Carin “Carrie” Nilsson Westerdahl (December 4, 1877 - March 19, 1938)

Bruce Westerdahl’s Grandmother

My comments about my Grandma Westerdahl are based on an interview with her daughter, my Aunt Eleanor “Lolly” Carlson in 1978. Unfortunately, my memories of Grandma are vague.

Grandma came to the United States in 1892 from Urglopsby in Skane, Sweden when she was just fifteen.  Before she met and married Grandpa in 1903, she worked as a maid for a butcher in Norwood, Massachusetts.   

Aunt Lolly’s first comment about her mother was, “She was a busy woman.” No wonder. Keeping house for a husband and four children (Gertrude, Carl, David and Eleanor) in the early Thirties involved a lot more work than it does now. From what I learned about my father growing up, raising him was a challenge enough for Grandma. 

Aunt Lolly said, Grandma was a good cook, and her favorite pastry was “a tart dessert made with a sweet cookie dough made in a muffin tin with a fruity cram like filling. Coffee bread was also a favorite, "because it was fun to help her make it.” I believe the family recipe for spritz cookies initially came from my Grandma Westerdahl.

Family members today love to go to the ocean. It’s in our DNA, and according to Aunt Lolly, Grandma loved to go places where she saw water. She didn’t swim, but she loved to see the water. Perhaps it reminded her of Sweden and the family she left behind.

I remember Grandma always wore dark, long dresses and her hair was always in a bun. She made her own clothes, and because Grandpa liked her in purple, she had a soft purple satin dress.

Grandma died of stomach cancer in 1938 when she was sixty, and Aunt Lolly, a nurse in training at the time, was her care giver before her death. Well over one hundred friends and relatives attended her memorial service. Family records indicate Grandma is buried in Riverview Cemetery in Shelton, Connecticut; however there is no record of a headstone.

The photo above with Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Gert was probably taken in the fall of 1904.