Växjǒ - Hulda Persson

Hulda Cecilia Kristina Persson was born August 10th, 1856 in Växjö and died October 8th, 1909 in Chicago, Ill. Hulda's father, Lars Peter Persson, was born March 6th, 1826 in Ystad and died July 29th, 1865 in Växjö. Hulda's mother, Ingrid Lena Liljekvist, was born March 3rd, 1825 in Madesjö and died November 29th, 1858 in Växjö. They were married on October 24th, 1858 in Växjö.

From the dates above you can calculate that Hulda was born out of wedlock and orphaned by the age of 8. Hulda had a sister, Hildur Maria, born November 17th, 1857 also out of wedlock. 

Notice also that Lars and Ingrid were married just over 1 month when Igrid died of TBC (tuberculosis). In the church records both Hulda and Hildur are shown as Lar's daughters. 

Hulda and her sister were cared for by Lar's family. However Hulda left for Copenhagen when she was just 16. While in Copenhagen she worked as a maid for 8 years until she earned enough to emigrate to Chicago in 1880 at the age of 24. There she met and married my g grandfather Claus Erik Leonard Sjowall on May 31st, 1885 and had two children. Hulda was a strong and determined person by anyone's measure. 

Today my agenda was to visit the towns of Växjö and Madesjö using my rental car. Google Maps had Kalmar to Växjö as 1 hr 20 minutes and 109 km.

Växjö has a population as of a 2020 census as just over 71,000. I decided to visit the Småland's museum in Växjö which had exhibits on how life was lived in and around Växjö starting from around 1792. 

The Småland's museum had a Växjö population time line that showed the population when Hulda was born of around 2700. I spent about 1 1/2 hours enjoying the exhibits and thinking about how Hulda and her family lived. I left the museum and took a short walk around Växjö close to the museum.

Växjö is a beautiful town with ornate buildings, parks and sculptures.  

I Google mapped my return to Kalmar with a stop in Madesjö where Ingrid, Hulda's mother, was born. The Madesjö church has a long history in Madesjö and I stopped to visit it. 

I snapped a few photos of grave stones in the church's graveyard. There were a host of Swedish names, a few may be distant relatives.

Back in Kalmar at 4:30 to freshen up in my room and record the days events in my blog.

As a side note: There are about 400,000 moose in Sweden and the hunting season culls about 90,000. In the Spring 100,000 moose are born renewing the population. As a comparison, there are 300,000 moose in all of the US. I have never seen a moose in the wild. and didn't see a single moose on my travels in Sweden. One day.