Died 5 October 1944 | ||
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Ruth Miriam Edström (née Randall; June 24, 1867 - October 5, 1944) was an American peace activist and fighter for women's rights. She worked with the pre-work for the third peace conference in The Hague (after the first conferences in 1899 and 1907). She participated in the international women's congress in 1915. Ruth was the wife of the head of Asea, J. Sigfrid Edström.
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Early life
Ruth Randall was the eldest of seven siblings in Wilmington, Illinois, the daughter of Oscar Theodore Randall and Jane Mariah (née Lewis) Randall. The family moved to Chicago in 1870 and settled in a suburb a few miles from the city center.
The year after their move the great Chicago fire happened with 250 people dead and 95.000 people homeless, however the Randall's house survived the fires but their shop did not make it and was burnt to the ground. The Randall family belong to the Reformed Church. One day when Ruth was sixteen years old her father brought her and her oldest siblings to a new chapel were Jenkin Lloyd Jones preached. The priest talked about Jesus and his message of love, justice and peace. Jones had like Oscar participated in the American Civil War and experienced the horrors of war.
The Randalls started to attend service at the Unity Chapel that belonged to All Souls Unitarian Church. They participated as well in Jones religious and philosophical education. The students were educated in the Unitarian belief system and became friends with the author Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Browning and many others. The year of studies ended with a historical party with dramas of Charles Dickens and Charles Kingsley. The latter wrote the book Hypatia, the female philosopher and mathematician. Ruth suggested the play about Hypatia and got to select the actors and direct the play.
Education and later life
Randall educated herself to be a teacher, worked for the Unitarian Church and got herself big cultural and esoterian interests. She got a job at Forestville School in Chicago. In the summer of 1896 the teachers of the school went on a trip to Europe, they traveled by the new atlantic steam boat Etruria. Onboard was also the Swedish engineer Sigfrid Edström en route to work for an electric company in Cleveland, Ohio.
Randall and Edström wed on her 32nd birthday, June 24, 1899, at her home in Chicago. The honeymoon was in Bremen and Gothenburg. They resided in Switzerland were Sigfrid work for a tramway company in Zürich. His wife liked to live in their first own home in the city, but already after one year the couple moved to Sweden where Edström was named the head of Gothenburg's tramway system.
In the summer of 1903, she, her husband and their two children, Miriam and Björn, moved to Västerås, were Sigfrid got to work for the stock company Asea. The company grow and with it came money, the Randalls started building a house in Stallhagen, they named the house Villa Asea. When the house was ready in 1908 the couple made a big opening for friends and the city major.
After her death in 1944 in Stockholm a memory fund for Ruth Randall Edström was created.