My grandmother have always felt a bit sad because she doesn’t know that much about her family. Especially on her father’s side since he was from Latvia. So, when she showed me her two boxes with old pictures and letters I decided to help out. And after a couple of months of digging through scanned church books in Swedish, English, Russian and German I have now found 144 persons related to her, and me of course. So here’s a bit of our story.
My grandmother is born in 1925 as Thelma Ann-Marie Krishjan in Springfield Gardens New York. Her mother, Anna Kjellberg, was born 1898 in Norrköping, Sweden and her father, Arthur Krishjan, was born in 1889 in Riga, Latvia but lived in New York, USA. Because Arthur was the captain of a ship staying at the port of Norrköping he was somehow invited to Anna’s father’s, Emil Kjellberg’s, house and so Anna and Arthur met. One can understand the anguish it must have been for the two lovers since they only could communicate through very expensive telegrams, which they of course couldn’t send that often and Arthur was away at sea for long period of times. But eventually they decided to get engaged and in 1921 they got married and Anna moved to N.Y. Lucky for her she already had two sisters and her uncle living in the US so that probably made the move slightly easier.
Her uncle, August Kjellberg was the keeper of the Hudson Athens lighthouse 1922-1930 which I accidentally found out when I found some scribbling on the back of the pictures below. http://www.hudsonathenslighthouse.org/
Thelma liked to play with her cousins Stanley and Shelly whenever they and their mothers, Aida and Helen, visited. Her father sent her telegrams from all over the world and during his trips he liked to draw ships and cartoons in a sketch book with his friend Max Selling. But then one day disaster struck and during a storm his ship, David C. Reed sank west of the Azores. That was the 14 of October 1928 and my grandmother was 3 years old.