On the evening of 10 February 1875 the Stang family house burned down on Skipper Street in Fredrikshald (Halden), Norway. The investigation revealed that the fire was probably started in an attempt to kill the 16 year old Mathilde Wiel who was on a visit with her aunt .
It was later revealed that earlier that year, in January, Sophie had attempted to poison Mathilde with arsenic but she had survived, though it did leave her partially paralyzed. The motive appears to have been that Sofie had been set up to care for Mathilde during a case of the flu, and that she would get rid of this task.
Mathilde later went on to marry John Melcher Ojerholm and became later known as the Poetess Laureate of Texas .
Sophie had obtained rat poison (arsenic at the time) from her sister in Sweden. Confronted with this, Sophie admitted that she had poisoned three other members of the household previously who had died .
The first was another maid, Maren Johan Daughter (1836-1869) with arsenic in a cup of tea. The motive could have been a quarrel. The two were not friends. Maren has stated she was intending to leave the house in a few days to marry.
The second victim was housemother Cathinka Stang (1809-73). The motive appears to have been an argument over a hat. Mrs. Stang had repeatedly tried to have Sophie fired but to no avail. Sofie had repeatedly said to other employees in the house that someone should kill Mrs. Stang.
And finally housefather, lumber handler, Niels Anker Stang by mixing arsenic in a bowl of barley soup (1804-75). He had discovered that Sophie had been stealing from the household.
She was also suspected of having murdered a gardener, his father and an older woman but denied this to her death .From "Dagbok fra en dødscelle" by Frank Kiel Jacobsen. Pub. Lunde, 1980.
The story of Sophie Johannesdatter, the last woman to receive the death penalty in Norway.
"Some are ungraceful on the outside, yet beautiful within. Others have a lovely appearance, but a hideous inside. I'm ugly both on the outside and the inside.Sophie Johannesdatter, the last woman to receive the death penalty in Norway.
"Sophie" is the story of the woman that executed a series of arsenic murders in the late 19th century. More than 3000 people attended her public execution, February 18th 1876. Her last words were "Now I go home to Jesus, I am!"
"The Swedish Texans" Larry E. Scott
1st Edition Copyright 1990
The University of Texas
Institute of Texan Cultures at San AntonioMATHILDE WIEL-OJERHOLM
One of the two books known to have appeared under the "Texas-Posten Publishing House" imprint was Vildblomster, a volume of poems by Mathilde Wiel-Ojerholm, published posthumously in 1911. Wife of J.M. Ojerholm, editor of Texas-Posten, she had died in 1903. She is the only Swedish woman to have her works published in her mother tongue in Texas; indeed, hers is the only known volume of Swedish verse ever to have been published in Texas. Among her fellow-countrymen she was regarded as an informal poetess laureate, who could be counted upon to deliver occasional verses for the more serious of their communal events. Evaluation of her skill as a poet may not rate her very highly today, but her unique position in the history of the literature of Texas Swedes and the extraordinary circumstances of her unusual life deserve mention.
She was born December 12, 1858, the eleventh of 13 children, in Lundestad, Norway, near Fredrikshald. Her father was a wealthy farmer from an old Norwegian family. When Mathilde was nearly ten, the family moved to Saffle in Varmland across the border in Sweden, but she and her sister Otillia often spent summers and holidays with relatives in Fredrikshad.
During the winter of 1875 Mathilde and Otillia visited their cousins in Norway, whose parents had both recently and suddenly died. While they were at the house, a servant girl named Sofie, cross with Otillia and finding Mathilde "bothersome," began to slip arsenic into Mathilde’s porridge. Mathilde became violently ill but, unsuspecting, continued to eat the food that Sofie prepared, food which contained larger and larger doses of the poison. Mathilde’s condition worsened, but she did not die, since her system had gradually developed a limited tolerance for the arsenic. For some time Mathilde resisted the poison, but she became so weak that she was nearly paralyzed. At a propitious moment, Sophie started a fire, hoping that the invalid would expire either in the flames or in the cold night air. But, despite her weak condition, Mathilde survived. Autopsies on the bodies of Mathilde’s recently decased uncle and aunt, in whose household Sophie had been a servant for many years, disclosed massive amounts of arsenic in the hair and nails. Sophie was arrested for attempted murder, tried and condemned to death. On February 20, 1876, Sophie Johansdotter was beheaded -- the last woman ever to be executed in Norway.
This attempt on her life left Mathilde’s health more or less permanently shattered and her arms and legs badly crippled for a number of years (although she eventually recovered to a large degree) but with her faith in God greatly strengthened. On crutches, she had visited Sophie in prison and had prayed with her.
A month later, on March 15, so ill that she had to be carried to the podium, Mathilde Wiel-Ojerholm read her poem "Can he forget?" to a huge Swedish-American crowd, presided over by Baptist, Lutheran, and Methodist clerics. The poem was sold for hunger relief, and a further sum raised from its publication in the 1902 issue of Prarieblomman, the nation Swedish-American literary annual of the Augustana Synod. Mathilde died only a few months later.
At her funeral on August 21, 1903, Pastor C.G. Widen read a poem of his own composition in which he calls Mathilde the one who:
recently fired us to a fever pitch of love
when it was a question of sending to
northern Sweden bread to those who cried out
from hunger
and whose cries reached us in our new
homeland;
for that reason, we put on the veil of sorrow,
on the bier our poetess is lyuing,
she, whose muse so often did sound
in the Swedish homes and churches in Austin
Winnebago County IL Archives Birth Records
DATE SEX REEL IMAGE INFANT NAM E FATHER NAME MOTHER MAIDEN
10/05/1886 M 0341 1 696 OJERHOLM, JARL MELCHER OJERHOLM, JOHN MELCHER WILL, MATHILDA
Child died as an infant.