Carla (Karla Beata Aqvelina) was born January 13, 1898 to Carl Andersson and Aqvelina Johansdotter. Her birth is recorded in Tjärnö Parish, Göteborg och Bohus, Sweden. She was the third born child and would be the eldest daughter. The first child was stillborn. Then came Henry in 1895. After Carla were her sisters Ajlitz (1901) and Ulla (1903) and her brothers Birger (1906) and Martin(1907).
I have few photos of Carla as a child other than these two from 1907 and 1908.
I’ve been told Carla was very smart. She spoke several languages. In 1919/1920, she was in secretarial school in Gothenburg, Sweden. It was there that she met my grandfather, William B. Dawson, Jr. (“Willie”). Willie’s eldest sister, Olga, was married to a Swedish man, Folke Jonsson, and they lived in Gothenburg. Willie had been visiting Olga and her family in Gothenburg since at least April 1919 when he met Carla (likely in late 1919 based on passport information). Family lore suggests that Olga was trying to do some matchmaking for Willie, but when he spotted Carla on the streets of Gothenburg, he fell for her instantly.
Sometime in 1920, Carla took Willie to meet her family on Koster. The following pictures all seem to have been taken on that visit. Many of these appear to have been taken at or near the family home – the yellow house at Röd.
Carla and Willie traveled elsewhere in Sweden.
On June 30, 1920, Willie’s passport application indicated that he was heading to Belgium and Holland to see Olympic Games. It is unknown whether Carla was with him. She continued to live in Sweden until May 27, 1921, according to her passport application from December 23, 1923. She is then noted as living in Brussels, Belgium from June 7, 1921 until she and Willie moved to Cologne, Germany.
Willie and Carla lived at 71 Rue Faider while in Brussels. They were married at City Hall in Brussels on October 19, 1921 after a courtship of about two years. While I don’t know if the photo below is from their wedding, I like to think it is. It is certainly the location of where they were married.
The day after Carla and Willie married, they moved to Cologne where Willie worked as a clerk at the American Consulate’s office. They would remain in Germany for almost four years and have two children before moving back to Willie’s hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. The next blog post will feature photos from Willie and Carla’s life in Cologne.
*Photos on this page were graciously shared with me by my cousins: Jane Forsberg Karlsson, Erling Corneliusson (by way of Jessica Corneliusson) and Becky Sparks. It was fascinating to see the same photos (or similar photos clearly taken during the same time) that ended up with different family members in both Koster and in Florida. Many thanks to all of them for sharing these photos with me and helping build a better picture of Carla and Willie’s early life together.