Mildred Augusta Malm

(This page is not in its final form. Eventually the biography will be expanded and more photos will be added.)

Mildred Augusta Malm, daughter of Augusta Sofia Smeds and Isak Alfred “Fred” Malm, was born 15 March 1908 in Eureka, Humboldt County, CA.

When Mildred was a small girl, the Malm residence was home not only to the family but to a substantial number of paid lodgers. During those times when her mother was occupied with rooming-house tasks, her aunt Anna Amanda Smeds probably cared for her. Amanda and Mildred are shown together in the photograph at right, taken during this time period. Amanda would marry Charles John Strom and moved to Fresno County in 1915, but the bond endured and as an adult, Mildred made it a point to journey down to see her aunt and other relatives, even though it required ten to twelve hours on the road each way.

In July, 1920, when Mildred was twelve years old, her parents acquired a dairy in Bucksport. At that time Bucksport was a mostly rural area outside the Eureka city limits and technically part of Loleta Township. It now forms the southern neighborhood of the city. This farm, located along the main highway (now known as Highway 101) was home to Mildred for the remainder of her childhood. Malm’s Dairy would be one of Eureka’s well-known businesses. Given the sentimental attachment to the legacy property, Mildred resisted initial overtures to sell the land to a developer for subdivision in the period immediately following her father’s death in 1953.

With the security represented by the acquisition of the dairy, her parents decided the time was ripe to expand the family, but their attempts to have further children met with grief. Two pregnancies came to term, but both babies lived less than a day. Therefore Mildred was, to all intents and purposes, an only child.

Mildred remained in Eureka the vast majority of her life, becoming the only grandchild of Herman Smeds to linger in the place where the Smedses had first established themselves upon coming to America. The only cousins to also be raised in Eureka were Kelly and Howard Smeds, who departed the area upon reaching adulthood. Another cousin, Walter Johnson, lived with the Malms in the early 1930s, having come from Berlin, NH, but he did not stay. Mildred was therefore somewhat isolated from the rest of the clan, her visits to Fresno County notwithstanding. On the Malm side, the picture was similar, with some kinfolk residing as far away as Finland. The big exception was her uncle John Victor Malm, who with his family remained based in Eureka for many decades.

Mildred married Paul Joseph Lieber. A son of Joseph Lieber and Cecile Belle Rutherford, Paul had been born 9 August 1909 in Dowagiac, Cass County, MI, and had been raised there. He had come out from Michigan to Eureka as a young man, becoming a bottler at Malm’s Dairy. The wedding was held in Eureka in 1932 -- the same year Mildred’s mother died. Paul and Mildred became parents of two children. Their daughter Lynne was born in 1936. Their son Kyle was born in 1941. Mildred was a housewife -- doubly so, in a sense, because she and Paul stayed with her father at the house at 4635 Highway 101 South, so she was cook and housekeeper for two men. By the time her father died, her marriage to Paul was over twenty years along and her youngest, Kyle, was twelve years old. Even then household would stay put at that address for some time to come.

Paul worked as a bottler for years, though not entirely for Malm Dairy. Not long after marrying Mildred, he began bottling for Humboldt Malt & Brewing Company, his tenure probably lasting right up until the business, founded in the 1850s, closed up shop in 1940. (The name is currently in use by another firm.)

Paul was able to handle duties that required leadership and public speaking. In his thirties, he served as spokesman on behalf of an association of local milk producers, saving his father-in-law from having to do so in his Swedish-accented English. An avid fisherman, Paul served as president of the Humboldt Wildlife Association for a long stretch in the 1950s and was a prominent member of the Humboldt County Fish & Game Commission.

Mildred was well known for a wry sense of humor. This trait particularly came out when she had been drinking. Unfortunately, drinking was one of the issues she sometimes struggled to keep a lid on.

Paul died 8 November 1980. (As it happened, he passed away while in South Bend, IN, and his remains had to be transported thousands of miles for final commitment.) At the end of her life, Mildred moved to Siskiyou County so that her daughter Lynne would be able to see to her care, Lynne having moved there in the 1980s. Mildred passed away 7 November 2000 -- the infamous “hanging chads” election day -- in Etna, CA. She was nearing ninety-three years of age, a remarkable span on its own terms, but looming even larger when seen in the context of her family. Only five other grandchildren of Herman Smeds lived past age eighty. Mildred was the only one who surpassed ninety. On the downside, by the time she perished, she had survived her son Kyle by more than ten years.

Descendants of Mildred Augusta Malm with Paul Joseph Lieber

Click here to go back one generation. To return to the Smeds Family History main page, click here.