The letter is owned by Anna-Karin Andersson Turesson.

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Here follows a translation of the letter in English.

Moline Ill. April 1. 1946. This is Nils writing                                    Dear Mother.                  This is most likely an unusual letter. Or surprising. I have been thinking of writing you a letter many times but I have not had your address, Verner sent it to me.                  It is long time since I saw you, it was when I was in the hospital in Karlstad in 1919. I have been thinking about that so many times.                  You must have been thinking what I have done all these years.                  I left for America in the fall of 1926 and ended up in South Bend Indiana and worked as a manservant for a millionaire for some years. After that I moved to Moline and started working as a pattern maker for some years. In 1930 I opened my own business, a lemonade factory. In the beginning there were some hard years but now it works fine. I have eleven men working for me now, I sell about one and a half million bottles a year and that is not so bad, so I earn my living rather fine. We have 4 trucks that delivers lemonade to the shops.                  I got married in 1934 and I have a nice wife, we have two children a boy who is 7 years old and a girl who is 2 years old. The boy looks like me and the girl looks like her mother.                  We built our own house 6 years ago and it is heated with gas.                  This is the story of my life in a few words. I will write you more if I hear from you and you are interested.                  It has not been so nice here during the years of war, I was not in the war but 6 of my workers were. I has been hard to find workers, but now they all are back, 2 were wounded and we are were happy that they are all alive.                  How is Karin? I have thought much of her so many times. I hope she is still alive and is doing well. Would write me some time.                                    I hope my letter will find you healthy.                                                     Many greetings to you from,                                                                       Einar                   My address is                     Mr. Einar Nelson                        2320 – 15 ave.                        Moline, Ill.                        U.S.A. My spelling is not so good but I have been here 20 years and have almost not talked any Swedish. My wife can not talk Swedish. It is hard to write Swedish on an American typewriter Because they do not have any  å, ä and ö, but I thought it was better to use it so you can read my writing better. (Nils.)

Translation in pdf-format.