Anna Larsdotter Hann’s Swedish portrait is my Treasure Chest Thursday post.

This carte-de-viste photograph of my great-grandmother is one of my prized possessions. I suspect this portrait was taken just before she departed on 7 May 1888 for Göteborg, Sweden. Thanks to the photographer’s imprint on the mount, I think Anna travel to Kopparberg (Copper Mountain) in Örebro Län, Sweden. It’s about 35 kilometers between Kopparberg and Anna’s hometown of Lindesberg. I wonder how long it took her to get to the photographer? Or perhaps there was a branch of this popular photographer in her hometown? Another research possibility.

Anna Larsdotter and Her Siblings Say Farewell to Sweden

The Household Examination record shown below illustrates the toll emigraton took on the Larsson family. Four of their five children emigrated. Son Anders left first from Lindesberg on 4 May 1887.  His older sister, Anna, followed, leaving on 7 May 1888 for Göteborg. From Hull she sailed on the SS Marsdin, eventually bound for the mining district of Ishpeming, Michigan. Younger sister Hedda left 19 Jun 1891 from Göteborg to Liverpool on the SS Romeo, bound for Chicago to help her widowed sister, Anna. Youngest brother Lars Erik left Lindesberg on 2 Mar 1892. 

The household examination book above shows the toll on the Larsson family, Four of the five children of Lars Larsson and Carolina Larsdotter emigrated to America.

I’ve talked before about Anna and how much I admire her for raising my grandmother, another daughter, and son alone after she was widowed at the age of 33 in a foreign land. I don’t have many photographs of her. But this is by far my fa

vorite. How brave she was!

Anna Larsdotter Hann was born on 17 May 1863 at the family house at Björklund, near Lindesberg, Örebro Län, Sweden. The eldest of five siblings, once Anna left for Michigan, she never again saw her parents or her brother, Per Israel, who remained in Sweden, when she emigrated.

She eventually had the company of her brothers, Carl Anders and Lars Erik, and her sister, Hedda Karolina, who joined her in Michigan. About 1894, Anna and her husband, children, and sister Hedda moved to Chicago.

I’ve had good luck with her family line, as both sides lived in or near Lindesberg for many generations. That’s Anna’s baptism record at the top of this post.

It’s also nice to stop and revisit Anna and this photograph because I’m filled with gloom at the bricks remaining in the wall between me and Anna’s husband, Gottfried Hann. I hired a German-language researcher to read the Illinois Staats-Zeitung for obituaries for Gottfried and she found several, along with his elusive birthdate and place. YAY!

So then I got overconfident and thought it would be cake to stroll through the LDS microfilm for his tiny Austrian town and find his baptismal record. But he’s not there and neither is his brother. Gloom, gloom, gloom.

But Anna Larsdotter Hann never gave up and neither will I. Not until I find her husband, who’s out there in some historical record somewhere.

UPDATE: Here’s how I found Gottfried Hann – here and here.