In 1868, Jonas Petter Hendrickson, his wife Johanna Lovisa, and their two oldest children, Amanda and Carl Johan, left their home in Kristdala, Sweden, for a new life in America. According to the church records of St. John's Lutheran Church in Essex, Iowa, the family emigrated that year, arriving at Quebec, Canada, on June 4, 1868.
From Quebec, the Hendricksons made their way west, eventually settling near Hobart, Indiana, where they would spend approximately four years.
Less than a year after arriving in America, Jonas took an important step toward making the United States his permanent home. On April 5, 1869, he appeared in Porter County, Indiana, and filed his Declaration of Intent to become an American citizen. Thirty-four years old at the time, Jonas declared his intention to renounce his allegiance to Charles XV, King of Sweden.
The family's years in Indiana also brought both new life and heartbreaking loss.
Their daughter Hilda Josafina was born on December 21, 1868. Her baptism is recorded at Augustana Lutheran Church, Hobart, IN. Hilda lived only two years and nine months, dying on September 1, 1871.
Another son, Oskar, was born on January 6, 1871. A surviving church record from Augustana Lutheran Church, Hobart, IN, shows that he was baptized on December 1, 1871, establishing that he was still living at that time. Oskar also did not survive to adulthood, although the date and place of his death have not yet been found.
Baptismal records Hilda Josafina & Oskar Hendrickson, Augustana Lutheran Church, Hobart, IN
About 1873, Jonas and his family moved again, this time to Red Oak, Iowa. According to the History of Page County, Iowa, Jonas worked in a brickyard there for approximately six years. It was work that would eventually become an important part of his life in Iowa.
But shortly after the family reached Red Oak, they suffered another loss.
Their son Oscar “Edward” Hendrickson, born January 20, 1873, lived for only a few weeks. He died on March 5, 1873, at less than two months old.
Three young children—Hilda, Oskar and Oscar Edward—were lost during these difficult early years in America.
Life continued, and the family grew. Clara Mathilda was born in Clarinda in 1874, followed by Emma Ottilia, born in Red Oak in 1876.
In 1875, J.P. completed the naturalization process and became a citizen of the United States.
Around 1878–1879, the Hendricksons moved once more, this time to Essex, Iowa. It would become their permanent home.
Drawing on the experience he had gained working in the Red Oak brickyard, J.P. established his own brickyard west of Essex.
The bricks produced there became part of the growing town around him. J.P. supplied brick for a number of Essex business buildings, including the Community National Bank and The Corner Store, which remained standing until it was demolished in 2008. He also made the bricks used to build the home of his daughter Amanda, southeast of Essex.
In a very literal way, pieces of J.P.'s work became part of Essex.
Photo of Community National Bank on Iowa Street in Essex, Iowa taken September 2026
The family continued to grow after settling in the area. Hulda Sofia was born in 1878. Hulda never married and would eventually help care for her parents during their later years. Their youngest daughter, Neolina Wilomena “Minnie,” was born in 1880.
Top row: Hulda, Amanda, Charley, Emma
JP, Johanna, Clara, Minnie in front
By about 1887, J.P. had acquired an 80-acre farm northwest of Essex, described in the land records as the south one-half of the southwest one-fourth of Section 21 in Pierce Township.
It was approximately two and a half miles northwest of Essex.
After years of movement—from Sweden to Indiana, then Red Oak and finally Essex—J.P. and Johanna had found the place where they would spend the remainder of their lives.
In 1912, J.P. and Johanna celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at the farm.
A photograph from that occasion shows the elderly couple seated outside their home after half a century of marriage and more than four decades in America.
More than a century later, another small detail would give that photograph added meaning: the chairs in which J.P. and Johanna were sitting appear among the household furnishings listed in the inventory of their estate.
Johanna Lovisa died in Essex on September 1, 1921. Her obituary noted that she had been in poor health for some time, and her death certificate recorded the cause of death as acute nephritis.
Her life had begun with tremendous loss. Back in Sweden, her parents, Olof Nilsson and Stina Andersdotter, died while she was still a child, leaving Johanna orphaned at the age of nine.
Yet the life she and Jonas built in America was very different. By the time of her death, she had spent more than half a century in her adopted country, surrounded by children, grandchildren, friends and the community she and J.P. had helped build.
J.P. remained on the farm after Johanna's death. He lived another six years, dying in 1927 at the age of 91.
By then, the young Swedish immigrant who had arrived in North America in 1868 had lived long enough to become one of the early pioneers of the Essex community. He had worked as a brickmaker, operated his own brickyard, acquired farmland, raised a large family and spent nearly half a century in the community he had chosen as his home.
The probate records created after his death offer an unusually detailed glimpse into the world he left behind—not merely the value of his estate, but the land, possessions and everyday household objects accumulated during a lifetime.
Today, Jonas Petter and Johanna Lovisa Hendrickson rest together in Essex Cemetery, on a hill overlooking the rolling Iowa farmland that became their home.
Their journey had begun thousands of miles away in Kristdala, Sweden. It took them across the Atlantic, through Canada, Indiana and western Iowa before finally bringing them to Essex.
And more than a century after their deaths, pieces of the life they built can still be found there—in the records of the church and courthouse, in old photographs, in the bricks of Essex, and in the farmland northwest of town where J.P. and Johanna spent their final decades together.
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