Augusta Josefina Swanson

1870s

Born 9 December 1879 in Bringetofta, in the Småland region of southern Sweden.

1880s

On 15 August 1884 her family left their home in Bringetofta for North America; Augusta was four. They settled around Shelton, Mason County, Washington, and both her parents died within a few years of arriving.

1890s

Married Isaac Hayes Loomis at Shelton on 17 December 1896.

1900s

In spring 1902 she worked at the Loomis roadhouse at Tonsina, Alaska. The marriage ended in divorce in 1904.

1960s

Died at Ferncrest Sanitarium, Seattle, on 28 May 1965.

A Swedish Childhood, and an Ocean Away

Augusta Josefina Swanson was born on December 9, 1879, in Bringetofta, in Sweden's Småland region. She remembered, from a hard childhood, anxiously awaiting her father's return from shopping trips when food was scarce, and eating raw potatoes as a treat, like apples. On August 15, 1884, when Augusta was four, the family left Bringetofta for North America, eventually settling around Shelton, in Washington's Mason County. Her father died when she was eleven, and on July 17, 1891, she was adopted by Joseph Warren Day and his wife, Irene Ansorge Day; Augusta kept fond memories of Joseph but disliked his wife, who set her to cleaning every window in the house each week, and she did not stay in touch with the couple after they later moved to Oregon.

Music and the Alaska Frontier

Augusta showed musical talent from her school days in Shelton, singing solos and duets at church socials and community events through her teens. She married Isaac Hayes Loomis on December 17, 1896, and in the years that followed accompanied him into the far north — cooking for his supply crews in a tent while pregnant with their son Ed around 1899, and, from 1901, helping run the Loomis Roadhouse at Tonsina, Alaska, with her sister Jennie, earning praise from travelers for the roadhouse's food and for the sisters' singing. In Valdez she became something of a local stage performer with the Order of Alaska Moose, singing solos at receptions and playing the lead in an amateur production of “A Family Affair” in October 1902 — the Alaska Prospector wrote that “one wonders that a lady of her stage appearance and grace has not adopted the stage as a profession.”

Divorce and a New Life

Augusta's marriage to Ike did not survive the frontier life that had brought them together. In January 1904 she filed for divorce, testifying that he had failed to support her and their son, drank and gambled away the family's money, and used cruel language toward her; the divorce was finalized that April, and she was awarded custody of Ed. She remarried before the year was out, to George Bernard Lovelace, and the couple settled first in Olympia and Tumwater, Washington, and later Tacoma, raising a second family together.

A Long Life Among Family

For the rest of her long life Augusta moved regularly to stay close to her grown children as they scattered across Puget Sound — following her son Ed to Port Angeles in 1921, her daughter Josephine to Seattle in 1924, and later returning to Port Angeles to help her daughter Beulah through a difficult birth. After her daughter Frances divorced in the mid-1930s, Augusta took mother and grandson Craig into her own household in Seattle and helped raise him. She sang at the June 1947 wedding of her granddaughter Patricia to Ray Lobb in Seattle, performing “At Dawning.” In her final years, living alone in a Seattle apartment, she was visited nearly every day by her daughter Jo. Augusta died at the Ferncrest Sanitarium in Seattle on May 28, 1965, at eighty-five.