Here's the Swedish handmālat (hand painted) Piggy Bank my mother gave me many years ago. Unfortunately I can't remember the specific occasion or year of her gift but I'd love to find out. Often she would give a duplicate present to my sister, but in this case she didn't, so I'll never know.
I mentioned my mother's Swedish ancestry a few Christmases ago when I wrote about decorating her four-sided Swedish TREE with mini ornaments she had accumulated.
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| She loved her set of 6 hand painted Norwegian bowls |
She collected all sorts of Scandinavian objects, baked Scandinavian treats and was thoroughly Swedish in appearance, temperament and traditions. So imagine our surprise when my sister started digging around on the internet and discovered that her mother was actually from an island in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Germany called Rügen, and that it's part of Germany, NOT Sweden! The area had been a dominion under the Swedish crown until 1815 but was eventually annexed to Germany. Her father Karl was from Stockholm, so no surprises there. His family name was Silvfer which he changed to Silver when he came to the US.
Here are some facts my sister unearthed about our mother's mother: She was born on June 3rd 1875 and christened Gustava Fredrika Wilhelmina Kabeller. Her birthplace was Putbus, Rügen, Germany and a passenger list card certifies that she arrived in Baltimore, MD in 1893, which would make her 18 years old!
Pictured above are the rose gold earrings she was wearing when she came to America. She immediately took them off since pierced ears would mark her as an immigrant from the old country. Fortunately she kept them and passed them on to my mother. Quickly she enrolled in night school to learn English in order to shed her Scandinavian roots and learned to speak fluently without a trace of an accent.
She married Karl Nicolaus Silver and inherited his two children from a previous marriage. We don't know when our grandmother came to Milwaukee, but we do know that my mother Isabelle was born there in 1906. Like my mother, her brother Ted and youngest brother Bill lived in Milwaukee all their lives. I remember Ted living with my grandmother until she died in 1957; only then did he feel free to marry. I was only 12 when she died but I remember her quite well.
Though we were disappointed that she was German rather than Swedish, I see that her birthplace is beautiful and a popular tourist destination. The French travel blog Memoirepleine describes it below:
"Rügen Island is a small paradise of white sandy beaches and turquoise water near the Baltic Sea, in northeast Germany. Mixing old-fashioned seaside resorts atmosphere and Scandinavian influences, Rügen is the perfect getaway for a weekend or more." HERE is the link for a full travelog.
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| Rügen's spectacular coastline |
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| Villas south of the pier on Rügen as photographed by Élodie in her blog Memoirepleine |
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| Sassnitz Harbor on Rügen. It would be fun to visit her birthplace |
