Grave Tales: Disabled Lamplighter Kept Geneva Bright

These days disabled people have social service agencies to help them find jobs and the training they need to handle them. Back in 1890, John Soderstrom had only his wife, Hanna, to help him hold down his position as Geneva’s municipal lamplighter.

John Soderstrom had lost a leg—surviving records don’t reveal how it happened—so he commissioned a specially made wagon that enabled him to reach the kerosene streetlights stationed throughout the city. A horse pulled him and his tools from light to light, where he trimmed the wicks, refilled the lights with kerosene and recorded how much kerosene each light had burned. Hanna Soderstrom helped her husband onto and off the wagon, as well as helping load the kerosene and other equipment.

Soderstrom made the rounds of the entire city twice a day, every day, from 1890 until the streetlights were electrified in December 1898. The city paid him $35 per month during the summer and $40 per month during the winter.

After he lost his job to modern technology, Soderstrom and his wife opened a candy store and grocery on School Street—conveniently located across State Street from East Side School, which now houses .

Centuries come and go, but the lure of candy for school children will never fade.