HOLDEN HISTORICAL SOCIETY - Key Persons

Charles L. Hendricks, Jr., the youngest of the Hendricks children was born on 25 March 1889. Like his older sister, Jennie, he was born in the Main Street house. He attended the Center Grammar School (District #1) until the age of about 12. At this time his epilepsy became so severe that he was forced to leave school. Town librarian, Mrs. Addie Black Holden, taking a great liking to him, helped Charles select books for study after he was forced to leave school. After suffering from epilepsy for over twenty-five years, Charles L. Hendricks, Jr. died on 24 November 1925. He was thirty-six years old. The official cause of death was listed as bronchopneumonia. He is buried at Grove Cemetery in Holden, MA. The first child of Henrik Larsson and Johanna Mansdotter was born 14 Nov. 1850 in the hamlet of Hillarp, Munka-Ljungby Parish of Kristianstad Lan, Sweden. Ludvig Henriksson, later known as Charles Louis Hendricks, first came to the United States via New York in May of 1872. He traveled from Goteborg, Sweden to Hull, England on the steamship Orlando, and then from Liverpool, England to New York on the City of Montreal. Charles Louis eventually ended up in Osage City, Kansas where a cousin owned a farm. After a few weeks of working as a farm laborer, Charles found himself working for the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad as a teamster during the summer of 1872. When the railroad work closed down for the winter, Charles, at age twenty-two, found himself a member of a buffalo-hunting team near Dodge City, Kansas. His job was to flay (skin) the buffalo. By 1873 Charles was packing hides in Dodge City. Sometime in 1874, Charles, while working as a waiter in a Kansas City hotel, met two other Swedes, who were headed to Worcester, MA. He became an employee of the Washburn and Moen Wire Company. Initially he was the coachman for Mr. Philip Moen. Soon he was transferred to the wire-drawing section of the factory. He started making window screens, and for the last eighteen years of his career at Washburn and Moen (American Steel and Wire Company) he was involved in the making of wires for pianos and other musical instruments. It was while working here, Ludvig Henriksson came to be known as Charles L. Hendrickson. Charles returned to Sweden from 1877 to 1879. While in Sweden Charles became engaged to Thilda Olsdotter (Mathilda Olsson). Both Charles and Thilda departed for the United States on 2 May 1879. Charles (the former Ludvig Henriksson) and Mathilda (the former Thilda Olsdotter) were married 23 August 1879 in Worcester, MA by an Episcopal clergyman, since there was not yet a Swedish Lutheran church in Worcester. Residing in Worcester, the first three children (Esther, Henning, and Edith) were born. As a founding member of the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Gethsemane Church in Worcester, Charles used the name of Carl Ludwig Henrickson. On 26 October 1883 Charles became a naturalized citizen using the name Charles L. Hendrickson. In 1885 the family moved into a newly constructed house in the center of Holden containing almost fifteen acres of land. It was in Holden that the last two children (Jennie and Charles, Jr.) were born. Charles continued working as a wire drawer in the steel mill. Charles worked long, regular hours in the steel mill and then returned home in the early evening to tend the farm that helped feed and support a growing family. Charles retired from U.S. Steel in 1915, at age sixty-five. In 1918 he sold nearly all of his farm land to Fred W. Bascom, who eventually built Holden's first subdivision known as Laurelwood Road. On 9 September 1925 Charles had the Worcester County Probate Court change his name officially to Charles Louis Hendricks, a name that he had been using for over twenty-five years. Charles died 16 May 1933 at the age of eighty-two. He is buried in the family plot in Grove Cemetery, Holden, MA.

The youngest daughter of Charles Louis and Mathilda Olsson Hendricks was born on 25 September 1886. She was the first of the children to be born in the Main Street house. It is said she was born in the upstairs bedroom and all the children (three at the time) were sent to sleep in the parents' downstairs room while the delivery took place. Jennie also attended the Center Grammar School and attended Holden High School. She graduated from high school in 1904. After graduating from Worcester Normal School, Jennie taught school in 1909 at Chaffin School (District #3). In 1910 and 1911 she taught at Jefferson School (District #5). From 1911 until 1914 she taught at the Center School (District #1) where she attended as a child. A graduate of Boston University and Columbia University, Jennie's career took her to Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, CT where she retired as an Associate Professor. It was Jennie, also known as "Aunt Honey" to her nephews and nieces, who was instrumental in making the arrangements with friend and selectman, Lloyd Starbard, to have her house and property preserved and protected as a historic teaching tool. Jennie was the last family member to live in the house before it was turned over to the Town of Holden to be used for historic purposes. In 1977, Jennie moved to the Holden Nursing Home when it became impossible for her to continue living in the house in which she was born. For the last decade of her life, Jennie provided the Holden Historical Society and the Holden Historical Commission with a wealth of information and recollections about her family and the evolution of the Hendricks House. Jennie died on 27 July 1986, three months short of her one hundredth birthday. The cause of her death was listed as cardiorespiratory arrest secondary to cerebrovascular disease. Jennie willed her body to a medical school for anatomic study. She is buried in Grove Cemetery in Holden, MA.