re: #314 calochortus

My paternal great grandparents in Sweden couldn’t make a go of it on the farm they rented and fell into the category of inhyseshjon (dependent tenant) which is evidently colloquially translated as “parasite” since they are lodgers who can’t pay rent.
Obviously they received charity-they had a cottage to live in-but they lost 3 babies in 4 years so things must have been difficult in the extreme. Eventually they moved a few miles away where in his late 50s my great grandfather got a job quarrying stone. I cannot imagine.
So, even under those circumstances charity was limited and came with a lot of social censure, though I’m sure the whole community was dirt poor and there wasn’t a lot to go around.

My Swedish forebears came from a similar background. My maternal grandmother was a house servant as a young girl. It was a common practice among farm families to send the girls out to be house servants and any boys not needed on the farm to apprentice or be a farm laborer. Grandma Caroline emigrated at 19.

My maternal grandfather was the youngest of seven. He was the last to emigrate (at 20) to the USA, and was the only child to return to Sweden (twice) to bury their parents. He had been apprenticed at a young age as cabinetmaker and carpenter. His parents were tenant farmers just as you described.

My other grandmother came first to Canada, following her immigrant father (a cobbler) at age 13, then ended up working as a maid in Chicago.