Charles “Karl” Holmquist was born in Stoverfors, Skellefteå, Vasterbottens, Sweden, on the 21st of September in the year 1868. He was the sixth and youngest child of Anders and Sara Holmqvist.
Family home in Sweden
In 1883 Karl’s older brother Peter (my great grandfather), then 21, left his home in Sweden to settle in America. He came to work in a sawmill in a small town called Jennings near Cadillac, Michigan. Three years later, Karl, age 17, would leave his homeland and join Peter.
In December 1891, just two days after Christmas, tragedy struck. Peter would relay the event to his parents by letter “He (Karl) went out on the lake the evening 27 of December with some of his friends to skate. When they were on their way home he walked ahead of the others…He was walking slowly stopping his pipe…..on the other side of an islet the ice was too weak…when the ice broke. He was found the day after.”
Cause of death: drowning. Charles Karl Holmquist, single, age 23, was gone.
Peter would write to his parents in Sweden, “My dear parents, brothers, and friends…. Your son and my brother Karl Holmqvist is resting in his grave for the first night tonight.”
Anders and Sara Holmqvist had already lost their two oldest children. And now their youngest was gone too, Two years later another son would die in Sweden from tuberculosis at the age of 34, leaving only Peter and one other son in Sweden.
I cannot imagine the loss Peter felt losing his brother–his only family to join him in America. A brother he most likely lived and worked with at the sawmill in Jennings, Michigan. I have not been able to locate Karl’s grave. It is quite likely it was not marked. But I am thankful to have one picture of him and to be able to acknowledge his short life here on this earth.
Ancestors Across the Ages 