Ernest, Louise, Frieda and Anna Hann, Chicago, c. 1912.
Today is my first Sentimental Sunday post and I’m writing about Anna Lovisa LARSDOTTER HANN, my great-grandmother. She was born on 17 May 1863 on the family farm at Bjorklund, Torphytton, Lindesberg, Örebro Län, Sweden. The eldest of five siblings, she emigrated from Göteborg to Ishpeming, Michigan, on 18 Oct 1888. She never again saw her parents or her brother, Per Israel, who remained in Sweden.
She eventually had the company of her brothers, Carl Anders and Lars Erik, and her sister, Hedda Karolina, who joined her in Michigan.
On 27 Apr 1891, when Anna Lovisa was 27, she married Gottfried Ernst HANN in Champion, Marquette, Michigan.
I think the predominant sentiment that I have about her is admiration. Widowed at the age of 33, with three children under the age of 3, including a newborn, Anna Larsdotter Hann went to work, taking in laundry, doing piecework needlework, scrubbing floors. She never remarried, but raised her three children in Chicago with the help of her sister Hedda. She lived to see her children married and started successfully on their own lives and families.
I also have to confess that I have great affection for Anna because she was the first emigrant ancestor I’d successfully traced. Swedish records are wonderful to work with and I’m happy to say that I’ve found five more generations of her family back to the mid-seventeenth century on just one trip to the Family History Library. Now I just need more of that elusive commodity, time, to find other generations I know are there.
Anna Hann died at my grandmother’s house in Chicago on 4 Feb 1925 at the age of 61. She’s buried in Montrose Cemetery in Chicago, near sister Hedda, her son, daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter, June Jeanette Hahn.
I wish I’d been able to know her and I hope I’m even half as strong as she was.
Ohh yes, Time is indeed an elusive commodity. One to be cherished when you can. Especially with our research, time, never seems to be plentiful enough.