"The Other Swedes"
~ Celebrating Them ~
~ The Lindsborg Swedes, Their Neighbors & Friends ~
Mr. Bror Gustaf Gröndal
~ Remembering him and his photography in the earliest years of Lindsborg and Bethany College, beginning in 1887
~ Celebrating Them ~
~ The Lindsborg Swedes, Their Neighbors & Friends ~
Mr. Bror Gustaf Gröndal
~ Remembering him and his photography in the earliest years of Lindsborg and Bethany College, beginning in 1887
Bror Gustaf Gröndal
(1855-1948)
Lindsborg's Photographer
1887-1945
“Dean of Kansas Photographers”
(1855-1948)
Lindsborg's Photographer
1887-1945
“Dean of Kansas Photographers”
Courtesy of the Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy Family.
Mr. Bror Gustaf (B.G.) Gröndal was born in 1855 in Västerås, Sweden, and after his father Johan Gustaf died, his mother Sofi Jack Gröndal moved him, at age four, and his 10 siblings to Uppsala to ensure that they would all have a good education at the University. But B.G. was not a scholar as he preferred sports, the outdoors and loved the sea. Therefore at the age of 14, he persuaded his mother to let him join a group of Uppsala emigrants leaving Sweden to settle in Sanford, Florida, where they were to work in the orange groves.
A variety of jobs followed this first one in Florida until he became seriously ill with yellow fever. For a cure, his doctor suggested that he take a sea voyage. This found him on fast-cruising clipper ships where he became a sailor that led him to an adventuresome career lasting more than a decade providing a series of interesting jobs including serving as an enlistment in the U.S. Revenue Service which later became the Coast Guard. And, due to his love of the sea, B.G. certainly had a determination with this job to sail as many of the seven seas as possible. However, one day his life as a sailor came to a decisive end with a shipwreck which found him hanging on to a bobbing cotton bail in the Gulf of Mexico.
Moving on to Lake Michigan's Chicago where the greatest number of Swedish emigrants lived, he found employment in a waterfront store and then at a photography studio where he began to learn the rudiments of photography. From Chicago he moved on to St. Paul, Minnesota, another haven for Swedes, where his cousin introduced him to a leading photographer Alfred Palmquist under whom B.G. learned all the particulars of photography as an apprentice. Due to the severity of the Minnesota winters, B.G. moved south to Austin, Texas, where he met a man who had become the owner of a fully equipped portable photography studio, yet the man knew nothing about photography. They became partners, traveling throughout West Texas producing tintype photographs during the era of the "Wild West" starting with photographs of cowboys, for cowboys!
Ready to have a studio of his own and hearing about a Swedish settlement in Round Rock, Texas, he headed there, only to find that a photography studio had already been established surprisingly by a Swedish woman photographer Sarah Margaret Noyd (1859-1945), who unknowingly then, would one day become his wife. So he traveled six miles north to establish a needed studio in Georgetown. Yet, back in Round Rock, a friendship developed with Miss Noyd and B.G. through their common interest in photography and they were united in marriage on October 19, 1886, and became photography business partners as well. Soon after, the couple was destined to live out the rest of their lives and their careers as photographers in Lindsborg, Kansas, beginning in 1887. This was due to the invitation of Bethany College founder Swedish American president Rev. Dr. Carl Aaron Swensson who stepped into the couple's photography studio in Round Rock during a break of the Augustana Lutheran Synod convention he was attending.
While B.G.'s wife would eventually become a mother of their 7 children in Lindsborg, she most certainly supported him and helped him during his career, as she watched him become a most famous Kansas pioneer photographer, well known and respected throughout Kansas by other photographers for his state-of-the-art studios and his photographic craftsmanship. In 1899 some of his work was published in New York City's Wilsons Photographic Magazine. In 1903 a new photo mount was named after him by manufactures. In 1905 he helped found the acclaimed exclusive 12 member Kansas Photographers Club. In 1907 he was president of the Kansas Professional Photographers Association where he would eventually earn the title of “Dean of Kansas Photographers" as the oldest active member.
He and his family were members of Lindsborg's Bethany Lutheran Church which belonged to the 1860 Swedish Augustana Lutheran Synod.
The photographs that he took during his 58 years in Lindsborg from 1887 to 1945 of the Kansas Smoky Valley Swedes and others, no doubt, have passed on down to family members of today and are, especially, cherished by those still living in Lindsborg today and by those past residents of Little Sweden.
A variety of jobs followed this first one in Florida until he became seriously ill with yellow fever. For a cure, his doctor suggested that he take a sea voyage. This found him on fast-cruising clipper ships where he became a sailor that led him to an adventuresome career lasting more than a decade providing a series of interesting jobs including serving as an enlistment in the U.S. Revenue Service which later became the Coast Guard. And, due to his love of the sea, B.G. certainly had a determination with this job to sail as many of the seven seas as possible. However, one day his life as a sailor came to a decisive end with a shipwreck which found him hanging on to a bobbing cotton bail in the Gulf of Mexico.
Moving on to Lake Michigan's Chicago where the greatest number of Swedish emigrants lived, he found employment in a waterfront store and then at a photography studio where he began to learn the rudiments of photography. From Chicago he moved on to St. Paul, Minnesota, another haven for Swedes, where his cousin introduced him to a leading photographer Alfred Palmquist under whom B.G. learned all the particulars of photography as an apprentice. Due to the severity of the Minnesota winters, B.G. moved south to Austin, Texas, where he met a man who had become the owner of a fully equipped portable photography studio, yet the man knew nothing about photography. They became partners, traveling throughout West Texas producing tintype photographs during the era of the "Wild West" starting with photographs of cowboys, for cowboys!
Ready to have a studio of his own and hearing about a Swedish settlement in Round Rock, Texas, he headed there, only to find that a photography studio had already been established surprisingly by a Swedish woman photographer Sarah Margaret Noyd (1859-1945), who unknowingly then, would one day become his wife. So he traveled six miles north to establish a needed studio in Georgetown. Yet, back in Round Rock, a friendship developed with Miss Noyd and B.G. through their common interest in photography and they were united in marriage on October 19, 1886, and became photography business partners as well. Soon after, the couple was destined to live out the rest of their lives and their careers as photographers in Lindsborg, Kansas, beginning in 1887. This was due to the invitation of Bethany College founder Swedish American president Rev. Dr. Carl Aaron Swensson who stepped into the couple's photography studio in Round Rock during a break of the Augustana Lutheran Synod convention he was attending.
While B.G.'s wife would eventually become a mother of their 7 children in Lindsborg, she most certainly supported him and helped him during his career, as she watched him become a most famous Kansas pioneer photographer, well known and respected throughout Kansas by other photographers for his state-of-the-art studios and his photographic craftsmanship. In 1899 some of his work was published in New York City's Wilsons Photographic Magazine. In 1903 a new photo mount was named after him by manufactures. In 1905 he helped found the acclaimed exclusive 12 member Kansas Photographers Club. In 1907 he was president of the Kansas Professional Photographers Association where he would eventually earn the title of “Dean of Kansas Photographers" as the oldest active member.
He and his family were members of Lindsborg's Bethany Lutheran Church which belonged to the 1860 Swedish Augustana Lutheran Synod.
The photographs that he took during his 58 years in Lindsborg from 1887 to 1945 of the Kansas Smoky Valley Swedes and others, no doubt, have passed on down to family members of today and are, especially, cherished by those still living in Lindsborg today and by those past residents of Little Sweden.
Lindsborg Local Promotion of B. G. Gröndal's Photography Through the Years
1973 2006 2007 2009 2013
In 1973, twenty-eight years after B. G. Gröndal left Lindsborg for Garfield, Kansas following the death of his wife, author Mrs. Elizabeth Jaderborg (1918-2016), historian and former Smoky Valley Historical Association secretary, included two short stories on he and his wife, Sarah Margaret Noyd, in her 1973 book, "Talk About Lindsborg," on pages 19-22. Presented as one piece, it was divided in two parts, thus, 2 stories: the first was title "Sally A. Noyd" and the second was titled "Partners for Life."
Thirty-three years from Mrs. Jaderborg's writing, in 2006, the Lindsborg Old Mill Museum was the first and only institution to professionally showcase B.G. Gröndal's work locally as a retrospective of his photographs.
The year after this retrospective, in 2007, Lindsborg Smoky Valley Historical Association official Chris Abercrombie (1949-2017) created a video simply titled, "B G GRÖNDAL PHOTOGRAPHER" for the Kansas PBS Station Program: Real Kansas, on KPTS. In 2009, Mr. Abercrombie published this on YouTube.
In 2013, the book "THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME, was published by his granddaughter Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy (1928-2017) who with her daughter, Cynthia Eddy, created this beautiful volume of the earliest professional Lindsborg photographer who for 58 years visually captured the times and the events of this Swedish and Swedish American community.
To learn more, go
HERE to Photographers' Bror Gustaf Gröndal & Sarah Margaret Noyd Gröndal
~ Accounts by Mrs. Elizabeth Jaderborg with LINK to Mrs. Eddy’s 2013
THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME
HERE to "B G GRÖNDAL PHOTOGRAPHER" ~ 2007, 2009 video account by Mr. Chris Abercrombie
with LINK to Mrs. Margaret Eddy’s 2013 THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME
HERE to Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy ~ Chronicling the Lindsborg, Bethany College and Smoky Valley
Photography of Swede Bror Gustaf Gröndal
Thirty-three years from Mrs. Jaderborg's writing, in 2006, the Lindsborg Old Mill Museum was the first and only institution to professionally showcase B.G. Gröndal's work locally as a retrospective of his photographs.
The year after this retrospective, in 2007, Lindsborg Smoky Valley Historical Association official Chris Abercrombie (1949-2017) created a video simply titled, "B G GRÖNDAL PHOTOGRAPHER" for the Kansas PBS Station Program: Real Kansas, on KPTS. In 2009, Mr. Abercrombie published this on YouTube.
In 2013, the book "THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME, was published by his granddaughter Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy (1928-2017) who with her daughter, Cynthia Eddy, created this beautiful volume of the earliest professional Lindsborg photographer who for 58 years visually captured the times and the events of this Swedish and Swedish American community.
To learn more, go
HERE to Photographers' Bror Gustaf Gröndal & Sarah Margaret Noyd Gröndal
~ Accounts by Mrs. Elizabeth Jaderborg with LINK to Mrs. Eddy’s 2013
THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME
HERE to "B G GRÖNDAL PHOTOGRAPHER" ~ 2007, 2009 video account by Mr. Chris Abercrombie
with LINK to Mrs. Margaret Eddy’s 2013 THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME
HERE to Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy ~ Chronicling the Lindsborg, Bethany College and Smoky Valley
Photography of Swede Bror Gustaf Gröndal
*
THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME
by his granddaughter
Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy
2013
This photograph "is in a collection of Lindsborg work in the Library of Congress" -- Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy,
page 105 of Through the Lens of Bror Gustaf Gröndal: Keeper of His Time.
THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRONDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME
by his granddaughter
Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy
2013
This photograph "is in a collection of Lindsborg work in the Library of Congress" -- Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy,
page 105 of Through the Lens of Bror Gustaf Gröndal: Keeper of His Time.
Courtesy of the Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy Family.
Sources: THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRÖNDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME; the accounts of Mrs. Jaderborg and Mr. Abercrombie
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"Let Us Celebrate Them"
* * *
Swedes: TheWayTheyWere
~ restoring lost local histories ~
reconnecting past to present
* * *
All color photography throughout Swedes: The Way They Were is by Fran Cochran unless otherwise indicated.
Copyright © since October 8, 2015 to Current Year
as indicated on main menu sections of
www.swedesthewaytheywere.org. All rights reserved.
"Let Us Celebrate Them"
* * *
Swedes: TheWayTheyWere
~ restoring lost local histories ~
reconnecting past to present
* * *
All color photography throughout Swedes: The Way They Were is by Fran Cochran unless otherwise indicated.
Copyright © since October 8, 2015 to Current Year
as indicated on main menu sections of
www.swedesthewaytheywere.org. All rights reserved.
