Mightier Acorns

“What’s an ‘Ahnentafel’?” you ask – read this introductory post for my explanation.

Hildur Leander was the second of six children born to Gustaf Hugo Waldemar Leander and Ingeborg Olesdatter (or Swedahl) in Brooklyn, New York.

Her father, Gust, had immigrated from Sweden in 1882, when he was 18. Ingeborg’s family was from Norway, and they began migrating to Minnesota after 1880, when Ingeborg’s older brother, Erik, brought his wife to Todd County. Ingeborg seems to have arrived in the U.S. about 1884 and quickly married Gust. They had their first daughter, Augusta, in Connecticut in 1885, and their second, Hildur, in Brooklyn in 1886. Then they moved to Stillwater, Minnesota.

From Elsewhere

Gust Leander moved his family around quite a bit, probably following work opportunities. The Leander family resided in Minnesota for a few years. Hildur’s brother, Martin, was born in Stillwater, and her sister, Mamie, was born in Saint Paul. The family moved to Illinois around 1894. Her brother Arthur was born in Chicago, and her youngest sister, Anna Cecelia, was born in Crystal Lake, in McHenry County.

By 1903, they were back in Saint Paul, where they would remain until Gust left the family about 1912 and moved to Tacoma, Washington.

It’s hard to imagine what Hildur and her siblings thought about their childhood, since to them, the frequent moves would have seemed normal. I don’t know whether they would have had a hard time adjusting to new places, or whether being the children of immigrants prepared them for that. I imagine they grew up only knowing English, but I wonder whether they were exposed to their father’s Swedish and their mother’s Norwegian, or if they spent time on the farms of their aunts and uncles.

Perhaps always being from somewhere else was a challenge, or perhaps that made it easier to adapt.

Stability in Stillwater

Hildur married William Holmquist on 26 June 1912 in Saint Paul. They made their home in Mahtomedi, where William worked for the public schools, and they raised their son and three daughters there. After a childhood spent moving every few years, life with William may have been a welcome contrast.

And then there is Gust’s departure for the West Coast. It is to find reliable records around divorce, and it’s even harder to know what happened when there are no records. I can only imagine that Hildur’s parents must not have been very happy, and I can speculate about how that may have affected their children. But at least Hildur and William were able to make a different life for themselves and their children.

And Then the Mysteries Pile Up

Life is not static, though, even when you settle down in Mahtomedi.

If you don’t count the mystery of what happened to her father after he left Minnesota, unanswered questions about Hildur’s life begin to accumulate after 1940.

The photo above shows Hildur and William with three of their four children in their cottage at Christmas time near Bear Lake, probably around 1938. They all appear in that household on the 1940 Census – William, Hildur, Ruth, Lillian, Wesley, and Dorothy. But that is the last record I have found that tells me where Ruth was. After 1940, I don’t see her in any records – and the clues I see in other people’s trees lead me to other women named Ruth Holmquist who are clearly not the same person.

Lillian married Marvin Robertson in 1940, and they raised their family in Mahtomedi. In 1950, they were listed in the Census with their four children, but nobody else was in the household. Wesley (aka Bud Holmquist) married in 1943, and he and Merilyn Martin lived in Omaha. Their 1950 household also included only their immediate family. Dorothy married Sidney Woodcock in 1944, and their family lived in Bremerton, Washington. In 1950, they appeared in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with their two children.

As I told you last week, when Dorothy married, William and Hildur also moved to Bremerton, Washington. In May of 1947, they lived in Seattle, where William asked Hildur for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty.

And that’s where I lose track of Hildur.

After 1947, Hildur does not appear in any more records. She isn’t listed in the census on her own, that I can find, and she is not in the home of any of her children (unless she was residing with Ruth, whom I also can’t find). She also did not live with her three surviving siblings in 1950: Martin, who resided in Dayton, Ohio; Arthur, in Saint Paul; or with Anna Zimmerman in Moline, Illinois.

Perhaps one day, I’ll catch a break or find a clue that tells me what happened to Hildur, her father, or her daughter. But for now, I’m stuck.

And sometimes, we have to live with that.