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Aufrida Georgina (Hamilton) Widerquist (1861–1939) left her home in Jönköping, Sweden, at the age of 18 and traveled to Chicago where where she worked as a ladies maid and nanny for about 20 years. In 1899, after moving to Los Angeles, she married Simon Benioff when he was a ladies tailor and she worked for him as a seamstress. She was six months pregnant with Victor Hugo Benioff at the time of their marriage, and they were divorced thirteen years later, never having lived together. She raised Hugo Benioff alone in Pasadena, California.
Aufrida used the name Hamilton instead of Widerquist after arriving in this country. We are not sure why.
We have very little information about Aufrida. Some of what we know comes from letters from Hugo to his wife-to-be, Alice Silverman.
The following is a description of Aufrida written by her granddaughter Dagmar:
Aufrida Widerquist Benioff
From an email from Dagmar B. Friedman to Deborah Friedman, April 22, 2003
I can’t tell you much at all about my grandmother. I don’t even remember seeing her although I may have once or twice. I don’t remember where or how she lived except that she was in a mental hospital for paranoia. She did not support my dad. As far as I know my father never received any money from his parents except a little child support from Simon when he was little. He used to have to play his violin in court to try and get money for his lessons. His father is said to say, “Let him be a plumber, I don’t want to pay for that.” My father lived in poverty. He said he was always hungry, and they often ate moldy bread. My father worked his way through college, and I guess worked as a child too. He also said one day he and his mother came home to find it burned to the ground. I do not know the cause. I assume my grandmother went to the Lutheran church. My father said that she was religious. My father must have gone too, but early on decided he was an atheist and stopped going. He remained an atheist and very anti-religious as far as I know.
I never saw my grandmother’s house, or tased her cooking or received a letter from her. My father was devoted to her, and I think scared of her. He said she would come around his house after he was married and peer in the windows at night uninvited. Who knows. Everything is so vague about her except the intensity of my father’s feelings toward her. She wanted us to visit her in the hospital, but we were not allowed. I think my parents were afraid of her illness. She was a seamstress and supported herself in this fashion. She made us several stuffed animals and the one I remember is a stuffed hen that I called Biddy. I took it everywhere. It had a calico back and a beige underside and looked like a chicken in a nest with no feet showing. I imagine that her English was not good as she did not have much schooling. Perhaps that is why she never wrote. I don’t know much about her. I’ll ask Elena and Paul. Perhaps they know more. But she was desperate that my Dad get an education and that he did.
My sister in talking to me about my temper tantrums as a child said that they were fierce and that she wanted me to stop screaming because she feared I’d be put in hospital somewhere. My childhood was at times difficult. Mostly I felt lonely and often not understood or respected.
Aufrieda along with her parents, her 7 brothers and 2 sisters, lived in this tiny cottage.
Mother has been ill and it has caused me much anxiety. She suffers from two ailments – acidity of the stomach and nervousness – and each one reacts on and intensifies the other so that when either one starts they both build up very quickly to an alarming extent.
Mother has been seriously ill but seems to be better now. The doctor has not been able to diagnose her case at all. What we originally thought was stomach acidity was not acidity at all. There is a possibility of stomach ulcers and a suspicion of cancer. Unless she shows definite improvement it will be necessary for her to go to the hospital for a thorough examination including X-ray photography of her stomach. She has suffered much and it reacts on me too. Her life has been a difficult one, an impossible one and consequently she often looks toward death as a relief- and at times when she is sick as now expects it and then she repeats her parting (line cut off here)…Sweden…that when…to each of her sisters and keep the rest for myself, that I be good always, for that is the best way and that I marry Dorothy for she is good and loves me while Alice does not. And that is all she says.
However unless her illness be cancer I believe she will live for many years yet**, for she has no organic weaknesses of any sort and both her parents lived to be 75 or 80. She often says her father was never sick a day in his life and her brothers and sisters amounting to ten in all were raised without a doctor ever coming under the roof- though three or four of them died with the cholera when it went thru Sweden. She is 64 years old and her hair is just beginning to turn grey though when she was young it was so thick and so long that when she came thru Liverpool on her way to this country a man on the street fell down on his knees to kiss her two long braids – embarrassing her terribly.
** Aufrieda Widerquist Benioff lived to be 78 years old, and died in 1939.
