Charles and Gertrude Christina Andersson were our Grandmother Christina Fredrickson’s aunt and uncle. Gertrude, always known, as ‘Auntie Andersson’ was a younger sister of Christina Fredrickson’s father and Charles Andersson was a younger brother of her mother. They were both born on the Isle of Gottland and became members of the Baptist movement there. She is recorded as having been baptized in 1858.

We do not know whether they were acquainted before coming to this country, but it would seem by the circumstances that they almost certainly were. They did not marry, however, until after having arrived in Kansas. Charles Andersson and another Gottlander, Jacob Alquist, came to Kansas in 1869 in advance of the main body of those who settled in New Gottland in Cloud County. They staked their first land claims and made arrangements for the arrival of the others.

Gertrude and her father, Tomas Tomasson, also left Gottland in 1869, but we do not know if they and Charles actually came together. They were married in Junction City shortly after her arrival there. They established residence in Cloud County either in 1869 or 1870 and were among the earliest settlers in the area. Their first home was almost certainly a sod house.

Tomas Tomasson is also identified in the Swedish records as having been a Baptist. He had been widowed for a number of years when he left Gottland for America at the age of 63. He was one of the original members of the Swedish Baptist Church organized in 1877. The place and date of his death are unknown, but he is not buried in the Gottland Cemetery. His death very likely preceded the establishment of the cemetery.

According to the oral history in the family, Charles and Gertrude had four children, none of whom lived past early childhood. The first two were buried along the creek bank in unmarked graves to minimize the possibility of the graves being disturbed. The latter two died a week apart at ages seven and four. Their deaths were almost certainly caused by one of the epidemics which took such a cruel of children in those days. What the exact cause was is no longer known, but diphtheria or scarlet fever, both now eliminated, are good possibilities. They are buried between their parents in Gottland Cemetery as shown in the pictures.

Charles, Gertrude, and her father, Tomas Tomasson, were among the nine original members of the Swedish Baptist Church that was organized in 1877 in a meeting in their home, and they were members all of their lives. No one reading the inscription on the children’s headstone could ever doubt their faith. Charles served the church as its Sunday school superintendent for a number of years. Gertrude lived to see the merger of the Swedish and American Baptist churches, a development she apparently welcomed with enthusiasm.

The picture of Charles and Gertrude included on this page is the only one of the two of them known to exist. We do not know when or the circumstances in which it was made, but a reasonable guess would be about 1890 when he would have been 48 and she 55.

Gertrude went to live in Sunset Home in Concordia in 1912 several years following the death of her husband and spent her remaining 16 years there. Our cousins Millard, George, and Keith remember her with great affection recalling that she always had either candy or a coin when they came to visit. She lived into her 94 year.

Charles died in 1903 at the age of 61. There was apparently no obituary, but the news item published in the Concordia Kansan follows in the entirety. The obituary of ‘Auntie’ Andersson is also included below.