Grave Tales: Common Laborer Still Makes His Mark on Geneva Society

Some obituaries paint a poignant picture of the dearly departed. Others, like that of Claus Gustafson, give readers startling insights into the society in which the dearly departed lived, especially when read more than a century after the funeral.

Gustafson immigrated to Geneva from Sweden in 1881 and worked as a laborer until he died of pneumonia May 29, 1907. The Geneva Republican described him as “one of the oldest and best-known Swedish workmen in this city,” which implies that blue-collar workers rarely reached retirement age, since he was just 50 when he died.

The Republican also felt it appropriate to report in the obituary that Gustafson had left his widow a paid-up life insurance policy worth $4,000—information that modern newspaper editors would consider too personal to include. Perhaps that detail helped attract suitors to Mrs. Gustafson’s south Second Street home, since she was probably a housewife with no marketable skills who would have been expected to remarry to support herself. She might also have sold her home and lived with the couple’s only child, a son who lived and worked in Chicago.

Gustafson may not been a mover and shaker in Geneva, but he doubtless enjoyed a vibrant social life as a member of the Modern Woodmen of America and the Knights of Pythias, two nationwide fraternal organizations that still exist. The MW of A, a service and financial management club, probably issued that $4,000 life insurance policy; the K of P almost certainly presented Gustafson with a thin-bladed steel sword that he would have worn at Geneva lodge functions.

And when it came time to lay Gustafson to rest, the Geneva chapters of the MW of A and the K of P joined together in their fraternal uniforms to march behind his horse-drawn hearse from Geneva Lutheran Church to Oak Hill Cemetery. Not even then-Mayor Henry B. Fargo, who also rests in Oak Hill Cemetery, could have asked for a more rousing sendoff.