Brief life history of Hedvig “Hedy” Grund Hammann
Hedvig Olivia Grund was born October 16, 1886 in Dals-Ed, Sweden. She was the first-born and longest-lived of ten children born to Emanuel and Matilda (née Johnson) Grund. Emanuel worked a prästgård (farm owned by the church) which was known as “Tittut.”
During The Great Migration from Scandinavia (largely between 1850-1930), Emanuel left Sweden for Ishpeming, Michigan in May, 1890. The choice of this new world destination was undoubtedly influenced by his younger brother Carl Oskar (called “Charles”) who had arrived in Ishpeming two years earlier, in 1888. Charles had found work in the nearby mines and a piece of farm land, on which the family could live and also tend for personal use. The land was owned by the Cleveland Iron Mining Company which, as a result of a merger in 1890, became the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company.
Emanuel’s wife Matilda and their children Hedvig (almost four years old), Olga Maria (two years old) and son Emil Marenius (three months old) as well as Emanuel’s sister Hanna, left to join him later in 1890. They arrived in Boston on October 6.
While few details are known of Hedvig’s youth in her new world home, at least one photograph exists of her membership in the Swedish Lutheran Church Choir of 1911. This choir was part of Bethany Lutheran Church, founded in 1870 by Swedish immigrants. The 1911 photograph includes Hedvig and her younger sisters Olga and Alma among the twenty-seven choristers. The choir was led by a young Gerhard Theodore Alexis who, after continuing his music studies in Illinois and abroad and eventually securing a good position as music director of the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in St Paul, MN, was married to Hedvig’s sister Olga in 1916.
Hedy graduated from the Augustana Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago that same year and, in 1918, she answered the call to serve in the Army Nurse Corps of the Red Cross to support American and Allied efforts in WWI. Hedy’s journal of her time serving in France is a moving document of her experiences.
(Click on “WWI Journal” at the top of this page to view a transcription of Hedy’s journal, followed by a scan of Hedy’s original typed pages, replete with hand-written corrections. The journal transcription may also be viewed at the website of Hedy’s great nephew, David Melbye.)
Following the war, Hedy met her husband-to-be Raymond “Ray” Forrest Hammann at the Army Hospital (now the VA Medical Center) in Perry Point, MD. Ray, who had served in the Army between 1917-19, managed the hospital’s store, and assisted veterans who had been blinded during the war with merchandising and pricing transactions through the use of Braille.
Hedy and Ray were married on August 15, 1921 in Buffalo NY, where Hedy lived at the time. They eventually settled in Havertown PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, and remained in their Decatur Road home throughout almost sixty years of marriage.
Per family recollections, Hedy always dressed as she had during her years of nursing service: in dresses, stockings, and dress shoes, with her hair pulled back into a neat bun.
Hedy had many talents including cooking, baking, canning, tatting (needlework), and quilting. She also wrote poetry and painted. Though Hedy and Ray did not have children, they had many nieces and nephews as well as grandnieces and grandnephews, some of whom have and cherish her needlework renderings of Swedish prayers and sayings, as well as her landscape and still-life paintings.
Hedy died June 30, 1981 and was buried with her nursing pin proudly adorning her burial clothes. Ray died less than two years later, on March 9, 1983. They rest beside one another at Valley Forge Memorial Gardens in King of Prussia, PA.