The Berggren brothers of Sweden were killed “in the usual way” mining iron ore in Ishepeming, Michigan, in 1889. Today’s Tombstone Tuesday is about Lars Erick and Per August and the grief their friends and family felt decades later. When I went to the Upper Peninsula, I was determined to find out what had happened to them, for the family stories were garbled. At the local historical society, I found the news article about the mine accident.

Erick and August emigrated from Sweden to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with their widowed mother, Lovisa Berggren. Erick married Mathilda Lind, the daughter of his landlord, in July of 1885, in Ishpeming. August was unmarried. They worked alongside my great-great uncle in the Cleveland Mine, until the day a charge failed to explode…and they went together to  investigate.

After the accident, the grieving mother Lovisa, and the widow of four years, Mathilda, were left to mourn. Mathilda was 25 when she was widowed. She never remarried, living with her mother-in-law until Lovisa died in 1930. Mathilda died in 1932.

The elaborate monument to Erick and August suggests that their fellow miners took up a collection. The inscriptions on the stone are in Swedish, but in addition to the all-important names and dates, all I could make out was “till minne av” (in memory of). The Swedish, the deteriorating sandstone, and the lichen obscured the rest.

The women who mourned the rest of their long lives are buried in the same plot, but have no grave markers. But they all rest together in the city cemetery in Ishpeming, Michigan.