Augusta Josefina Swanson

1870s–1880s

Born 9 December 1879 at Lönsås, in Bringetofta parish, Småland, Sweden, to Sven Johan Swensson and Johanna Sophia Björk. The family left for North America on 15 August 1884, living in Minneapolis and Tacoma before settling in Shelton, Washington.

1890s

Taken in by Joseph and Irene Day of Shelton after her father's death in 1891. Sang at church socials and community events. Married Isaac Hayes Loomis on 17 December 1896 and went north with him to the Klondike; son Edward was born in Skagway in 1899.

1900s

Ran the Loomis Roadhouse at Tonsina, Alaska, with her sister Jennie in 1902 and sang on the Valdez stage. Divorced Ike in 1904 and married George Lovelace that December; daughters Jo (1906) and Fran (1909) were born.

1910s–1920s

Son Bud was born in Portland in 1912. Lived in Olympia, Tumwater, Tacoma, and Seattle, singing solos at Mason Methodist Church in Tacoma. Followed her son Ed to Port Angeles in 1921 and her daughter Jo to Seattle in 1924.

1930s–1960s

Lived in Seattle, helping raise her grandson Craig, and sang at her granddaughter Patricia's wedding in 1947. Died in Seattle on 28 May 1965, at eighty-five.

From Småland to Shelton

Augusta Josefina Swanson was born on December 9, 1879, at Lönsås, a soldier's croft on the Drageryd Södergård farm in Bringetofta parish, in Småland, Sweden. Her parents were Sven Johan Swensson and Johanna Sophia Björk, and she had older sisters Ella and Anna and a brother, Charles, and younger siblings Frank and Jennie. Food was scarce, and she remembered waiting anxiously for her father to come home from shopping trips, and eating raw potatoes like apples as a treat.

On August 15, 1884, when Augusta was four, the family left their home for North America. They lived for a time in Minneapolis and in Tacoma, where her sister Annie was born in 1888, and by 1890 they were in Shelton, in Mason County, Washington. Her father died in 1891, and on April 7 that year Augusta, then eleven, went to live with Joseph Warren Day and his wife, Irene, who formally adopted her that July. She was fond of Joseph but disliked his wife, who expected her to do the housework, down to washing every window in the house each week, and she did not keep in touch with them after they moved to Oregon.

Augusta went to the Shelton public school and sang wherever she could: solos and duets at Methodist church socials, "Sunshine of Paradise Alley" at the Eastern Star's St. Patrick's Day party, and a duet in the Demorest Medal Contest at Kneeland's Hall. In November 1896 she and Ike Loomis were among nineteen people on a four-horse sleigh ride to Union City that arrived for supper at two in the morning and broke down on the way home. On December 17, 1896, she married Ike at the home of Arthur Needham in Shelton.

The Klondike and Alaska

Ike ran pack trains on the White Pass trail during the Klondike rush, and Augusta went north with him, cooking for his crews in a tent while she was expecting their son. Edward was born at home in Skagway on May 5, 1899. In September 1901 she and her sister Jennie sailed to Valdez to join Ike at Tonsina but decided to winter in Valdez. That December they sang in a quartet and a duet at the opening of Moose Hall. In the spring of 1902 the sisters ran Ike's newly renovated roadhouse at Tonsina, where travelers praised the cooking and "had a concert that evening, which relieved the monotony of the trip wonderfully, both Mrs. Loomis and her sister being splendid vocalists."

Back in Valdez that fall she played Sally, "Dan's good-hearted little cook," in an amateur production of "A Family Affair" at Moose Hall. The Alaska Prospector wrote that "it was difficult to separate the art from the sweetness and charm and exceeding beauty that is natural to Mrs. Loomis. One wonders that a lady of her stage appearance and grace has not adopted the stage as a profession." That November she sang two solos at the Moose reception for the U.S. Attorney for Alaska and sang in the choir at a funeral in Valdez.

Divorce and a Second Family

The marriage did not last. In January 1904, while she was working as a cook in a logging camp, Augusta filed for divorce, testifying that Ike had never supported her and their son and had been "drunk and dissolute" for most of their marriage, gambling their money away. The divorce was granted that April, and she was given full custody of Ed. Around the same time she lost a trunk holding all her possessions, including some of her mother's things, on the ship from Alaska to Seattle.

On December 26, 1904, in Shelton, she married George Lovelace. Their children were Josephine (Jo), born in 1906, Frances (Fran) in 1909, and Chauncey (Bud) in 1912. About 1907 they moved to Olympia to help care for George's parents, and the family lived in Portland, on a small ranch at Tumwater, in Tacoma from 1915, and in Seattle from 1919. In Tacoma Augusta sang solos at Mason Methodist Church, directed a candlelit pageant of twenty-seven girls, and in 1919 sang in the Tacoma Oratorio Society's chorus in Handel's "Judas Maccabeus." In the spring of 1920 she took the children clam digging at Alki Beach and made chowder for company.

Keeping the Family Together

In 1921, wanting to keep the family together, Augusta followed her son Ed to Port Angeles, and when he married she gave him and Beulah her house on West 2nd Street and moved nearby. In 1924 she followed Jo to Seattle, where Jo was going to business school, and later went back to Port Angeles to help Beulah through a difficult birth. She clerked in a bakery in 1926 and worked as a seamstress in 1929, and in the early 1930s her son Bud lived with her. After Fran's divorce in the mid-1930s, Fran and her son, Craig, moved in with Augusta in Seattle, and in 1941 Augusta moved to Portland for a time to help Fran raise him.

On June 24, 1947, she sang "At Dawning" at her granddaughter Patricia's wedding to Ray Lobb at Tibbetts Methodist Church in Seattle. In June 1953, while she was in Los Angeles with Fran, Ed and Beulah called on her during their long drive around the West. In 1954 she flew to Los Angeles with Fran, and in October 1956 she took a five-day trip with Fran and Jo over Chinook Pass and down to Eugene and Portland, where they spent an afternoon with Patricia. In her last years she lived alone in an apartment on Admiral Way in West Seattle, and Jo, who lived nearby, came almost every day. Augusta died of congestive heart failure at the Ferncrest Sanitarium in Seattle on May 28, 1965, at eighty-five, and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery.