Maria (Mae) Elisabeth Winblad (1895-1987) was born in Greenwich Village in Manhattan to John Edward Winblad I (c1870-1914) and Salmine Pedersen (c1870-1914).   Salmine was from Farsund, Norway and John, was born in, or near, Harnosand, Sweden.

John had run away from home and joined a ship because his father wanted him to have a religious career.  John’s father was Anton Julius Winblad I (c1850-1901) the church organist of Ytterlännäs and the town’s first schoolteacher. The town’s farmers were suspicious of someone who wanted to take their children from the fields and put them in school. Anton had married the Vicar’s daughter and had a good career within the community. There is a picture of him at the church in Ytterlännäs.  His daughter Frideborg would follow him as a teacher herself. 

John’s travels eventually took him to Norway where he met the baker’s daughter and married her. He convinced her to come to the United States and they had their first child, Anton Julius Winblad II (1886-1975) in Manhattan. 

John was working as a longshoreman, and Maria was born in 1895. The family moved out of Manhattan to live in the quiet of New Jersey around 1900. They had a  new house built on Wayne Street. 

Otto Perry Winblad was born in 1902 in Jersey City and in 1910 they decided that the family would move to the Isle of Pines in Cuba. John had decided to a be a plantation owner, and many other American families moved to the Isle of Pines during this time. 

The farm wasn’t a sucess and in 1914 Maria was back in Jersey City where she met Arthur Freudenberg, he was a Sunday School teacher at Waverly Congregation Church and she was a very religious Lutheran at Trinity Scandanavian Church in Jersey City. 

Her father attended the wedding then he and Salmina went to Norway to visit her family. They both died within a few months of each other. Otto was with them and returned to live with Maria and Arthur in 1915. Although Arthur is listed in the 1930 census as the head of household, he was by then not living with his wife. Maria lived on.

Source: Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 
Sunday, March 23, 2003 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

scientist_guy@hotmail.com

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