Elias August Fredericks born 29 Aug 1854 in Vittinge, Vastmanland, Sweden and had his christening there on 3 Sep 1854
Parents are Fredric Larsson (9 May 1811-1 Apr 1880) and Christina Maria Jansdotter (17 Sep 1810-??)
Elias marries Sophia Augusta Lindenau on 1 Oct 1876
Their first kid Linnea Teresia dies sometime between 1876 to 1878
They go on to have :
August Alfred Engelbrekt 28 May 1877
Linnea Axelina 11 Oct 1879
Karl Gustaf 16 Sep 1881
Then the family comes over to America in 1881 on the ship Marsdin and here's where things get tricky
Elias is listed on the ship records but thats it, with the loss of the 1890 records I dont know what happened to him
In the 1900 census Sophia says she's a widow, and then! in the 1910 census she says she's divorced and no one knows what happened
Now in those two census records it lists Sophia having more children
Bernard - born 27 Oct 1884
Elsie - born Nov 1885
William -born 27 Jun 1888
Fred- born 9 Mar 1890
So does that mean Elias was still around in 1890? without the census there's no way to prove it either way
Elias has simply vanished and he never returned, I know for a fact that Sophia and almost all her children are buried at Mount Olive Cemetery in Chicago and that Elias is not there
So where is Elias? like with all families we have stories that were passed down and with our family there's two
Rumor 1) They had seven children to support in the new world and so Elias left for the gold rush and died somewhere along the way or over a fight for gold,or any other thousand things that go wrong in traveling around back in those days
Rumor 2) Now stuck raising over seven kids, he simply abandons Sophia and the kids for fame and fun in the new world
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I've been working on my family history for years and years now and I can trace all of Sophia's line and I know the lines of all her children.
But Elias....he's a massive massive family mystery...nobody knows what happened to him
Over the years I've emailed so many different places to try and find him with no success, I used membership ancestry and used family search but I've gotten nothing on what happened
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Anyone wanna try and help?
Just a quick note to say that I hope our audience grows enough that someone with more information stumbles across this at some point! Good luck with your continued research.