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Ola Olson (1854 - 1938)

Ola "Olaf" Olson
Born in Näsum, Skåne, Swedenmap
Ancestors ancestors
Brother of
Husband of — married [date unknown] [location unknown]
Descendants descendants
Father of , , and [private daughter (1890s - 1990s)]
Died at age 83 in Cleveland, Ohiomap
Problems/Questions Profile manager: David Olson private message [send private message]
Profile last modified | Created 11 Jan 2015
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Biography

Ola was born in Näsum, Sweden 1854[1]. Ola Olson ... He passed away in 1938 i Clevland Ohio[2]

1938 may 13 passed away[2]

Correspondence from Paula (Brower) Coppedge to David Olson on 7/7/2015 regarding Olaf.

"I wrote you because the 6th was your father's birthday [actually July 4 for Ted], and also that of our Swedish grandfather. I don't know what you know of him. He was a tall, well-built man and a wonderful companion for Sally and David and me, and earlier than that for Ted and John, who were usually identified as 'grandpa's boys.' He and his younger brother had been orphaned in their teens and, as was the custom (or the law?) in Sweden, they became the wards of a cousin who used them as cheap labor and treated them badly. Mother said that cousin was the only person she ever heard her father speak of with hatred.


What saved him was the friendship of the local minister who, recognizing Grandpa as a bright boy, chose him 'to read for the pastor.' which I suppose amounted to a sort of tutoring. He courted Hannah Tomasson, who lived across a lake from where Grandpa lived, and he used to tell us how, once when he was driving his sleigh back across the lake the ice buckled in the severe cold and since he was more than halfway home, horse and sleigh slid down the rest of the way! He taught me a bit of Swedish and we used to correspond on a very primitive level. All I can remember is jag alskar dig -- I love you.


When Grandpa completed his military service he emigrated to the U.S. and went to Galesburg, Illinois on the advice of the minister to enroll in Knox College in order to learn English. As soon as he could he sent for Hannah and they were married in this country, moved to an isolated farm in Minnesota, where Hannah found the wind, cold and loneliness intolerable, so they moved down to Chicago, where there was a prosperous Swedish settlement on the near north side. Grandpa started a wholesale coal and feed business which did very well until the advent of the automobile ruined it and the family moved to a farm in PawPaw, Michigan, a lovely place which I have seen many times and which Mother loved and your great-grandfather, who was then in his teens, hated. It couldn't have been a very productive farm, and when Walter was ready for college (Oscar was already at Albion) they bought a house in Ann Arbor large enough so that they could rent rooms to students, and in time the three younger children went to the University. Mother said she never heard her parents speak anything but English, which increased her scorn for the Dutch in Holland, many of whom spoke a kind of patois of low-deutsch and broken English. A usual exclamation was 'haieh' (to rhyme with cat and express dispair, disgust or exasperation.)


Then disaster struck, twice in rapid succession. Walter (for whom your father was named and who was much loved by everyone) died of miliary tuberculosis while he was in college. It was during the flu epidemic of I think 1917 and felled so many people that cots were set up in the football field. Soon thereafter Hannah was struck by a streetcar and died. Mother was a junior in college and was utterly devastated. My father, who was a dental student at the university, saw the accident, but never told Mother he had been there. Hannah must have been a remarkable woman. She had been her father's favorite daughter, the only one who was sent to college, a sort of kunst-handwerke-schul in Stockholm, and she taught Mother to do lovely crewel work. All the time I lived at home an occasional one of her former roomers would call to tell Mother how much her mother had meant to him.


Grandpa died when he was 83 and I was 13. The attending physician, a neighbor of your grandparents, said he had the body of a man 20 years younger. He had been a lay minister in the church in his youth, and a devoted churchman always. He was wonderful grandfather to the Olson boys and the Brower children.


I don't know that you're interested in any of this, but here it is.


Love, Paula

Sources

  1. Näsum (L) CI:7 (1842-1861) Bild 58 / Sida 107
    Arkiv Digital page info v100652.b58.s107 | To page (paywall) | Riksarkivet
    Birth record
  2. 2.0 2.1 Find a grave #125769185
    Birth: Jul. 6, 1854
    Nasum
    Skåne län, Sweden
    Death: May 13, 1938
    Shaker Heights
    Cuyahoga County
    Ohio, USA
    Son of Mans Olson and Helena Person (per OH death record)
    Husband of Hanna Thomasson, who predeceased him
    Family links:
    Spouse: Hannah E Thompson Olson (1855 - 1916)
    Children:
    Oscar Thomas Olson (1887 - 1964)*
    Walter T Olson (1889 - 1913)*
    • Calculated relationship
    Burial:
    Forest Hill Cemetery Ann Arbor Washtenaw County Michigan, USA Plot: Block O Lot 8
  • Household examination book: Näsum (L) AI:7 (1853-1861) Bild 19 / sid 15 (AID: v100635.b19.s15, NAD: SE/LLA/13290)




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DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships with Ola by comparing test results with other carriers of his Y-chromosome or his mother's mitochondrial DNA. However, there are no known yDNA or mtDNA test-takers in his direct paternal or maternal line. It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with Ola:

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Categories: Näsum, Näsum (L)