My Swedish great grandfather married my great grandmother, in Minnesota, soon after he arrived. She had come from Sweden to America at age 8.
They eventually had 7 children, with only 4 living to adulthood. One week diphtheria killed two.
The townsmen ran him out of town, for reasons I’ve never found out about.
We have discovered to come to America, he deserted the Swedish army and abandoned a first wife and children in Sweden.
Nobody knows what became of him.
Story above spanned 1860s through early 1890s.
It came out later that she had been a prostitute or something in Germany, and had left behind a daughter. Apparently it was rather a shock when the daughter tracked down her half-siblings and introduced herself after their mother died.
My father met my mother in Unions Station in DC. She came there from MN for a job & he was preparing to ship to Europe during WWII. They arrived in the station at the same time their first day in DC.
While his ship loaded & the convoy gathered, they saw the sites of DC with their friends. Before he shipped to Europe he told my mother he would return and marry her. She laughed and snickered to her girl friends that night.
They wrote to each other during the war. (he still has the letters)
On his way home to Texas he had my grandfather send her a train ticket from DC to TX. They were married the night she arrived in Texas, in my grandparents livingroom. They were married 66 years. She died just over a year ago.
An incredible couple and incredible marriage. She was loved by everyone who met her. She was known here as “Swede”. 95% of the locals did not know her real first name.
My father has a great big hole in him since she is gone. I work with him almost every day. That somehow takes his mind off the loss.
So.. Yes the article is bunk. She did not come from England. But she did come from MN.
A good deal of southern Sweden lost 1/2 to 1/5 of its population to immigration in quite a short time. The census records are quite amazing.
Albert Johnson?