by her daughter Sigbrit

(Translated from Swedish)

My mother, Ruth Elvira Hübinette, was born on March 25, 1891 in Blankaholm near Västervik in Kalmar County (in central Sweden). Her father, Gustav Ulrik, was a blacksmith at the Blankaholm Sawmill and her mother, Maria Lovisa, was a housewife. 

The blacksmith's shop in Blankaholm where         The sawmill at Blankaholm in the 1930s
Ruth's father, Gustav Ulrik, worked.

View from present-day Blankaholm (2006)

In 1899, at the age of 10, she moved with her family to Holmfors in Överluleå Parish in the north of Sweden where the military was building a huge defense installation. In Blankaholm she had acquired a southern accent with rolling r:s, and when, on her first day in school, the teacher asked her her name, all the other children laughed at her. So she soon adopted the local accent instead. My grandfather, Gustav Ulrik Hübinette was working as a blacksmith and machine operator at a brick works in Holmfors. In 1900, five of the seven children still lived at home, Ruth, Beda, Edvin, Herbert and Fritz, while Ellen and Jenny had emigrated to the USA. My Aunt Levida had married Erik Larson in 1900 and they also lived in Boden. Their sons John and George were born in 1901 and 1902.

A few years later the family, together with Levida's family, moved to Malmberget, a mining community some 200 km north of Holmfors. This photo was taken in Malmberget, probably before 1903 (Beda emigrated to the USA that year):

Gustav Ulrik, Ruth, Beda, Herbert and Maria Lovisa.

The mining company Gustav Ulrik worked for ran good schools for the children of their employees, and Ruth graduated from the Malmberget Secondary School on May 25, 1906 at the age of 15. That year, her sister Levida and brother-in-law Erik Larsson and their two children emigrated to the USA accompanied by Ruth's and Levida's brother Edvin. Ruth's first job was as a nanny for Pastor Erik Bore's family in Gällivare. (Gällivare is a mining community about 5 km from Malmberget). She then worked for a while at Lalander's, a clothes store in Gällivare (see picture below).

Lalander's clothes store

In 1910, at age 19, Ruth moved to Jönköping in southern Sweden where she worked as a nanny for a merchant family. She rented a room at at Östra Storgatan 9. Since Malmberget was so far away she couldn't see her parents very often. The train fare was expensive and her vacation was very short and she was homesick all the time. In a postcard that her brother Herbert sent her from Malmberget in 1911, Herbert says that Fritz had returned to the USA and that he was sorry he didn't have time to see Ruth before he left. Fritz may have visited Sweden before or after his stay in Russia where he helped set up a tractor factory.

After three years, she left her job in Jönköping and moved back to Malmberget where she got a job at Lalander's clothes store. It was at this time that her siblings in the USA sent her a ticket to America. However, she felt that she ought to stay in Sweden and look after her ageing parents, so she gave the ticket to her younger brother Herbert Haddon. Sadly, he contracted TB in the USA and returned after only one year to Malmberget where he died in 1914.

On July 15, 1916, Ruth moved from Malmberget down to Luleå on the northern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, where the Lalander family also had a clothes store. One of their employees in Luleå was my father to be, Oscar Back. When he was conscripted into the army in 1915, he refused on religious grounds to do military service and was sent to prison as a conscientious objector. Ruth wrote very formal letters and postcards to him while he was in prison. I still have those letters.


In 1918 she moved to Sundsvall. She rented a room at Prostinnan Ruut's home in Norra Stadsbacken and worked as a clerk at a ladies' clothes store. In increasingly affectionate letters to Oscar, who by now had moved to Umeå where he worked at Edgrens Men's Wear, she suggests that he should move down to Sundsvall. Her boss, a merchant by the name of Wickman, was planning to set up a ladies tailor shop and wanted Oscar's brothers, Eric and Ernst, to come and work for him there.

Prostinnan Ruuth's home, Repslagarevägen 6, Sundsvall (2006)

In a letter of November 28, 1919 she mentions that Jenny, Victor, Genevieve, Carl and Fritz will be coming to Sweden in the spring. She says that Victor and Jenny has sold their big house and moved back to their old house.

On Christmas Eve, 1919, Oscar gave her a ring with a pearl inset. About a month later he left his job at Edgrens and opened his own men's wear store in Umeå, 'Oscar Backs Herrekipering'.

On February 23, 1920 my grandfater Gustav Ulrik and his wife moved from Malmberget to Grindbacken in Svartvik, near Sundsvall. 

In a letter to Oscar of October 19, 1920 Ruth asks him if he thinks they can afford to have a wedding. She says that her parents are poor and cannot arrange a wedding at their home and won't be able to give them a dowry.

Good Friday 1921 was Ruth's 30th birthday and two days later, on Easter Sunday, Ruth and Oscar were married in Sundsvall. Their wedding dinner was held at the Odd Fellows restaurant and was arranged by a Miss Trana.

Oscar and Ruth's wedding at Odd Fellows in Sundsvall. On Ruth's left, her parents Gustav Ulrik and Maria, and on Oscar's right, his mother Julia and sister Lydia.

After the wedding, Ruth moved to Umeå. The family first lived in an apartment at Öbackavägen 5b in Umeå. Their first child, Arne, was born there in 1922 and a year later my brother Folke was born. In 1925 the family moved to another apartment at Kungsgatan 85 and then to Kungsgatan 107, where I was born in 1926. In 1928 Father built a house at Kungsgatan 117. Our little sister Ulla was born there in 1928, but she died from croup only two years later. She is buried at Norra Kyrkogården in Umeå, which is also our parents' resting place.

 Kungsgatan 117. On the porch are Folke, Arne, Sigbrit, Ruth and Oscar.

Oscar and Ruth were life-long members of Bethel, the local Baptist Church, as were most of their friends, and we spent many a summer at the Baptist Vacation Home in Stöcksjö near Umeå. Father always came home from the store for lunch and my brother Arne used to call him on the phone to tell him that lunch was ready. Arne was only about 1,5 years old so he just picked up the phone and said to the operator: '810, daddy eat!'. The operators soon learnt who the caller was and kindly passed the message on to Father. The photo below was taken on such an occasion. The woman is Oscar's mother, Julia (Kindahl) and the baby is my brother Folke.

Father ran his men's wear store until around 1935. He then became a traveling salesman for Stockhaus, a clothes company, and worked as such until the Second World War when gas rationing put an end to car travel. During the war he was a clerk at the National Wartime Preparedness Agency in Umeå. Later he worked for an electric company in Vännäs near Umeå and the last few years of his life he was employed by the Västerbotten Museum in Umeå. 

In 1948 my parents moved to a new house at Egnahemsvägen 18, Teg (in the same block where Lars now lives). They had purchased it at a house exhibition in Umeå and my brother Folke and my husband Bertil had disassembled it, moved it to Teg and reassembled it there.

A few years later, Oscar had his first heart problems and in 1954 he died in hospital of a heart attack. Ruth, who was then 63 years old, lived on in the house until 1967 when she moved to a small apartment at a senior citizen home in Gimonäs, Umeå. Despite her failing eyesight, she led a very active life. For example, she traveled to Israel with a group from her church and a few years later she visited Leningrad in Russia. Mother died in 1985 at the age of 94.