Friday, November 25, 2022

 

Mom's Sister, Our Dorothy, Like Dorothy of Wizard of Oz But in Iowa: Dorothy Olson

 Nadene Golddfoot                                                             

                                                                           

                               One of 3 poses that I have of Dorothy 
  
 Mom's half-sister, Our Dorothy, was born in 1905 in Sioux City, Iowa at age 5.  Dorothy died on January 3, 1910 in Sioux City of an appendicitis attack.  Frank, her stepfather (our grandfather), had carried her in his arms to the doctor who couldn't save Dorothy.  Mom, who was then born in 1913, never had a chance to meet her.                    
   Mildred Elizabeth Robinson, our mother,  is in the middle in the back row, and her brother Edward Kenneth  Robinson is kneeling with the dog on the left in front.  Augusta's daughter, Mildred Elizabeth Robinson,  was born June 29, 1913.  Her son, Kenneth Edward Robinson, was born March 15, 1915.  

Dorothy was a tough act to follow.  She was so beautiful and according to Grandma, perfect.
               Our  Grandma Augusta when young

  Grandma had worked for her 1st husband, Olson, as a tailor, which he was, too, and my mother spoke often of how Grandma taught her to sew, and how often she had to do something over again to please Grandma, who must have been a perfectionist in all things, both sewing and cooking. Her husband, Olson, had a roving eye for the other ladies, and Augusta had objected for the last time.   
Cast iron wood burning cook stove from Montgomery Wards 

Grandma had become a professional cook.  Imagine, these cooks worked over a wood stove where one had to know the wood placed in the hole and how it would react and the temperature the stove arrived at.  

I wouldn't be surprised if the dress Dorothy is wearing in the picture wasn't made by Grandma herself.  
 
Augusta Gustafson b: 1870 had immigrated to the USA with her older sister, Anna Lisa in 1888; Anna was b: 1855 and they traveled with Anna Lisa's 12 year old son, Charles Karl August Gustavsson Johnson.  Anna may not have married Johnson, I'm not sure.  The girls, Anna Lisa and Augusta, were both born in Backgården, Lumsheden Village, Sweden. 

 My uncle, Edward Kenneth Robinson and his 2nd wife had visited this village during their Swedish trip and had brought back a book of genealogy of the family for me, all in Swedish, of course.  It was compiled by Olle Lindahl of Sweden whose wife had been born in Lumsheden, Sweden.  One of  Olle's relatives was Bob Hadeen who had connected me to Olle. I couldn't find any Swedish foreign exchange student who could read or understand old Swedish, which some of the history of Lumsheden was written.  
 
It seemed my records show both sisters had met two Olsons somehow; Anna Lisa's Olson born in 1855 in Sweden and Augusta's Swen Fred Olson b: 1876 in Iowa.   She was beautiful!   
                                 
                     An ice man delivering ice                                    
Augusta had divorced Olson at the time she was working in the Pierce Mansion and met the ice-man, my grandfather, Frank Hugh Robinson there who delivered ice for their ice box. (refrigerator).  Frank and Augusta had married some time in 1910.   My mother was born to Frank and Augusta in 1913.  Her brother, Kenneth Edward Robinson, was born 2 years later in 1915. 


1735 was when the 1st successful apendectomy was performed.  Surgical treatment for appendicitis began in earnest during the 1880s. Although doctors struggled to decide who should undergo the knife – some patients would recover on their own without surgery – surgical technique and anesthesia had improved outcomes to such an extent that surgery would rapidly became the gold standard approach. By the end of the 20th century, laparoscopic surgery replaced open surgery in most cases, and laparoscopic appendectomy is now considered one of the safest, lowest-complication surgical procedures performed today.

Despite this excellent track record, many questions about the appendix still persist. The causes of acute appendicitis have yet to be identified, and we do not yet understand why the appendix will rupture in some patients and recover in others. Only in 2007 did researchers finally offer a compelling case for the function of the appendix: the tiny organ appears to play a role in both the digestive and immune systems by acting as a storehouse for valuable bacteria, which are enlisted when the gastrointestinal tract loses its beneficial gut flora.


 
Frank L. Baum b: 1856, wrote about a Dorothy in his 4th book, published in 1908.  Written shortly after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and around the time Baum moved to California, the book starts with an earthquake in California. Dorothy and others are swallowed up by cracks in the earth, and fall into a cavern, where they begin their adventures.

Very little of the story—six of the twenty chapters—actually takes place in Oz. As in Ozma of Oz before it, and in some of the books after, Oz is not the land where the adventures take place, but the land the characters are seeking as a refuge from adventure.

The Oz books were my very favorites as a child, and Dorothy

 played the 

most important part in them all.  She makes me think of our 

Dorothy.  It's possible that Baum's Dorothy was a book that our Dorothy

was able to have heard about.  

Resource:

https://wwwrobinsongenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/08/augusta-johansson

-gustafson-swedish.html

Labels: , , , , ,


# posted by Nadene Goldfoot @ 8:56 AM
Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?