17, 1857. The two dates are exactly a month apart, so one minister probably wrote the wrong month. The record also gives her a second surname, Björklund. It turns out to be her father’s, and her brother Andreas used it all his life.
A Maid in Ljushult
Before she left for Svenljunga, Laura lived in Ljushult, a small parish next to Sexdrega that shared its minister with it, which is probably why her moving-out entry is in the Sexdrega register. In the Ljushult household examination book for 1854–1858 she is at Sävshult Västergården, using her father’s surname, Björklund. The note says she came from Trantorp in 1855 and left for Svenljunga in October 1857.
Earlier in the same book she is at Trantorp, under the name Laura Larsdotter, born at Erikstorp in 1836. The note says she went to Sävshult in 1855.
In the book before that, she is already at Trantorp, in the household of the widow Petronella Hagman and her daughter Johanna. The word in front of Laura’s name appears to be fosterd., foster daughter. The note gives “Erikstorp 850,” for 1850. Laura was about thirteen.
Erikstorp
At Erikstorp, in the Sexdrega household examination book for 1837–1849, Laura is listed as Mathilda, with her widowed mother and her brothers and sisters. The notes at the right show the family breaking up in the 1840s. Mathilda went to Trantorp in 1849. Her mother and her brother Per August went to Svenljunga the same year, to live with her eldest brother, Andreas, and the other children went to other places.
The move to Svenljunga in 1849 explains Laura’s own move eight years later. She was going to her brother Andreas’s farm, where her mother was living.
The book before Laura was born shows the whole family at Erikstorp. Her father is Lars Björklund, born in 1787, and her mother is Malena Svensdotter, born in 1792. Their children are Andreas, born in 1822; Sven Johannes, born in 1824; Britta Sophia, born in 1826; Lars Magnus, born in 1828; and Per August, born in 1834. The note beside Lars records his death on January 26, 1836. Laura was born five months later and never knew her father.
Laura’s two surnames come from her father. Larsdotter means “Lars’s daughter,” in the old custom that also made Selma an Antonsdotter. Björklund was her father’s own surname. In the countryside, names like Björklund (“birch grove”) were often given to soldiers or taken by craftsmen. Laura used the name only for a short time, but her eldest brother, Andreas, was Björklund all his life.
October or November 1857?
The Svenljunga moving-in register says Laura arrived on October 17, 1857. The Sexdrega moving-out register says she left on November 17, 1857, a month later. The Ljushult household book gives October 1857, which agrees with Svenljunga, so October is more likely. The Sexdrega clerk probably wrote the wrong month.
Not found
No baptism entry for Laura has been found, so her birth date of June 14, 1836, rests on the household examination books, which give it the same way every time. No death entry has been found for her father, Lars Björklund. The Sexdrega household book records his death on January 26, 1836, and he is gone from the family by the next book.