It started with a diary

It started with a diary.

When I was 14, my dad gave me a moleskin notebook and suggested I should start keeping a diary. I was flattered and at the same time curious. Why did he think I should chronicle my mundane teenage life? Years later, I found out that both his mother and her grandmother kept diaries.

My great-great-grandmother (my father’s mother’s mother’s mother) was Augusta Söderholm. She was born in Sweden in 1827 and died from tuberculosis at the age of 28. Her diary starts in 1847 with a trip to Germany and her impressions of travelling by the new mode of transportation – the steam-engine train.

Could one retrace her trip to Germany? What about her travels from her country estate to Stockholm, where the diary chronicles societal balls and descriptions of hopeful suitors?

My sister Kerstin got equally excited about the possibility of following Augusta’s footsteps.

And so our own journey started – a journey to understand the life of a young, wealthy, Swedish girl in the mid-1800s.  You can read about our journey here and on Kerstin’s blog in Swedish. We hope you will embark on this journey with us.