Resurrecting Hjalmar Robert Hanell

I wrote earlier in the week about a young man named Robert Hanell, buried in the Chariton Cemetery under a small stone that tells us nothing more than his name. 

The only other trace of Robert that I'd found was this paragraph from The Chariton Patriot of Wednesday, March 4, 1874: "Robt. Hannell, aged 24, died in this place last Saturday, of typhoid fever. He was a promising young Swede, having formerly clerked at Braden's but later at the 1st National Bank." This tells us that his death occurred on  Feb. 28, 1874, and provides a birth year of about 1850, most likely in Sweden.

Now we know a little more --- thanks to friends who recognized a research challenge when they saw one and went to work and also to a little additional research on my part.

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My friend Deb Nicklay was the first to respond. It was she who discovered the Chariton Cemetery Find a Grave entry that assigns a false surname --- and false identity (Robert Hanell Newman) as a 5-day-old infant --- to poor Robert.

Then Sherry Peterson, also a member of the Facebook group The Forgotten Iowa Historical Society, did the needed research at Ancestry.com to locate emigration records for this young man.

Without their help, I'd most likely have dropped the matter where I left it on Tuesday and moved on to the next bright and shiny topic that caught my eye. Many thanks to both. Now there's more to tell.

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The first record that Sherry found was an entry in one of those vast LDS databases, this one entitled "Swedish Emigration Records," that told us a young man named Hjalmar Hanell, born about 1849, left a village called Torpa in Sweden's province of Ostergotland and sailed on 5 May 1871 from the North Sea port of Gothenburg with "Charton" as his destination.

Ostergotland is located in southeast Sweden, sandwiched between Lake Vattern on the west and the Baltic Sea on the east.

That record led to the document shared at the top of this post --- a passenger list dated May 4, 1871, for the ship Orlando which sailed from Gothenburg the next day, bound for Hull on England's northeast coast, first port of call on the long journey to America.

I've circled the entry in red. Note that Hjalmar, age 22, was traveling with another young man, Alfr. Nilson, age 24. The destination of both was given as "Charitan." The occupation of both was given as "Bokhallaren," or bookkeeper. 

Digging just a little deeper, I came upon a sketchy family outline --- apparently compiled in Sweden --- that identifies Hjalmar Robert Hanell, born on Feb. 14, 1850, near his place of emigration origin in Ostergotland, as one of several children of John Hansson Hanell and his wife, Emelie Aminoff. The compiler seems to have had no idea what became of Hjalmar Robert --- no date of death is included in the database. At least two of his siblings are identified, however, as merchants and that would help to explain Robert's occupation as bookkeeper, or clerk.

So now I think we can be fairly sure that Hjalmar Robert Hanell arrived in Chariton, Iowa, a few weeks after he left his native Sweden during 1871 and found work as a clerk first in Braden's store, then at National Bank. It's not at all surprising that as a new resident of a community where English was the common language he began to call himself "Robert" rather than "Hjalmar."

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Going back to digitalized issues of The Chariton Patriot, I came up with one more entry for Robert --- this one published on April 16, 1873, about a year before his death: "Robert Hanell, Swede clerk at Braden's, leaves for Chicago this week to engage in the study of portrait and landscape painting. He has much skill in that direction."

That paragraph made me a little sad --- it has the power to turn someone previously just a name into a living and breathing young man with talent and aspirations.

It would appear that Robert returned to Chariton after his stay in Chicago and found a new job as a clerk at National Bank --- then occupying the much altered building on the west side of the square that now houses Johansen Plumbing & Heating.

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I can kind of understand after looking at various records how Robert came to be assigned a new and false identity in that Find a Grave entry, although it involves a leap in thinking that I probably would not have taken and does make life difficult for anyone who in the future may try to track down this young man whose new life in America was cut short by typhoid. Perhaps I'll have more to say about this in a future post.