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CHAPTER 2: CARL GUSTAV AND CATHERINE SMITH ARE MARRIED
arl Gustav Andersson was married to Catherine Smith in St Patrick’s Catholic Church,
Grahamstown on 8th August 1881. Catherine was two months short of her seventeenth
birthday. CG must have been thirty. What a pity there are no photos of that time.

How could this marriage ever work, people would ask nowadays? How did her family feel
about this age difference at the time? Carl Gustav couldn’t have been much of a ‘catch’
financially either and his family were complete unknowns. None of those Swedish relatives
were ever to meet Catherine, nor was Carl Gustav ever to see any of them again: Impossible to
imagine now.
And yet not only did the marriage ‘work’, it was apparently, as the stories go, a ‘match made in
Heaven’.
Was it something to do with expectations that were so very different in those days? Imagine
present day parents approving the marriage of their starry eyed teen to her 30 year old
boyfriend! Imagine a young girl being content to be a married woman at seventeen, without
education or any dreams for her future other than an enormous number of children? Did young
girls or anyone else for that matter in those days ever indulge in such luxuries as selffulfilment? They were pioneers focussed on survival.
I do believe that what he lped enormously for this particular family was that both partners
were by nature calm, happy and contented people.
The young couple named their cottage Hope’s Garden because they were young and so full of
hopes. The property was known by this name in the town for many years.
And one after the other the children were born, the details of who and when are on the chart,
so not all will be mentioned.
For clarification I’ll mention a few about whom something is known:
JOHN JOSEPH AUGUSTUS b 1885 who was to marry IDA BEATRICE WATERS on 26th November
1907. These of course became the parents of firstly Ruby and then on to all the Aunts and Uncles.
More will be said about them later.

LINDA b 1897. Linda is worth mentioning as she married ALBERT HODGKISS in 1920 in St
Mary’s Catholic Church, Pietermaritzburg. The plot thickens here as Albert Hodgkiss was
my father’s eldest brother.
HENRY b 1898. Henry never married and I remember him quite well as a quiet, mild
mannered man who was a jeweller, living and working in Durban. He made the silver flatshaped serviette ring bearing my initials which has been with us forever. The day Uncle
Bert (another story!) brought it from Durban my mother called me excitedly to come and
see, but I was engrossed in Paul Gallico’s ‘The Snow Goose’ and couldn’t put my book down
to see a serviette ring. I was eleven and discovering wonderful books!
EDGAR b 1900. Quite an interesting fellow, he was a spiritualist clairvoyant. He did a
reading for me when I was about 18. Another quiet, mild mannered man: He married
Kathleen in about 1923. She was tall and thin and much given to big picture hats, a lot of
make-up, and singing largely.

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