Augusta Parsons Hylander
Augusta Parsons Hylander was nearing the end of her life when she wrote an account of her Swedish childhood and her emigration to America as a teenager. She was born in 1873 in the village of Sturup in Skåne county, Sweden, and died in 1965 in New York.
In 1988 Augusta’s daughter, my great-aunt Gay, discovered the hand-written manuscript among her mother’s papers and sent a typed version to my grandparents, writing enthusiastically that she was thinking about “turning it into a little book”; but Gay herself died later that year, and the little book she’d envisioned never appeared.
The story of Augusta’s early life is evocative and full of detail that would interest any social historian, and although her voice is fairly understated, it’s direct and you do get a strong sense of the kind of person she was as you read through it. So I thought I’d share it here in the hope that others might appreciate it. I’m typing it out myself as I post, rather than scanning photocopies of Gay’s typed pages; this way it will be easier to read, as well as more useful to anyone who happens by in search of a first-person account of village life in southern Sweden during the late 19th century (or indeed emigration to America, or Swedish-American life in Waterbury in the early 20th century).
Here’s a list with links to each post.
Part three: Augusta’s father dies
Part four: Christmas and Midsummer
Part six: Ellis Island and beyond
Part eight: Motherhood and life in Waterbury, CT
Part nine: The 20th century arrives
Part ten: Moving around Waterbury in the early 1900s
Oh my goodness (Augusta update)
Part eleven: A baby daughter at last
Part twelve: The Depression and widowhood
Part thirteen: Working at Cornell and looking back over a long life
Footnote: “An object lesson in graceful living”
Here, too, are the only photographs I have of Augusta, taken in 1938 when she was 65 years old. I’m sorry to say they’re not particularly good ones. She’s second from the left in this group shot:
This was taken on the same day:
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