Everett Aaron Abrahamson, our cousin in the "Children's Home"

New Britain, Connecticut 1903:

Pastor John Eric Klingberg, a man of poor means himself, saw the need of the homeless children of New Britain and began a mission to those children that continues to this day.

"The first step in the founding of the Klingberg Home was an impulsive one. A policeman came to the young clergyman one night and told him three tiny children, whose mother had left them, were alone and hungry in a shack at the edge of town. "I dressed the little fellows,” Mr. Klingberg says, “and brought them home, where my wife received us with tears in her eyes.” At the time he was earning only $16 a week and living with his wife and their two small children in a crowded tenement. “We just prayed, and trusted in the Lord for help,” he says."

Rev. John Eric Klingberg at the
"Children's Home"

Everett Aaron Abrahamson, our cousin, grew up in the Children's Home of New Britain. In the 1930 census I find him living there where he stayed until he was 16 years of age. At that young age he went to work as a farm hand. When he applied for the draft in 1942 he wrote his next of kin to be his employer. He never married or had a family of his own. He died at 53.

The first clue I found of Everett's existance was his baptismal certificate. He was born in New Britain June 16, 1920 and baptised December 12, 1920 in the First Lutheran Church of New Britain. No father was mentioned. His mother was unmarried Alma Charlotta Abrahamson, my grandmother Lydia's cousin. His sponsors were his maternal uncle Luther Abrahamson, Luther's wife Agda and a man named Carl Lindberg.

The next year his mother married Carl Lindberg. They had two children together and all documentation seems to say the family had a pretty good life together.

Now I know that I have no right to judge the decisions my family made a century ago as I truly do not know ANY of the extenuating circumstances but the mother/grandmother/woman in me questions, WHY?

    WHY would Alma leave her boy in a home?

    WHY would his uncle Luther and aunt Agda not take him in?

    WHY would the man who married his mother and stood as his Godfather at least not take him in, if         not give him his name?

His mother and half brothers obituary includes him. His stepfather's obituary does not. His obituary includes his half-siblings names. All knew he existed so ......

    WHY?

my second cousin once removed

Everett Aaron Abrahamson

b. June 16, 1920 New Britain, Hartford, Connecticut

d. February 10, 1974 Newington, Hartford, Connecticut

for an interesting read about Rev John Klingberg and his children's home
click ↓
"The Home that Prayer Built"

Alma Charlotta Abrahamson Lindberg 1892-1965

My grandmother and two of her sisters emigrated from Sweden to the US but her remaining six siblings remained in Sweden. For her brothers in particular that choice was not hard to understand. Their father, my great grandfather Robert Albin, owned a fairly large estate/farm that they would one day inherit. Most young Swedes at the turn of the 20th century worked as farmhands or milkmaids as the family plot (if the family even owned one) was small and their family was too large to be supported by that farm. Add to that a country that was economically poor, not yet very industrialized and had in the past century suffered droughts and crop failures.  Those young people with seemingly bleek futures were also reading newspaper articles and letters from siblings, cousins and friends now in the US promising opportunity, jobs, adventure all to be had if you could scrape together the boat fare to the US. Many of my grandmothers cousins also heard the siren call of "Amerika" and one by one I am finding them now settled in the US.

my cousin twice removed

Alma Charlotta Abrahamson Lindberg

b. 30 Dec 1892 Dräggved Öfre, Håcksvik, Ålvsborg, Sweden

d: 21 Nov 1965 New Britain, Hartford, Connecticut, USA

Alma was the second of seven children born to Anders Abrahamsson and Anna Susanna Karlsdotter. Anna Susanna was the younger sister of my great grandmother Anna Karolina Karlsdotter Abrahamson. Alma's older brother Luther Abrahamson emigrated to New Britain, Connecticut in 1912 and perhaps with his encouragement the unmarried Alma at the age of twenty four also left for the US.

She left Gothenburg Sweden Sep 7 1916, headed for Kristiania (Oslo) Norway. In Kristiania she boarded the Oscar II. It appears she did not travel alone but with two friends, Signe and Agnes, who also had connections in New Britain, Connecticut. Traveling steerage class the three friends entered Ellis Island on September 19, 1916.

Alma never ventured beyond New Britain. In 1921 she married Carl Lindberg, also a Swedish immigrant and they had two children, Herbert Carl 1921-2003 and Dorothy Alma 1923-2013. With her daughter Dorothy, Alma visited Sweden just a few months after the death of her mother Anna Susanna in 1947.

Alma died in 1965, her husband Carl the next year and they are buried in the Fairview Cemetery in New Britain, Connecticut.

photo by E Greer, findagrave.com ←click to view

Vila i fred Alma och Carl †