Johannes Abrahamsson (1819-1867)

By Guy Lamoyne Black

Johannes Abrahamsson was born August 2, 1819 in the Lutheran parish located at Rydaholm, Jönköpings-Län, Sweden.  He was christened on 8 August 1819.  The exact place of his birth within the parish is unknown, but may have been Rubblarp.  His parents were Abraham Jonsson (born October 4, 1777 in Rydaholm, Jönköpings-Län, Sweden) and Stina Svensdotter (born December 2, 1779 in Walhallet, Rydaholm, Jönköpings-Län, Sweden).

He was his mother’s oldest child.  However, he was not the oldest child in the household.  His father had previously married Marta Nilsson, and they had two children together, Stina (born April 11, 1814) and Marta Lisa (born February 19, 1816).

Abraham’s first wife, Marta, died giving birth to her second child.  Probably for that reason, Johannes father named the second child Marta, in honor of his wife who had sacrificed her life giving birth.  Unfortunately, the baby Marta also died about a year later.

Within a couple of years after his first wife’s death, Johannes’ father married Stina Svensdotter, and shortly thereafter, Johannes was born.

Johannes’ mother gave birth to a second child, and his only other known sibling, Lisa, nearly four years later on June 25, 1823.  So Johannes probably grew up with two older half sisters and his younger sister.  He was the only male child in the household.

At age twenty-nine, on March 25, 1849, Johannes married his only wife, Stina Lisa Andersdotter, age twenty-four, of Nyagjerde, Rydaholm, Jönköpings-Län, Sweden.  Together they welcomed six children into the world.

Johannes and his wife had been married and were living in Rydaholm parish for only slightly more than a year, when they had their first child and son, Anders Johan Abrahamsson (born May 25, 1850).  Less than two years later he died, on February 28, 1852.

At about the same time Johannes’ first son died, his wife began expecting a second child, Christina, who was born November 28, 1852 in Rydaholm.

A third child, Anna Lisa, arrived on October 27^th or 28th, 1855.

Johannes named their fourth child (born sometime between July 8^th and 11th, 1858), and second son, after their first son who had died in infancy.  Unlike Johannes’ first son, this second Anders Johan lived into adulthood and formed a family of his own.

The fifth child, Emma, was born November 22^nd or 23rd, 1861.

Their last child, Inga Lisa, the grandmother of Glenda Joyce Memmott Black, was born on March 28, 1865 in Rubblarp, Rydaholm, Jönköpings-Län, Sweden.

It appears that the family did not move around, as all of the children were born in the same place in the Rydaholm parish in Sweden.

Little else is known about the life of Johannes Abrahamsson.  He died prematurely at the very young age of forty eight, only three years after his mother died, and not quite two years and nine months after the birth of his youngest daughter.

The death of Johannes must have been especially traumatic for his children.  Although she was only small child, less than three years old, his youngest daughter, Inga Lisa, remembered her father’s death.  She told her daughter, Lillie, that the night Johannes died was a cold winter night when the ground was covered with a lot of snow.  She was awakened by the sound of her older sisters crying.  When she asked them why they were crying, they told Inga Lisa that her father had died.  She turned and saw him and said, “He is not dead.  He is right here by me.”  Then she kissed him.  Her mother was not there to comfort her during this very intimate encounter with death.  Stina Lisa had left her children alone at home while she walked several miles into the night to get help with her husband’s body, four days before Christmas, December 21, 1867.[i]