My Swedish great-grandfather Fredrick Ludwig Wederquist was born in 1851 to Sven Wederquist and Lovisa Dahlberg, the fourth of ten children. Due to my growing interest in genealogy, my wife, daughter Cristin, son Travis, and I found ourselves in Sweden in summer 2008 looking for ancestral farms and churches.
My second cousin Linda had researched all our common Swedish ancestry, tracing most lines back to the 1600s, and had traveled to Sweden in 2004-5. Based on information and contacts she supplied, we were able to stay at a vacation rental on the same farm where Ludwig had been raised in Bälaryd Parish, Jönköping län, Sweden. The small home where Wederquists lived is still standing today, awaiting renovation as a summer cottage for its current owner.
Linda had set me one task to do while roaming the ancestral area of the Wederquists: try to locate the grave of Ludwig's youngest sister Valmina Wederquist, probably in the Hult parish cemetery, less than 30 minutes south of where we were staying. Baptized Wahlmina Carolina, she was, by 4 years, the youngest of the ten children born to Sven Widerquist and Lovisa Dahlberg. Three older brothers had all died in September and October of 1857 of dysentry so Valmina added only a seventh child to the small cottage.
As other siblings emigrated to America, Valmina had become a nurse, moved to Stockholm while saving money, and then moved back to a home she purchased near her birth place in the country. She took in her parents who were destitute, leaving behind their home of 39 years. Her mother Lovisa died a year later at age 76, and her father Sven ten years later at age 86 (finally succumbing to tuberculosis). By then all 4 of her surviving brothers and one sister were living in America; one other sister Emelie remained behind in Stockholm.
One of Linda's friends helped us find the cemetery, and prepared for a long and possibly fruitless search, we were pleasantly suprised to find Valmina almost immediately. The grave marker was modern, well-placed, facing the front of the church, inscribed to "Malvina Widerquist, Alphyddan, 1865-1945" – her name had been a bit transposed at death.
Valmina died the last of this Wederquist line in Sweden; her sister Emelie had passed in Stockholm 6 years earlier. Her will listed no relatives: I doubt my grandmother even knew that she had an aunt still living in Sweden in 1945, and Valmina had probably not heard from anyone in America for years. Valmina left all her money to the church – no doubt why she was given such a nice spot for her grave. In 2010, 65 years after Valmina had died, we were likely the first relatives to visit her solitary grave.
Alphyydan Cottage, Valmina's last home in Hult
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