Family Reunion: Leander/Lenander
a quick overview of my work on this surname
My mother-in-law’s paternal grandmother was Hildur Agda Leander (1886-1945). She wished you “Merry Christmas, from 1938” a few weeks ago - she’s seated between the Christmas tree and her husband, Arvid William Holmquist:
Hildur was the daughter of Gustav Leander and Ingeborg Swedahl, born on 18 Dec 1886, probably in Brooklyn, New York, and was baptized on 19 Feb 1893 in the Christ Lutheran Church in St Paul, Minnesota.
Gustav and Ingeborg were immigrants who married in New York about 1884, not long after arriving from Sweden and Norway. Gustav was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Ingeborg in a village called Byneset, Norway. Their first two children were born in Connecticut and Brooklyn, New York, respectively, and the family had moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, by 1888. We don’t know what happened to Gust; the 1913 City Directory for Saint Paul lists everyone in his family living at 1019 White Bear Ave, except for "Gust M", who it says "moved to Tacoma Wash". Ingeborg is listed as "divorced" and living with Hildur and William Holmquist in Lincoln Township on the 1920 Census, but the rest of Gust's biography is a mystery.
Fortunately for us, there are good records in Sweden that tell us about Gust’s origins. His parents were Mårten Persson Lenander (1833–1896) and Augusta Charlotta Gustafsson (b. 1833), and he had three siblings: Arthur, Norma, and Agda (who died at one year of age). Swedish “Household Clerical Surveys” from the late 1800s give us some insight into where the family lived - but after Gust emigrated, and Mårten died, it isn’t clear what happened to Augusta.
There are a lot of unanswered questions to look into for each of these individuals. I’m pretty sure Arthur emigrated to the U.S., but if he did, he used a middle name (William) and the surname “Lenander” instead of “Leander.” Norma appears to have emigrated to Chicago, but she died back in Gothenburg. There are small disagreements between the records that might be nothing - Mårten’s birthdate is sometimes recorded as “20 May” and sometimes as “29 May” - or might indicate that I am mixing up records from multiple families.
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