More Died From Flu Than Bullets

More died from flu than from bullets that year… That was the sad truth in America in 1918.  World War I was raging, but so was an influenza epidemic like the world had never seen.  Theodore Peterson—my great uncle Ted—was an engineering student at the University of Nebraska when duty called.  He never made it to Europe.

Although this photograph taken at his funeral is heart-wrenching to me, so too are the words of his sister Sara.  She wrote this letter to Sture, her sweetheart, on October 16, 1918—just days after Ted died of influenza at an army camp in Fort Grant, Illinois.  Their mother had lost her beloved husband Charles in 1917, and then her beloved son Ted just a year later.

“Mother is keeping up splendid, but the first few days are not near as hard as it is afterwards.  We girls have been talking of sending her out to California for the winter at least.  Carl (my brother) is in San Francisco, you know, and they have been wanting her to come for so long.  This winter will be so long and lonesome for her here.  If she gets out there she may be able to not think so much.  But I haven’t heard her complain—not once.  She is as brave a soldier as any.”

Sara wrote this a week later:

“Though I didn’t go to see the boys off today, I’ve been thinking of the day Ted went.  I don’t believe Ted ever felt happier in all his life than the day he went.  At last he was going to realize what had been his one wish and ambition ever since this war started.  And I can’t help but think, why oh why did he have to die, before he had a chance to accomplish some part of what he was so anxious to do.  It’s hard for us mortals to see the why of these things.  But it must be all to the best, for these things do not just happen, they are brought about by the Divine will.  It’s so hard to believe that is it the best, when we can’t see the why and wherefore.  But after all, surely I can be as brave as Mother, for surely to lose a son must be harder than to lose a brother.  And she says that after all and in spite of all, she wouldn’t had Ted done any other way than he did.  She is glad and proud that he wanted to go.

Sture, I said once about a year ago, that I would rather my brother would go, even if it meant that he never came back, than to have him take the stand of some of our other young men I know.  These words of mine have come to my mind so often these days, and while perhaps at the time I spoke them, I didn’t weigh them as I have since, I know deep in the bottom of my heart I meant them, and now I have come to the test.  And while it almost breaks my heart, dear, I can still say with all sincerity, that I am glad he took the course he did.  I would be unworthy of him and his sacrifice if I felt otherwise.”

For every soldier who died, whether on the battlefield or from the ravages of the flu, there were those who remained to mourn.

The Petersons - Sunshine and Shadow

My ancestors ran the gamut from black sheep to outstanding citizen.  But life isn’t fair…  Those who honor faith and family, who play by the rules, sometimes suffer plenty of tragedy anyway.  Consider my Peterson ancestors.

My great-grandparents were Carl Peterson (1861-1917) and Emelia Fryksdal Peterson (1861-1933).  From all indications they were a close and loving family—Carl’s obituary was titled “Another Good Man Gone.”  Eight children were born to them, all surviving to adulthood—but their adult lives were a mixture of sunshine and shadow, with plenty of heartbreak to go around.

Carl Jr. lived in California for a time before returning to his roots and taking over the family farm in Nebraska.  He and his wife had a daughter and a son; their baby boy died of whooping cough at 11 months.  Carl died young, at 53. 

Anna was a schoolteacher.  When her father died at age 57, she took care of her mother and sisters until they were settled with relatives or in homes of their own.  She married at age 37 and after a yearlong honeymoon, settled down to raise a family—only to die at 40, shortly after having her second son.

Theodore (Ted) was an engineering student at the University of Nebraska when he was drafted into the army.  He did not survive World War I; like so many other soldiers, he died of influenza in 1918, in an army camp in Illinois.

Emma lived on her own in Chicago, working as a nurse, and then bought a house in Montgomery, Illinois, where she worked at Copley Memorial Hospital until she retired at age 72.  Emma was very independent—she renewed her driver's license (for the final time) at age 91.  Emma never married, and she died at age 102.

Sara married Sture, her baseball-playing sweetheart, after a seven-year courtship (interrupted by WWI).  They lost their first child shortly after birth—a hidden sorrow that Sara never talked about.  They relocated to Illinois around 1940—Sture had a near-fatal car accident during the transition.  Sara outlived her husband and died in Illinois at age 91.

Signe was a schoolteacher and an excellent artist; some of her paintings survive.  She married a Nebraska farmer and had four children.  Their oldest son Jack died of a brain tumor at age 31, leaving a widow and young daughter.

Hilma, another schoolteacher, married and moved to Minnesota, where she and her husband Harold had three children.  Their only son, Harold Jr., drowned in a lake in Canada at age five.

Therese was bright and educated, but troubled.  After graduating as salutatorian of her high school class and becoming a schoolteacher, she died at age 30 in a mental hospital near Chicago.

This photo shows the four surviving sisters in later life—Emma, Sara, Hilma, and Signe.  They had seen much sorrow, including losing four siblings.  I lived near my grandma Sara and saw her often.  She had learned to take the good and the bad in stride, and was an inspiring example to me of surviving setbacks and appreciating the joys in life.

Passage to America

Once you become known as the Official Family Historian, a wonderful phenomenon begins to occur.  Relatives, especially older ones, begin to give you things, saying, “I know you’ll take care of this.  I don’t want it to be thrown out after I’m gone!” 

My Aunt Janet recently left a box with me.  One of the items in the box was this wonderful document—her grandfather’s ticket to America. 

Carl August Peterson (1861-1917) my great-grandfather, came to the United States in 1881.  He first settled in Chicago, where he had a brother, Theodore.  He married Emelia Fryksdal there, and later they went west to Nebraska. 

His passenger contract, written in both Swedish and English, gives these details: 

“The departure from here Goteborg/(Gothenburg, Sweden) will take place in a Royal Mail Steamer on 20 May 1881.  From Gothenburg the passengers are forwarded on steerage place to Hull, and further, never later than twelve hours after the custom house examination, to Liverpool, in third class carriages on the railroad.  With the first steamer belonging to the Cunard Line, the departure from Liverpool will take place never later than eight days from the arrival there.  In the above payment (30 kronor) is included:  Steerage place in the Steamers and third class carriages on the Railroads.  Forwarding of luggage viz: 10 cubic feet, half for children; also good and sufficient food from Gothenburg to the landing place in Amerika [and] free lodgings in Hull and Liverpool.”

Several things stand out to me:

• Firstly, he traveled “steerage” class on the ship (the section near the rudder, which had the cheapest accommodations available) and third class (“emigrant’s class”) on the railroad, which would have gotten him a bench to sit on.  A long way from luxury...  Irish-genealogy-toolkit.com describes steerage as “a dark, noisy, smelly, stuffy deck of large bunk dormitories.”  Even so, a steerage ticket could cost the equivalent of six month’s wages for a laborer. (I wrote about "steerage" here.)

• Secondly, he could take 10 cubic feet of luggage.  Everything else from his old life had to be left behind.  I wonder what he packed? 

• Thirdly, he was provided with “good and sufficient food.”  Can I surmise that it was cold and minimal and plain?  

• I am guessing that the “free lodgings” in Hull and Liverpool were nothing to write home about, either... I've read about those lodging houses in books.

The 1880s were a hard time in Sweden, with crop failures causing food shortages and lack of employment.  Leaving everything he had ever known must have been difficult, but staying where he was must have been the less attractive option.  So, he came to America at the tender age of nineteen, found a job in Chicago, got married, went west to Nebraska, bought some land, and worked hard… and his children became farmers and teachers and nurses and soldiers.  Carl August Peterson, an immigrant I am proud to call my ancestor. 

Carl Peterson, Nebraska Pioneer

My great-grandfather, Carl Peterson, was an immigrant and a pioneer, as was his wife Emelia.  Thousands like them came from Sweden in the 1880s—due to massive crop failures there—to settle on farms in the American Heartland.  My great-grandparents’ story is not unique, but it’s no less precious to me for being common.  It’s because of their willingness to start a new life on a new continent that I can sing “God Bless America” today as I remember my debt to those who came before me.

Carl, who went by Charles or Charlie, came to America in 1881 and first settled in Chicago, where it is said he worked in a steel mill.  He married Emelia Fryksdal (another Swedish immigrant) in 1883; their first child, Carl, was born there.  But soon they headed west to the plains of Nebraska, as so many Swedes did, where they settled on a farm in Hamilton County.   

His grandson Robert Wallin recalled, “In 1885 he bought 160 acres from the Union Pacific Railroad for $6 an acre.  He put down $360 and had a $600 mortgage, which he renewed 10 years later for the same amount ($600).  They put up a temporary house.  Charles had two mules and a cow, and he used the mules to break up the land.  Halfway through, one mule died and he finished the rest with a mule and a cow...” 

A fine new house was built in 1903.  The historic Oregon Trail crossed right through their property; traces of the ruts could still be seen in the 1960s when my family visited the old homestead.  Carl and Emelia had eight children there, all of whom survived to adulthood, and he and Emelia remained on that Nebraska farm for the rest of Carl’s life.  

Carl became an American citizen on January 29, 1903, at the district courthouse of Hamilton County in Aurora, Nebraska; his citizenship certificate, a cherished possession, survives.  (Because of the “derivative citizenship” laws in effect until 1922, Emelia would automatically have become a citizen when Carl did.)

Carl never saw his homeland again.  He developed stomach cancer in his fifties, and died in a Chicago hospital in 1917.  But his wife Emelia and two of their daughters returned to Sweden in 1920.  Photographs survive from that trip, including a picture of the small cabin in Borgestorp, Sweden from which Carl came to America.

Carl’s obituary was a fine tribute.  It is titled “Another Good Man Gone” and reads, in part, “No man was held in higher esteem by his neighbors and the community generally than Charlie Peterson.  A man of strong conviction, he had the faculty of holding the respect of those who differed with him most radically…  The world can ill afford to lose in these trying times men such as Charlie Peterson, but the work he did and the example he set for unwavering loyalty will live long after his body turns to dust.  He fought the good fight and kept the faith.”

Anna Peterson Genoways - Love Found Late

I recently wrote about my great aunt Therese.  Her oldest sister was Anna Peterson Genoways (1887-1928).  She was a schoolteacher, like me; and she married later in life, like I did.  I call this story "Love Found Late."  

Anna was the oldest of eight children, born to Swedish immigrants who farmed on the plains of Nebraska near the Platte River.  Her childhood and youth were happy, as far as I can tell.  She traveled to Sweden in 1905 with her mother and younger sister Therese.  Anna was a typical oldest child—mature and responsible—and she, like two or three of her sisters, became a schoolteacher.      

Her life was first marred by tragedy in 1917.  Her father Charles, by all accounts a wonderful man, died of cancer in a hospital in Chicago.  Not long after, her dear brother Ted, an engineering student at the University of Nebraska, died in an army camp during WWI—like so many others, not in combat, but in the Great Influenza Epidemic.  

Anna was now needed to help run the family farm.  By the 1920 census, she is 32 years old and is no longer listed as a schoolteacher as she was in 1910; now she is a “farm manager” with a mother and three younger sisters to support.

But her life took a happy turn in 1925, when she married Edwin Genoways at age 37.  They took a year-long honeymoon, traveling all over the west in their brand-new Model T.  They even drove it to the top of Pike’s Peak!  Their daughter-in-law told me that Edwin said years later that at times they had to drive it up the mountain in reverse, and at other times they had to push it—but they made it.  A number of photos have survived, including this one of the happy couple standing in front of their car:

Back home in Nebraska, Edwin and Anna soon had a joyful event—the birth of their son Charles in 1927.  This was followed a year later by the birth of another son, Bruce. 

But their time together was now running out…  Two weeks after the birth of Bruce, Anna died at age 40.  My father remembers his little cousin Charles tearfully asking for his mother, being too young to realize that she lay dying.

Edwin was now a grieving widower with two young sons.  This picture of the three of them sitting outdoors, Edwin holding little Bruce, always tugs at my heartstrings:

Edwin managed to raise both boys on his own—and they both turned out well.  But he never remarried…  Anna, the wife he loved for so brief and happy a time, was evidently never replaced in his heart.

Therese Peterson: A Life Too Brief

My paternal grandmother, Sara Peterson Wallin, came from a Swedish family of six girls and two boys, all long dead now.  Several of her siblings have stories which intrigue me—particularly the story of Aunt Therese.

Therese Irene Peterson, the youngest of eight, was born in 1907 on the dry plains of Nebraska, near the Platte River, where her parents purchased a farm when they came west in the 1880s.  They were Swedish immigrants with a minimal education—but like many immigrants, they wanted better for their children.  Therese not only finished high school, but was the salutatorian of the Aurora (Nebraska) High School class of 1925.  She visited Sweden with her mother and unmarried older sister when she was thirteen.  She once had the opportunity, at a local fair of some kind, to take a plane ride with Charles Lindbergh.  She became a teacher, like two of her older sisters did.

But Therese was troubled...  At one point she was sent to a hospital in Kansas that was doing groundbreaking work in the field of mental illness; that hospital was the new Menninger Clinic.

She must not have gotten better.  In 1937 she was sent east to her sister Emma, a nurse in Chicago.  Somehow Therese ended up at Elgin State Hospital, a mental facility (“asylum” as they used to be called) near where I grew up in Illinois.  Even in the 1960s, when I was young, that place was reputed to be scary and medieval; I can’t imagine what it was like in 1937...  What little I’ve read gives me nightmares.

Therese didn’t last long there...  Within a month she was dead at age thirty, and her body was sent home to Nebraska for burial. 

As I grew up in the 1960s, the story was that she died by starving herself to death—“anorexia” as we would call it now.  She was held up to me as a warning whenever I wouldn’t “clean my plate”—and since I was painfully thin for my age and a picky eater, I recall hearing the words “Aunt Therese” being whispered behind my back quite often, when the grownups thought I couldn’t hear them.      

I ordered Aunt Therese’s death certificate recently.  I was shocked to find out that she died not of starvation, but of bacillary dysentery—caused by filthy drinking water, most likely, and a disease which was uncommon in the civilized world by 1937.  It would have been a terrible way to die.  What a tragic end to an all-too-brief  life. 

I think of her sometimes and wonder how her life would have turned out, had she lived longer.  I wish I could have known her.  I wish someone could have helped her.

Grandma Wallin—Ahead of Her Time

My paternal grandmother was Sara Elizabeth Peterson Wallin, whose father Charles Peterson I will write about in a future post.  It was Grandma Wallin who gave me my love of genealogy (and some of my Swedish genes).

Grandma was born in Nebraska in 1894 and died nearly 100 years later, in 1986.  She grew up at a time when girls, especially daughters of immigrants on the Nebraska prairie, didn’t think about much except getting married and having a family.  But Grandma was smarter than most, and more ambitious than most.  She managed, after graduating eighth grade, to attend a nearby coed ‘college’ (as the word was used then), Luther College, and then get a job at a local bank, the Hordville Bank.  She did well there—well enough that when the owner/president of the bank needed to be out of town, Sara ran the bank.  But when WWI ended and her sweetheart came home from France, she gladly gave that up and settled down.  She and Sture Nels Wallin were married in 1920, after a seven-year-long courtship. 

When I knew her, half a century later, she was interested in genealogy, and it rubbed off on me.  I spent a few happy afternoons in my childhood walking around a local cemetery with her, reading each gravestone and imagining the lives of those they described.  I still remember her handwritten charts showing her ancestry and Grandpa’s.  I ended up with that information in later years, and it became the basis of a family tree that now has nearly 10,000 members on it. 

But what I remember most about Grandma Wallin was her insistence that all her grandchildren, girls included, should try to get an education.  (That, and the lutefisk I avoided like the plague every Christmastime.)

So thank you for the inspiration, Grandma Wallin.  You are gone but not forgotten!