Andrew (Anders) Olaf Beckstrom & Augusta Josephine Nelson

These are my great great grandparents who emigrated from Sweden and came to Kansas USA. Andrew was born Anders Olaf, June 29 1852 in Stads-Och-Landfors, Vaxjo, Kronoberg, Sweden. His parents were Olaf Beckstrom and Anna Boman. Augusta Josephina Nelson was born in 1862 in Stockholm, Sweden.

I don't think that Andrew and Augusta knew each other prior to immigrating to the US, but they both seem to have left Sweden around 1870-1880. They married in 1880 in Topeka Kansas and in the 1880 census Andrew is listed as a painter and he and Augusta have one infant son, Franz A. Beckstrom. I believe Franz died that year.

They ended up settling in Bothell, King County, Washington in 1883.  The newly forming town was on land that was Coast Salish territory and inhabited by Duwamish and Sammamish people. Wars, epidemics, treaties and genocide were employed to take possession of the land by the US government. By the mid 1850s the US government relocated the surviving Sammamish people to reservations and non-reservation lands. After this relocation, descendants of the Sammamish dispersed into other tribes, including the Suquamish, Snoqualmie, and the people of the Tulalip Reservation, and are generally considered members of those tribes.

My ancestors benefitted from the destruction and losses of the First Nations. They were able to obtain land and farm and raise a large family. I am grateful my ancestors had that opportunity but I am sad that the lives and ways of many First Nation people were obliterated.

In an article from 1983 highlighting an upcoming 100 year Beckstrom family reunion:

"As newlyweds in Topeka Kansas, Andrew and Augusta were enticed by stories of free land in the West for homesteaders willing to work and improve the land. The young family sold most of their household goods, left Topeka and headed for San Francisco in a boxcar.

The trip from San Francisco to Seattle was made by boat. They arrived in April 1883. The family stayed in temporary housing in Seattle while Andrew went across Lake Washington and up the Sammamish River to locate a homestead."

The Homestead Act of 1862 was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government (including freed slaves and women), was 21 years or older, or the head of a family, could file an application to claim a federal land grant. There was also a residency requirement. Immigrants could apply if they were seeking citizenship.

Andrew and Augusta arrived in present day Bothell in July 1883 with 2 year old Anna and 2 week old Carl and Andrew's father Olaf and moved into an abandoned cabin on the river's edge. They built a cabin and lived in it until 1895.

A photograph from the above mentioned article, I think this was taken about 1908-1910.

This photo below was taken a few years earlier than the above photo.

I don't know any family stories that have been passed down as I was adopted out and have never met anyone from this side of the family. But I did find some more articles about the Beckstrom family.

I am intrigued by the mention of a family medical book that Augusta had in her possession. I wonder if this book still exists. I hope that someone preserved it and cherishes it. I would love to see it some day.

An article from the Seattle Times published in 2003 tells a bit of their story.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030111&slug=logcabin11e

Cabin is Bothell's first family home

By J. Patrick Coolican

Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Beckstrom Log Cabin  The Beckstrom cabin is at the Park at Bothell Landing on the Sammamish River, 9919 N.E. 180th St. in Bothell. Visitors can see the inside of the 14-by-16-foot cabin on Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. when the Bothell Historical Museum, also at the park, opens for the season after Easter.

Imagine that first year, May 1883: After arriving by boat from Seattle and homesteading 160 acres just north of what is now downtown Bothell, Andrew and Augusta Beckstrom, their children Anna, 2, and infant Carl, and Andrew's 72-year-old father, Olaf, had to find shelter and begin storing food for the winter.

Unfortunately, Andrew Beckstrom was a city boy from Smaland, Sweden, a painter by trade, and not much of a woodsman, his son John told The Seattle Times in 1960.

Luckily, the elderly Olaf Beckstrom was apparently skilled with an ax and a hoe and was able to build the family a 14-by-16-foot log cabin and plant a garden.

The cabin was on the verge of collapse until recently, when the Bothell Historical Society helped coordinate an effort to rebuild it, preserving Bothell's primitive past.

The Beckstrom starter home was moved to the Park at Bothell Landing in 1979. It had been sinking into the ground, the floor rotting and windows in need of replacement.

At a cost of $30,000, it was placed on a foundation last year and repaired so the community can see its settlers' spartan lifestyle.

The city, which owns the cabin and leases it to the Bothell Historical Museum, paid for about half of the restoration, with another $15,000 coming from King County. Beckstrom descendants paid for new windows.

The cabin was the 1885 birthplace of John Beckstrom, the first white child born in Bothell, according to Historical Society President Sue Kienast.

Built with thick, ancient tree trunks and square wooden nails, the cabin also had a table, chairs, small beds and rough chests crammed into its small space.

The family would live there for another 10 years, until a larger farmhouse was built. A lean-to was apparently added to the cabin to help accommodate the 10 Beckstrom children who had arrived by the mid-1890s, Kienast said.

The Beckstroms eventually would move into their farmhouse in 1895 and have 16 children.

While Andrew Beckstrom was establishing the local Swedish Lutheran church, the matriarch Augusta Beckstrom was the young Bothell community's nurse and doctor, according to the 1960 Times account.

Possessed of an old family medical book and good instincts, she set broken bones, bandaged wounds and tied severed arteries, all common afflictions in the logging trade.

The Beckstroms' rowboat was their lifeline to supplies in Seattle. It was stolen a year after they arrived, however, so they hiked overland on rudimentary trails to get medicine, tools and other supplies in the city.

Preserving the cabin's authenticity has been left to contractor Ron Loop, who used creative methods to ensure some historical accuracy.

To replace rotting boards in the flooring, he found some in an old chicken coop with grains matching those of the originals. He rusted some old horseshoe nails to resemble the original pegs and sandblasted and blowtorched a beam to age it. The cabin's restoration is betrayed only by its unavoidable new concrete foundation.

Augusta and Andrew Beckstrom's grandson, Rudolph Jr., still lives in Bothell. He remembers his grandmother, although she wasn't the conventional, candy-giving type, Beckstrom said. "She was a little tough."

Despite the ascetic life they led, Beckstrom said his father, aunts and uncles never complained about life as settlers, the hard manual labor, the lack of basic comforts.

"It's just the way it was; there was no sense griping about it," he said.

After the farmhouse was built, the cabin stored dynamite used to blow up tree stumps.

Beckstrom said he occasionally played in the cabin. "You could just go ahead and get your dynamite."

I found the following article from the Bothell Historical Museum Newsletter:
http://bothellhistoricalmuseum.org/documents/BHMSpringNewsletter2012.pdf

"A Glimpse of Life In Early Bothell" 
excerpts from an oral history of Carl Beckstrom II, recorded in July 1992 

Carl II was born in 1908 in Bothell, WA in a house built by his Grandfather on Cedar St. and 103rd. His family (including 4 sisters) later moved to a house built by his father.

Carl II was the grandson of Andrew and Augusta Beckstrom who journeyed to Bothell in a rowboat in
1883 along with two of their children, Anna, two years old and Carl l, two weeks old. Their first child
died. Andrew was a paper hanger and painter and Augusta, with her family medical book in hand,
became the area's nurse and doctor. Andrew built a cabin in 1884 where the family lived until he could
build a house. They eventually had thirteen more children.

Andrew's son, Carl l, married Nellie Oates and they had five children, Carl II and his four sisters.
Carl went to Hillcrest school and in winter they would slide down the school hill. Also the cars would
pull the children along on sleds.

He remembers the big snowstorm of 1916. His dad shoveled the snow off the roof for fear it might collapse. In summer they would swim in the Slough, fish and play in the woods. On Sunday afternoons everyone would go to the train depot to watch the train come in.

Carl's chores were to bring in the wood and light the stove and fireplace. Like many people of that
era, they bathed every Saturday night in a washtub. With no refrigerator or icebox they buried a big
crock in the ground and covered it with wet sacks. This kept the contents cool.

Carl's grandfather, on his mother's side, had a farm and the Beckstrom clan would gather there for holidays, birthdays and reunions to celebrate, creating many good memories. Carl graduated from high school in 1927 and worked with his father on a milk route.

He met his future wife, Alice, at Charles Walter's store and they were married in 1931. Later on they were able to buy a cabin on Pine Lake where they spent many pleasant summers with their young son, Doug. Some of their favorite places were Vancouver Island and the Oregon Coast. "

These are their children (copied from my tree at ancestry):

	Franz A Beckstrom  Son	1880 Topeka, Shawnee, Kansas, USA	1880 Topeka, Shawnee, Kansas, USA
	Anna Beckstrom  Daughter	1881 Kansas, USA
	Carl E Beckstrom  Son	July 1883 Kansas, USA
	John August Beckstrom  Son	Apr 18 1885 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Andrew Ulrick Beckstrom  Son	Mar 1887	May 2 1953 Seattle, King, Washington, USA
	Selma N Beckstrom  Daughter	Feb 1889 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Inga M Beckstrom  Daughter	Sept 1890 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Julia J Beckstrom  Daughter	Feb 1892 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Johanna Nina C Beckstrom  Daughter	Sept 1893 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Tina T Beckstrom  Daughter	Apr 1895 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Elva T Beckstrom  Daughter	May 1897 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Stella Beckstrom  Daughter	May 27 1899 Bothell, King, Washington, USA	Jan 1981 Alaska, USA
	Albert O K Beckstrom  Son	Mar 1 1901 Bothell, King, Washington, USA	22 Oct 1918 Bothell, King, Washington, USA
	Rudolph Jalmar Beckstrom  Son	Jan 8 1903
	Theodore Beckstrom  Son	1905
	Bror Howard Beckstrom  Son	Dec 8 1907	1955 Albuquerque, Bernalillo, New Mexico, USA