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| Mabel Cavallin, circa 1904 |
In the last month of my mother’s
life, we pulled out her mementos, read old letters that she had tucked away
years before. We found the last letter written to her by my grandmother (her
own mother) just a month before my grandmother’s death.
“Mabel died last month,” my grandmother wrote, “the one we always called Mabel from Texas. Her son, Arvid, wrote me. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage.”
Who was Mabel? I wondered. Later, I
pulled up the 1900 census and scanned my great great grandparents’ neighbors in
Olivia Texas, looking for a “Mabel.” I found just one – Mabel Cavallin,
daughter of Malcolm and Christina Cavallin, two of the very first settlers in
Olivia. In the Swedes in Texas book, I
found a little more: the story of the Mabel's parents Malcolm and Christina Cavallin,
the tale of the marriage of her sister Ellen to Carl Emil Peterson and Mabel’s own marriage in
1913 to Otto Peterson (the brother of her sister’s husband.) I have already told a bit of this in earlier posts, especially in: "Ellen Cavallin Peterson milks her cow" and "Farmyard Board Walk."
In the 1920 census, I found Otto and Mabel still living in the Olivia area with a growing family, including an eldest son, Arvid. Continuing my search, I found the
picture of a gravestone there in the Olivia cemetery and the record of her
death: “Mabel M Peterson Sept. 22 1882
- Feb. 28 1958.”
“Mabel died last month," wrote my grandmother in March 1958.
Identifiers:
Negative #: Paulson538 (The original negative was 5x7" and scanned at 1200 dpi tiff. It was downsized to a 400 dpi jpeg for this post.)
Related posts: "Ellen Cavallin Peterson milks her cow" and "Farmyard Boardwalk"
Date: Circa 1904.
Mabel Cavallin Peterson Sept 22 1884 to Febr 28 1958
Family trees accessed through Ancestry.com
Findagrave.com
”Swedes in Texas in Words and Pictures, 1838 to 1918” (Published in Swedish in 1918; translated by Christine Andreason, 1994: and accessed on the web here.)
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