Carlson House

Fritz Gerhard Carlson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1866. At about five years old, he immigrated to the U.S. with his parents, Peter and Magdelena Carlson. Peter Carlson was a shoemaker who practiced his trade in New York for several years before establishing his shoe and boot business in St. Charles.

By 1908, Fritz Carlson had established the successful Fritz G. Carlson Company, a clothing and shoe store for men, in the Irwin Block on West Main Street in St. Charles.

Fritz married Maem Smith in 1896. The Carlsons built this Prairie Style house in about 1924.

Sources

■ Durant, Samuel. History of St. Charles

■ Olson, Ernst. History of Swedes of Illinois. Chicago: Engberg-Holmberg Publishing Company, 1908.

■ U.S. Federal Census 1880, 1910