Whereabouts Unknown, 52 Ancestors

Can you imagine losing track of an adult child who has moved away from home? It must have been a source of worry and frustration for my 3rd-great-grandfather. The story has not been passed down in my family, so I can only read the records and wonder.

Carl Leopold Fors lived a short life before he disappeared. He was born on 15 November 1851, in the parish of Vårdinge, near Gnesta, about 30 miles southwest of the city of Stockholm. His father, Anders Forss, was a crofter (torpare) and tailor (skräddare). His mother, Catharina Andersdotter, had a military heritage as the granddaughter of a Navy sailor and a Cavalry soldier. 

Carl was the sixth of eight children, three of whom died within a seven week period when he was only six years old. Older brother Johan Julius was 12 years old when he drowned in December, 1857. The church books don't show the cause of the two younger boys' deaths, but it may have been an illness, as they died four days apart. Gustaf Adolf was not yet four and Otto Wilhelm was eight months old when they died in January, 1858. Carl was the youngest of the five remaining children: three boys and two girls. Having lost the three brothers closest in age to him, was Carl perhaps scarred for life?

It was a challenging time for the family, with Carl's paternal grandfather dying in August, 1857, in a nearby parish. Anders Forss packed up his family in March, 1860, and moved the 8 miles back to the family farm in Björnlunda parish to live near and care for his aging mother. There Anders built a new house named Andersberg, which I've written about previously.

Over the next few years, all his older siblings left home, with Carl moving out in the fall of 1868, at about age 17. He left the parish shortly after his mother's death in January, 1869, moving in March to the nearby parish of Frustuna and then to Maria Magdalena parish, in the city of Stockholm, in November, 1870. 

The records show that Carl lived in Stockholm for the next four years. He was listed as a single laborer in all entries that I have found. The last entry that I located is the husförhörslängd, household survey, written in Storkyrkoförsamlingen parish (Sankt Nicolai), at the end of 1874.

When Carl's father, Anders Forss, died in 1888, his heirs were listed in the preamble to the estate inventory, as was usual. The entry for Carl (Karl) was brief:

Sonen Karl Leopold Forss hvilkens vistelseort är obekant under de senaste 12 åren, antagligen är han till sjöss utrikes eller döde.

My translation guesses where commas should be:

Son Karl Leopold Forss, whose whereabouts are unknown for the past 12 years, presumably at sea, abroad or dead.

It seems to me that Carl had died, as he disappeared without communication with the family and without a departure recorded in the church books. If he had emigrated, his family should have known his whereabouts, just as they knew his sister's location in Wisconsin. He might have been imprisoned in a foreign country, but could a common laborer afford travel outside Sweden in 1874? If he had died in a parish where he was known, the death would have been recorded and the family notified. If he died while traveling, his death could have been recorded as an unknown person. Could he have died in a boating accident while fishing or sailing on a ferry? Could he have committed suicide or suffered violence, with his body ending up in one of Stockholm's many waterways?  

The four brothers and sisters of Carl Leopold Fors lived into the 1900s, dying between 1916 and 1930. Did they ever learn their brother's fate? Was there closure?

 

Orientation

The family lived in parishes in the area marked in purple. The Forss/Fors siblings are marked in my grandfather's tree with the star.

To Do List

• Continue watching for records about Carl Leopold Fors.

Sources

• Church records for parishes: Vårdinge, Björnlunda, Frustuna, Trosa Landsförsamling, Maria Magdalena, Storkyrkoförsamlingen (Sankt Nicolai)
• Daga District Court Probate Records
• Lantmateriet.se Historical Maps
• Church Records: Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Trade Lake Swedish Mission Church and Zion Lutheran Church, Trade Lake, Wisconsin