Klingborg Family History

Dear Kevin,

You mentioned in our recent email exchanges that you were interested in our family connections to San Mateo. Here's some info:

You are one of four generations of San Mateoans (five if you count your uncle Kit & aunt Lisa).

Duttons: Fred's parents, Doc & Lucy (your great-grandparents) moved to California from Julesburg, Colorado in the early 1930's, first to San Francisco, then down to San Mateo. As I think you know, Fred met June at San Mateo High (he attended a boarding school in the mountains in the Santa Cruz area before attending high school in San Mateo). I assume you know Fred had a younger brother, Edward ("Eddie") who was quite the social activist and a university professor (Fresno State and the University of Kansas).

Klingborgs: Frans ("Boppy") and Eve came to San Mateo with their daughters, June and Connie in the early 1930's from Seattle where Frans and his older brother, Carl, owned a small woodworking business which went bust in the Great Depression instigating the family's migration to California. When they first came to San Mateo, Boppy opened a small one-man workshop on El Camino Real and the family lived in a single room in the back for the first couple of years before Boppy got back on his feet (I can show you the location sometime...I can't remember the address).They had been preceded to the Bay Area by Boppy's younger sister, Elfreda ("Auntie Frida"), who also came from Seattle with her husband ("Uncle Pat") who had moved here for a job in Oakland as an accountant. The Klingborg siblings' mother, Christina Kunkell (your great-great-grandmother who emigrated from Sweden to the U.S. in 1891), also moved to San Mateo from Seattle around 1940. She died just a couple years later.

Photos from June's 1942 San Mateo High Yearbook
(she's in all three pics...she was editor of the school newspaper)
Photo of Christina Kunkell (Klingborg-Stenquist) with June & Connie
at Half Moon Bay (early '40's)

Photo of Frans' and Carl's Seattle woodshop (ca. mid-1920's)

Photo of Frans' San Mateo business (ca. mid-1950's)

Photo of Boppy (Frans) mid-1960's at their Turner Terrace home

Photo of Christina Kunkell (Klingborg-Stenquist) with June & Connie
at Half Moon Bay (early '40's)

Eve Klingborg featured in San Mateo News after big prize win

Eve's parents, Nils & Vivie Heiner (also your great-great grandparents) moved to San Mateo after Grandpa Heiner retired from his career as a pastor. They ended up living with Eve and Bop in their final years (they died within a month of each other, Dec. '58, Jan. '59) because Grandpa Heiner had gone blind (glaucoma). You'll recall Vivie's father was Magnus Alm, the Finnish (ethnic Swede) industrialist who emigrated with his family to Canada in the early 1890's after his ironworks in Finland went bankrupt. Lisa and I knew our great-grandparents as young children (I was 8 when they died) and have fond, if now quite distant, memories of them.

Both Lisa and I were born in Mills Hospital in San Mateo. Fred moved June and me to LA before Lisa was born (I was about two) when he got a job as an attorney for the Southern California Gas Co. but we moved back to San Mateo several years later when he landed a position in the California Attorney General's SF office working for Pat Brown. We moved to Sacramento after Pat became governor and Fred was named his chief of staff. Your mom was born there in 1960. It all led to the 1960 Kennedy presidential campaign and us moving to D.C. in '61.

Counting back generations of direct family who have lived at various times in San Mateo:

1) Three of your great-great grandparents (Christina, Nils, Vivie)
2) Four great-grandparents (Doc, Lucy, Eve, Boppy)
3)Two grandparents (June & Fred)
4) *No parent but an uncle & aunt*
5) You!

You also asked about where we lived. Amusingly, June/Fred (+ Kit/Lisa), Connie/John Boucher (+Doug/Ted), and Eve/Boppy bought adjoining homes (three-in-a-row) on Turner Terrace in the mid-1950's. That was the last place we Duttons lived in SM until June came back in her final years. The addresses: Bouchers - #458, Duttons - #450, Klingborgs - #436. The houses are all still there (I've seen them) so you can do a drive-by sometime or Google the addresses to see photos.

So, don't be shocked if you occasionally bump into a friendly family ghost or two!

Kit

11/19/2024