The ABCs: Abandonment, Bigamy, and Concealment

In one of my earliest posts on this blog, “From Johnson to Westerlund (and back)”, I recounted the discovery that the name Johnson is not at all an old family name, but one that was adopted in the late 1910s by my grandfather Fredrick Arthur Johnson (1888-1937). To recap very briefly, my grandfather was born on Long Island, and he and his family lived in Brooklyn. But in 1917 he turned up living in central New York, in the village of Ilion. Along the way he had changed his name from Arthur Johan Alfred Westerlund to Fred Johnson. (I will be bouncing back and forth with his names: just remember that Arthur and Fred are the same person). I ended that blog post with several unanswered questions: Why did he change his name? Why did he choose the name Fred Johnson? Why, on his marriage license in 1919, did he list his father’s name as Alfred Johnson and his mother as Charlotte Rumstrom? I still can’t completely answer these questions, but some new evidence has come to my attention that, I think, go some way in shedding some light on the issue. Before I explain what I’ve found, the old warning comes to mind: “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”

Fred Johnson aka Arthur Westerlund. Photo courtesy of Marcia Robbins.

In that old post I described my pet theory: he changed his name in order to avoid the anti-German sentiments that were common in the U.S. during the years of the First World War. Those sentiments were real enough, but I no longer believe that that was his reason.

Where is this coming from? For several months now, I’ve been following the trail of the families of the mother of my maternal grandmother, the Driscolls and the Collins from West Cork in Ireland. One of the intriguing – and frustrating – parts of this has been trying to figure out how some DNA matches fit into the family. These matches involve three adopted children, two of which are connected (the same mother), but the third somehow is a separate story. Last week I was looking at some folks from Bayonne, New Jersey (yes, Jersey!). Anyway, one of them was born on Long Island. That led me to remember my grandfather. His draft record said that he had been born in East Hempstead, but I had been unable to obtain a birth certificate. But that was before I knew his original name, and maybe in my earlier searches I hadn’t used the name Arthur Westerlund. So I ran another search.

What I found was a marriage record. We know that Fred Johnson married Nellie White in 1919, but this wasn’t Nellie. This was a 1914 marriage between Arthur Westerlund and a person named Helen Agnes Tucker! Coincidence? No: the father of the groom was named Alfred and the mother was named Hannah Bottleson. My Fred/Arthur’s parents were Gustaf Alfred Westerlund and Johanna Charlotta Barthelsson. There was also a small notice published in a Brooklyn paper called “The Chat” listing marriage licenses issued in which the address of Arthur Westerlund, age 25, was given as 494 Elton Street. I have several records that confirm that this was where my Westerlunds were living.

Transcript of the marriage license for Arthur Westerlund and Helen Agnes Tucker, 1914, in Brooklyn>

Listing of marriage licenses issued, published in The Chat in Brooklyn, 25 Apr 1914.

It is at this point that alarm bells started going off in my head. What do we know about Helen Tucker? In the transcription of the marriage license (I haven’t gotten a copy of the original yet), her parents are cited as Elom Leroy Tucker and Mary Delany. Further investigation showed that her father’s name was actually Alvin Leroy Tucker. This marriage record gives Helen’s age as 18. This is not true: Helen Tucker was born on 27 Feb 1898, in the Bronx. Therefore, she was only 16 years old when she married Arthur.

That prompted me to try to do a little research on the question of the minimum legal age at which a woman (a girl?) could marry. What I found was, frankly, disturbing. Leave aside for the moment the question of what the laws were in 1914. Today, in the year 2021, the minimum age at which a girl can marry in the state of Massachusetts is 12, yes, twelve, years old. Prior to 2017, the minimum age in New York was 14. Looking back to the 19th century, the age of consent in the state of Delaware in 1880 was … wait for it … seven. I have tried to avoid applying 21st century morals to people living centuries earlier, but I must admit that this pushes me close to my limits.

Let's continue following the timeline. In the 1915 New York state census, we find Helen listed as Helen Westerlund, but living with her parents at 373 Cleveland Street in Brooklyn, about 3 ½ blocks from the Westerlund home on Elton Street. But there’s no Arthur living there. In fact, the Westerlunds seem to be entirely missing from that census. I worked through the records, page by page, following the census taker as he walked the blocks: he goes straight from 492 Elton to 496 Elton. I guess that either no one answered the door when he knocked, or he didn't even recognize it as a separate dwelling.

The Westerlund and Tucker homes in Brooklyn. The Westerlunds lived in the small brick house at 494 Elton (on the left, the home with the air conditioner in the upstairs wind), and the Tuckers lived at 373 Cleveland (on the right). In the center is a map of the routes between the two, only a short 8 minute walk today.

The next record of Arthur Westerlund/Fred Johnson is in the 1917 WWI draft registration. He was then living on Railroad Street (now Central Ave) in Ilion under his new name. A year later he is in the army, in the Syracuse Recruit Camp, in 1918, Fred then married Nellie on 01 Nov 1919 in Ilion. As I mentioned earlier, Fred listed his parents as Alfred Johnson and Charlotte Rumstrom. Alfred was, indeed, his father’s name; Swedes often go by either their first, second, or even third given names in everyday life. Charlotte Rumstrom is a mangled form of his mother’s name. Although her real maiden name was Barthelsson, her mother in 1888 had married a private detective in New York named Herman Maleus Eugene Olausson Rundström. I suppose that if we squint a bit, Fred didn’t really falsify the names of his parents.

If the names of his parents were reasonably close, though, what about his own name change? There is, and was at the time, a legal process for changing one’s name. All this involves is filing a form with a court and paying a fee. That filing then becomes a public record. I haven’t actually done the research, but I doubt that Fred bothered to go through with this. I’ll explain why in the next paragraph. But if you think about the times, Fred had never traveled abroad (to my knowledge), and I’m not even sure how widely passports were in use at the time. In the 1910 Federal census Arthur’s occupation is said to be a driver for a private family. Whether he drove a motorcar or some sort of horse-drawn conveyance is not clear. But driver’s licenses were not mandated in New York City until 1919. So, I’m left wondering what kind of personal identification people would generally be using at the time. I suspect that there was none at all. I can easily imagine that if you moved from one place to another, your name was what you said it was, no questions asked.

On Jan 26, 1920 in Portsmouth, Virginia, Helen Westerlund divorced Arthur on grounds of desertion. I’m sure you’ve done the arithmetic in your head already: that leaves a period of nearly three months in which Arthur Westerlund aka Fred Johnson is legally married to two different women. To me, then, a likely scenario is that Arthur married Helen and almost immediately abandoned her. He then scuttled north to central New York under a new name, presumably to avoid being discovered. When his father died in 1923 (his mother had died the year earlier) Fred returned to Brooklyn to sign away any claim to the estate. Thus, it seems likely that at least his sister Wilma (the only other heir) knew where he was living so that he could return to Brooklyn to take care of the paperwork.

Record of the divorce of Arthur Westerlund and Helen Tucker, 20 Jan 1920.

To wrap up some loose ends, Arthur Westerlund and Helen Tucker – to the best of my knowledge – had no children together. After divorcing Arthur in January of 1920, Helen married Charles Aloysius Angley on 18 Jun 1920. Angley’s father had died when he was only 8 years old. This is another ugly story, with charges of his father regularly beating his mother showing up in the local papers. His mother subsequently remarried to a man named John James Campbell. As a result, Charles appears in the records under both the name Angley and Campbell. By 1930 Helen and Charles Angley/Campbell were divorced, and she then married Jacob Stelling sometime before 1940. They stay together until he passed in 1969 and she died in 1986. Helen apparently never had any children of her own. I have found her nephew on Ancestry.com, and, in a biography of his grandfather, he wrote that Helen and Jacob raised a grand-niece from the time she was a baby. I have reached out with a message to this nephew, but he is now in his mid 80s, and I haven’t heard back from him yet.

By the time that I discovered the Westerlund to Johnson name conversion, only one of the children of Fred and Nellie Johnson was still living, my aunt Phyllis Dickenson. I had a chance to chat with her about the name change, and she somewhat wryly said that she suspected that her family was being suspiciously secretive and that there might have been something untoward or illegal going on (gasp!). Maybe her intuition was right all along. I’m also reminded that Nellie’s sister, Kathryn (Kaddie) Squire, was extraordinarily reluctant to talk about family history. I wonder if this story of abandonment and bigamy was involved. I also shudder to think that that is only the tip of this particular iceberg. Obviously, I haven’t answered all the questions with which I began this post, but I think we’ve taken a few steps toward in that direction. I wonder where the path will lead us.

The Name on the Stone

Just about a year ago we visited Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn/Queens in the hope of learning more about the family of Alfred and Lottie Westerlund. We know they had two children that grew to become adults: Arthur (later Fredrick Johnson) and Wilma. But apparently there were a few other kids as well. I have a birth certificate for Eric born in 1897, and the federal census of 1900 lists two others (and doesn't include Eric): Harry and May. In New York I was hoping to find some data for these children that would help me to track down their births and deaths.

Alas, no luck on that score. As you can read in more detail in my earlier post, Westerlunds in NYC, the plot where Alfred and Lottie are buried has no headstones or dates to help. But there was the one marker with two surnames: Westerlund and Östergren. I was left with the mystery, who are or were the Östergrens?

So this post is to update you on what I've been able to discover about the mystery family. I must admit that I don't have all the answers yet, but what I have been able to find adds a bit of color to an otherwise dry story of names and dates. It begins with a simple question, so simple that it took me more than six months to think to ask it. I wonder what the cemetery records can tell me about the people buried in Grave #16642 along with the Westerlunds? I turns out that they do know the answer to that question: there's only one other person there: Gustava Ostengren [sic].

The New York Death Index 1862–1948 has a record for the passing of a Gustava M. Ostengren (that same misspelling!) on 27 Dec 1903, age 72. This was a good 20 years before the deaths of Alfred and Lottie. The record put her date of birth as 1831 plus or minus. This is only an index record, so it contains none of the information that would be recorded on a death certificate. A 1903 death means that the latest census in which I might find a record of Gustava would be the national census in 1900. The search of those records came up entirely empty. I did eventually find a possible record, though, “Wilhelmina Ostergreno.” This woman was recorded as the mother-in-law, living in the household of John and Anna Johnson at 33 Cornelia Street in Brooklyn. John and Anna had three children: Elin, Gorden, and Maple. Wilhelmina immigrated to the U.S. In 1895 and spoke only Swedish.

But is this the right person? Although the age, Swedish origin, and surname are correct (once you verify by looking at the actual record), the first names don't match. I quickly concluded that this was the person I was looking for because the names of her daughter and grandchildren rang a bell. You see, in looking for records of Westerlunds in the local Brooklyn newspapers I'd come across an article published in The Daily Standard in 1911, a short notice of a party that had been held. You can see the article in the image, but here's a quick transcription, with important names highlighted:

A pretty wedding anniversary was celebrated recently at the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund, on Fulton street, when a reception was given to their East New York friends. The Rev. Mr. Borgendald, who officiated at the wedding of the couple, was among the guests. Others present were: Gordon Johnson, Arthur Westerlund, Mrs. A. Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. S. Goldberg, Mr. and Mrs. H. Thorne, G. Thorne, Richard Bender, Mr. and Mrs. F. Quillan, Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Williams, Mr. and Mrs. J. Harrar, Mr. and Mrs. J. Anderson, Miss Wilma Westerlund, Miss Emily Harrar, Mr. and Mrs. P. Werner, Mr. and Mrs. J. Duffy, Mrs. Rundstrom, Miss Wilma Folk, Miss Thekla Field, Miss Marie Donaldson, Miss Juliette Karr, Miss E. Karr, Miss Ella Johnson, Miss Lisa Petterson, Miss Mabel Johnson, Miss May Harrar, Miss Ella Quillan and Miss Mildred Thornex.

There you see the names of my grandfather (Arthur Westerlund), his sister (Wilma), and their maternal grandmother, Mrs. (Charlotte) Rundstrom. We also see the names of four of the people listed in that census record: Mrs. A. (Anna) Johnson, Gordon, Ella, and Mabel. (I've learned that you have to be flexible with spellings!) I took this as evidence that the Johnsons and the Westerlunds were travelling in the same circles and corroborated my interpretation that Wilhelmina from the census could be the same person as Gustava.

Let's take a slight detour here from my original purpose of trying to figure out who the Östergrens were. Several of the people attending the anniversary party were familiar to me, but who in the world were Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund? One possibility was that they were another branch of the family that had emigrated. However, in none of my records have I found a J. Westerlund who fit the profile - no Jan, Johan, Jonas, etc.. Census records in New York have a few John Westerlunds in the general area, but none living at or anywhere near Fulton Street in Brooklyn. There's always the possibility of coincidence, that these Westerlunds had no relationship to my farfars far (paternal grandfather's father).

Well, I think I've resolved this, and it reminded me of one of the clues that helped Sherlock Holmes solve the case of a stolen racehorse and the death of the trainer in the story Silver Blaze: the case of the dog that didn't bark. At the anniversary party we have the son and daughter of Alfred Westerlund; we have his mother-in-law, Mrs. Rundstrom. The Johnsons are, I think, clearly friends of the family (if not more). Finally, we have the name of the anniversary couple themselves, Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund. So what's missing? Why didn't the dog bark? The rest of the family of Alfred and Lottie were at the party; why weren't they? I think it's because the newspaper made one further error in reporting or writing the story. The couple being honored was not Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund, but Mr. and Mrs. G. Westerlund (Alfred's first name was Gustav). A quick check revealed that in 1911 they'd been married for 25 years: a nice number to have a “pretty wedding anniversary.”

Back to the basic question: were the Östergrens and Johnsons merely friends of the Westerlunds, or is there some family relationship hiding there. That question remains open. I've followed the Östergrens back to Sweden. As the census record of 1900 indicates, Gustava-Wilhelmina Östergren came to the U.S. In 1895. The Emigrant Database shows that she embarked, alone, from Göteborg on May 3, 1895 bound for New York. Her full name was Gustafva Magdalena Wilhelmina Saltgren. On 22 Nov 1863 she married Anders Fredrick Östergren, who was an artilleryman. He died in 1870 of a lung inflammation. Together Anders and Gustava had only one child who survived to adulthood, Anna Wilhelmina. Anna left for the U.S. On 10 Sep 1889, again from Göteborg. This, by the way, is one of the major ports of departure from Sweden, located on the west coast with direct access to the North Sea. In English it goes by the name of Gothenburg (although the Swedish pronunciation is nothing like that!).

Anna married John Alfred (or Albert?) Johnson on 20 Aug 1892. John Johnson was also Swedish. The censuses of 1900 and 1910 say that he arrived in the U.S. in 1875 at the age of 18. There's no record of an emigrant with that specific name and about that age arriving in 1874 or 1875; in 1876 a young man from the county of Östergötland named John A. Johnsson did arrive. This might be him, and I'll be pursuing that possibility, but with the name of John Johnson – and its several Swedish variants – I'm not too confident that I'll be able to positively identify him. One interesting note about their marriage: I've posted a copy of it below. Note who the witnesses are: Alfred and Lottie Westerlund! Convincing evidence that I've got the right Östergrens, now Johnsons.

At this point I've found no evidence that the Östergrens and the Westerlunds are connected in anyway back in Sweden. I haven't been able to confidently find or follow John Johnson's lineage either. Perhaps if we go forward in time there will turn up a link between the families.

John Johnson's occupation on his marriage license was listed as sailmaker. This job was probably on its way out even in the 1890s; more commonly he's listed as an awningmaker. He worked for John Boyle & Co., tent and awning makers in Manhattan, for 38 years. His obituary in 1919 confirms that he was born in Sweden, but does not provide the city, parish or county he came from. The three children listed in the 1900 census – Elin, Gordon, and Mabel – were all for whom I've found any records.

Gordon William Johnson was born on 29 Aug 1895 in New York, presumably Brooklyn. In 1914 he graduated from Public School 85, now in Astoria, Queens. He enlisted in the Army in 1917. There was a short notice published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 9 Dec 1917, marking a farewell party held for him by his friends:

Dec 1 a farewell party was given in honor of Gordon W. Johnson at his residence, 730 Halsey street, by his numerous friends.

Mr. Johnson is leaving for Camp Joseph Johnston, Jacksonville, Fla., to serve in the Quartermaster's Department. He is the only son of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Johnson, a resident of Brooklyn all his life.

A pleasant evening passed in interesting and amusing games and dancing.

Three tableaus were presented by Frederick Meyer, assisted by Bert Thompson, with Gordon Johnson acting as announcer.

Several operatic selections were also rendered by Mr. Meyer, a Brooklyn tenor, assisted by William Templeton, pianist.

Supper was served at midnight, the decorations being the colors of the Allies.

Among the guests were: Miss Mabel Johnson, Miss Irene Hoblin, Miss Julia McCormick, Miss Marie Shuldiner, Miss Marjorie Brown, Miss Edna Pullman and Miss Etta Kaiser, Bert Thompson, Gus Elstrom, Harry Kharrs, William Templeton, Harold Ward, Willworth Delaney and Frederick Meyer.

Many gifts were received by Mr. Johnson for use when “Somewhere in France.”

Athough this was a gay sendoff, the aftermath was tragic. Pfc Gordon shipped down to Jacksonville for training on 11 Jan 1918, and from there he went to overseas on 6 Jun 1918. In France he died of pneumonia on 9 Oct 1918.

Back to the other children of John and Anna Johnson, the two daughters Mabel and Ellen. I haven't been able to round out my story of Mabel. She married Harry Howard Hulse in 1926 when she was 27 years old. Harry had been a sailor in WWI and worked for International Printing Ink Co. in Brooklyn during the World War II years. As far as I know they had no children, but that may not be the full story. For some reason I haven't found Mabel in the 1940 census, even though I Harry is listed, married, living with his parents. In 1942 he and Mabel are living at the same address, so it seems that they hadn't split up. Perhaps she was out shopping when the census taker came around.

Ellen married Harry C. Keiner on 17 Oct 1915. They had three children, Harry Jr., Dorothy and Margery. I was able to get in contact with Ellen's grandson, and asked him if he had any knowledge of where John Johnson had come from in Sweden. Unfortunately, he didn't know, but he did say that he would consult the family Bible. It's the Keiner family Bible, though, so I don't have really high hopes that it will have information on Harry Keiner's father-in-law.

There are still lots of avenues of exploration open for the Östergren/Johnson clan. Nothing at this point, though, suggests that the relationship between them and the Westerlunds was anything other than that of friends. The two families emigrated from different parts of Sweden and came to live near one another and attend the same church in Brooklyn. The fate of Gordon is a sad one, but that was really a drop in the bucket in the context of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and the carnage of World War I. The newspaper accounts, both of his farewell party and the reports of his passing, go a little way toward bringing that time in our history back to life.

Barthelsons in NYC

The Swedish side of my family has always been very mysterious to me. I never knew any of the folks who emigrated, nor any of the first generation born in the U.S. My dad's paternal grandparents were Gustav Alfred Westerlund and Johanna Charlotta Barthelson, both of whom arrived in New York in the early 1880s. As I've had a chance to burrow back through the records, I've been finding that they were not the only members of their families to emigrate. My focus in this posting are a few of the Barthelsons who came to and stayed in the New York City area.

My great grandmother, Lottie, was born on 27 December, 1861 in Svedvi, Västmanland, Sweden. Her mother, Catharina Charlotta Barthelson, was unmarried at the time, and Lottie's father is not recorded in the parish archive's record of her birth.(To try to minimize confusion arising from the fact that mother and daughter shared, and seemed to have used the names Charlotta and Lottie, I will refer to my great grandmother as Lottie, and to her mother as Catharina.) Lottie's marriage license claims that her father's name was Oscar Barthelson; so far I've not found anyone by that name, other than a boy who died very young. Catharina actually did not live in Svedvi, but in the city of Vasterås, about 10 miles (16 km) east. At that time Catharina was living with her brother, Carl Victor. Catharina and Carl's father, Per, had died in 1858, and their mother had remarried and lived in Svedvi. Catharina gave birth to Lottie while visiting her mother in Svedvi. Carl Victor will figure in this blog in the future, but I'll have to leave that just as a teaser for now.

It appears that Catharina emigrated to the U.S. on 26 May, 1882, leaving from Stockholm. It's not clear to me if Lottie travelled with her on the same ship, but later census records give the daughter's date of arrival in New York as 1881 (1900 census), 1882 (1920 census) or 1883 (1930 census). In 1888 Catharina married Hermann Maleus Eugen Rundström, ten years her junior. Hermann's occupation in 1888 is given as “detective”, “agent” in the 1890 city directory, “editor” in the New York census of 1892, and in the 1900 national census it's “special policeman.” Catharina and Hermann lived in Brooklyn: in 1888 at 56 Pacific Street and in 1900 at 189 West Ninth Street. Interestingly, in the 1892 census Herman Rundstrom is listed, followed by “Lottie Rundstrom” (= Catharina); then there's a 43 year old waiter from Sweden named Oswald Silverson, and two young girls, Annie Rundstrom (aged 12) and Sarah Rundstrom (aged 8). The names in this census are are just listed and aren't explicitly broken down into families or households, but I would guess the recorder was taking names sequentially so that Oswald, Annie and Sarah are living with Hermann and Catharina. I have no idea who Oswald is or if he has any importance to the family; perhaps he was just a boarder. The marriage with Catharina was Hermann's second, so I presume that Annie and Sarah were his daughters by the previous marriage. I know very little about Hermann's life in Stockholm, so that's a job for the future. Hermann passed away from a stroke at the relatively young age of 51 on 4 July, 1906. The place of death is cited as 298 Clinton Drive, and his occupation at that point as “janitor.” He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn/Queens.

In an earlier blog I described how later, in 1915, Catharina was committed to the New York City Home for the Aged and Infirm, Brooklyn Division. She doesn't appear in the 1920 census, and I searched in vain for records from the home itself. What I did stumble across, however, was disturbing. It is the death certificate for Charlotte Runstrom, giving the date of death as 25 November, 1915. The certificate wasn't issued in Brookly, though, but in Manhattan at the City Home Hospital. It seems that just a few months after entering the Brooklyn home for the aged, she died of “asphyxiation by submersion in the river.” I've had no success in scouring the newspapers for any account of the accident (or something else?). Was there a police report filed? On the document the coroner states that an inquiry is pending. Actually, I just noticed that little tidbit in writing up this blog, so I'm just starting to see if a report was actually ever produced. So her death remains a mystery for the time being. Catharina was also buried in Evergreen Cemetery. When we visited there earlier this summer I had no idea that there were any other family interments to investigate. I suppose I'll just have to go back.

So, my great great grandmother, Catharina Charlotta Barthelson has a tragic accident and dies in the river. On the scale of bad news, though, I'm afraid that's not the worst story to tell. Let's move on to consider that of other brother, not Carl Victor yet, but Johan August Barthelson.

Perhaps I should stop here and give you an outline of this part of the family, so that we can keep track of who's who. Here are the basic facts as I've been able to reconstruct them. I begin with Per Barthelson and list the next two generations. The plus sign (+) is placed before spouses or unmarried "partner," the numbers indicate the generation (first, second, and third). The names of persons in this blog posting are highlighted.

1. Per Barthelson (1814-1858)
   +Ingeborg Jansdotter (?-?) [never married]
   2. Lars Persson Barthelson (1835-1866)
      +Brita Stina Lundell (1833-1897)
      3. Anna Larsdotter (1856-1857)
      3. Per August Barthelson (1858-?)
      3. Ingeborg Maria Barthelson (1859-1892)
      3. Carl Victor Barthelson (1862-?)
      3. Anna Louisa Barthelson (1864-?)
      3. Christina Charlotta Barthelson (1864-1869)
   +Kjerstin Persdotter (1814-1888) [name also cited as Christina]
   2. Johan August Barthelson (1841-1914)
      +Christina Mathilda Wahlström (1836-1883)
      3. Alma Fredrika Barthelson (1864-?)
      +Emma Gustafva Pettersson (1860-1940) (2nd wife)
      3. Emma Vilma Augusta Barthelson (1892-?)
      3. Harold Carl Barthelson (1895-1944)
   2. Catharina Charlotta Barthelson (1843-1915)
      +Oscar ????
      3. Johanna Charlotta Barthelson (1861-1922)
      +Hermann Maleus Eugen Rundström (1854-1906)
   2. Per Oscar Barthelson (1847-1849)
   2. Carl Victor Barthelson (1849-?)
      +Anna Christina Eriksson (1840-1922)
      3. Anna Christina Barthelson (1872-1872)
      3. Elin Maria Barthelson (1872-1872)
      3. Victor Emanuel Barthelson (1873-?)
      3. Carl Johan Barthelson (1875-?)
      3. Anna Viktoria Barthelson (1877-1877)
      3. Herman Mathias Barthelson (1879-?)

So back to Johan August. As you can see from the tree, Johan had a wife and child in Sweden. However, his wife Christina died of uterine cancer in 1883, and three years later his only daughter Alma was married. That same year Johan emigrated to America, to New York where his sister Catharina already lived. There he remarried, to another Swedish emigre named Emma Gustafva Pettersson. Togther they had two children, Emma and Harold.

While my story here has been presented in chronological order, that's not how it came to me. It would be far, far too confusing to try to lead you through that maze, even if I could remember every step along the way. But I actually came across Johan long before I had any idea of his relationship to me, and I'd tossed those records aside as not being relevant to the search. Part of the problem with tracing him in America is the inconsistent anglicization of his name: sometimes he was in the records as John, sometimes as August, and of course the last name was spelled in a lot of different ways. But just as my initial encounter with him in America was discarded because I didn't identify him correctly, that's is just what happened that lead to his untimely demise.

Here's the story, as reported on the front pages of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and several other newspapers in the city. It seems that the Barthelson family had come upon hard times around 1913. Johan was getting on in age (he was in his seventies at the time), and so on August 14, 1913 his wife arranged to have him live in the Swedish Augustana Home for the Aged in Brooklyn. He was a resident, not committed to the institution, so he was free to come and go as he pleased. Well, on the night of 15 December, 1913 he so pleased. He left the home, telling the staff that he was going to spend the night with his brother who lived in Manhattan. He never arrived.

Aside: Who was this brother? He is not named in the papers, but it was said that he lived on West 26th Street. I've gone through all of the households on that street in the 1915 New York census, just a year after all this came down. No sign of anyone that I recognize. It could be that the papers simply got the facts wrong: maybe it wasn't his brother, but his wife's. Maybe it was a brother from some sort of fraternal society. Maybe they got the address wrong. But if it was a brother, then the only candidate I have is Carl Victor Barthelson. This is the second tease: I sure hope I'll have a story to tell you about him very soon. (End of aside.)

On December 20 Mrs. Barthelson was told that her husband had left the home and not returned, and she began the search for him. The family told the police at the local Bath Beach station, and a general alarm was issued on December 22. Johan's daughter twice visited the Kings County hospitals, asking if someone with his name or general description had been admitted. Results? Nothing. It was only on January 15 that Mrs. Barthelson was contacted by a worker that there was a body in the morgue that might be her husband. Of course, it was.

According to the Daily Eagle: "Evidently he had wandered about for three days without food or shelter, for at 3:25 on the morning of December 19 he was picked up in a dazed condition, with a broken arm at Third avenue and Ninth street, by Patrolman Thomas Maloney of the 145th Precinct. An ambulance from the Methodist Episcopal Hospital removed him to the Kings County Hospital. He gave his name as August Dotelson, of 135 Nelson street. This happened on Friday, and the alarm was not sent out until Monday." Apparently the name that Johan gave to the staff and that they recorded changed through time, from August Berchelseon to Dotelson, to Dalase. He gave his home address with the correct street name, but incorrect number. Through all of this, no connection was made by either the police or the hospital staff that a missing 74-year old man named Barthelson might actually be the same as the 74-year old man named Berchelson in the hospital. To top it off, quoting the Daily Eagle's story of the trip to the morgue: "'We went to view it.'said Mrs. Barthelson, 'and it was he. There, on a tag attached to his sleeve, his name was written "August Barthelson."' Yet for nearly a month he lay there in the hospital while the police of the city had his description. He gave his first name correctly and his last name only slight wrong. He had the name of the street correct, too, although the house number was incorrect. And yet no one, out of the many through whose hands this case passed, was able to see any possible connection between this poor unidentified sufferer and the August Barthelson named in the general alarm sent out nearly a month previously." Johan August Barthelson was buried in Evergreens Cemetery.

Three police officers were charged with neglect of duty as a result of this fiasco. It also resulted in a reform of procedures to facilitate communications between hospitals and the police in regard to missing persons. How, you may ask, can I connect this story of August Barthelson in Brooklyn with Johan August Barthelson from Karlstad? The age is the same; both were butchers by profession; there is a census record of John Barthelson with wife Emma and son Harold; and that same record has them living next door to Hermann and Lottie Rundström in Brooklyn; finally, the death certificate cites his parents as Pierre Barthelson (= Per) and Christiana (= Christina). These and a few more similar little tidbits, I think, are pretty good evidence that the men are, in fact, one and the same person