Carolina Mathilda Olsson was 17 years-old maid when she got into a Halland steamship, in April 20, 1891, to depart from Malmö to Brazil. Alongside with her was a millman named Erland Ekman, 26. In Brazil, they would end up married and their granddaughter would end up being my grandmother.
They both were single as they got into the ship, with another few families. After I found out that they were not married when they departed, a hypothesis I raised was that they were escaping from something. A famine? Extreme poverty? Family problems with an unplanned pregnancy? I have to check the records for exactly when their children were born in Brazil.
It's not likely that they met only on the ship - their names were written together and they were the only ones who paid 25 kronor for the ticket (not 100, the price charged from everyone else). I wonder if they paid that little because they had friends on the ship or if it was because they would work in it.
Their ship landed in Rio de Janeiro, which then was the capital of the very new Brazilian republic. Somehow, I don't know why, they decided to go to the south of Brazil, to Rio Grande do Sul state. Two years after that, there would be a bloody civil war between two political parties in that part of Brazil, and I wonder what they saw at the time.
Erland made good money making coffins in Brazil, and perhaps the civil war created a ready market for that. My grandmother still laughs a lot, at 90, when she remembers playing hide-and-seek with her brothers behind the coffins made by her grandfather.
No records were kept in my family about their daily lives. There are some postcards from later years, already into the 1900s, when Carolina somehow decided to go back to Sweden. It's possible that she had gone back before - she had postcards sent by a girl on her name-day, calling her "tante Karolina". Probably it was the daughter of one of her brothers, both of whom were kids when she departed. So, if there was a family rift before she came, it was probably pacified at the time. But I have no records about her visits to Sweden before 1909.
The reson for those records were very sad. Her father had died in October 18, 1908, by stomach cancer. In May of 1909, it was probably the first time she would visit the family after his death. How long did a letter take to be delivered in Brazil at those times? How long did a ship take to go back?
On the ship there, though, she got meningitic tuberculosis. At that time, it was something like cancer and aids altogether - a death spell. She checked in at the Allmana Sjukuset and from there she sent postcards to her son Carl Axel Ekman (nicknamed Albin) showing the exact window of her room in the hospital.
"My dear Albin, how are you? Are you very upset missing mom or maybe are you better this way? Now it won't take long until we go back. Say hello to everyone and be kind to dad. Many kisses and hugs from your mom."
Her brothers - the "Arbetskarlen" (freelance worker) Nils Ohlsson and "Timmermannen" (wood shipper) Axel Ohlsson - lived downtown in Malmö, in the Björnens block in Södra Förstadtsgatan. Classy place nowadays. The building, though, is not there anymore. It was located at Jorgens Ankersgatan, 10 and 12.
That's where she died in September 1, 1909. She was buried in September 5, and the first person who helped me on that search, ten years ago, found out records of her burial located at the Sankt Johannes parish. But there's no cemetery in that parish - probably it was on the old cemetery by the canal, but I had no evidence of that.
Nearly 100 years after her burial, in September 12 last year, I was the first one in the Brazilian side of the family to go to Sweden and try to do some digging on Carolina's life and motives. With the help of the excellent professionals in Malmö's city archives and city library, I could locate even the place where Carolina's brothers lived. But that part is for another story.