Harriet Neruda Nielsen (née Clasen)
(1904 - 1971)
Profile
Pvt. Harriet N. Nielsen enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in 1945. She was one of twenty-nine Danish born WACs during the Second World War.
Harriet Filothea Neruda Nielsen (née Clasen) was born on 23 March 1904 in Copenhagen, to seaman (stoker) Julius Heinrich Clasen and Harriet Philothea Clausen (née Jensen).[1] She skipped using Filothea at a later date.
Nielsen’s father emigrated to the United States at some point and several arrivals—in 1907 and 1911—of her mother and her are recorded in the passenger lists in New York. She seems to have emigrated indefinitely in 1913, arriving in New York from Copenhagen onboard the SS Oscar II on 2 September 1913.[2] She travelled with her mother and their final destination was to join her father in Detroit, Michigan. Her mother married again in 1916,[3] but it is not clear if her biological father died or the parents divorced.
Nielsen seems to have been married twice before she married Carl Waldemar Nielsen in the early 1930s. They settled in Rockford, Illinois, where her husband worked at the Weiman Co., a leading furniture maker, for many years.[4] Nielsen seems to have been a housewife until the beginning of the 1940s at which point the local directory records her as being a waiter at Hickey’s restaurant (1940),[5] a machine operator for the Pierce paper company (1942),[6] and a a driver for the Ken-L Products Division (1944).[7] This may be an example of the mobilization of the women in the American industry during the war.Nielsen enlisted as Private (A-616304) in the Women’s Army Corps in Chicago, Illinois, on 2 February 1945. There is no information available on the nature of her service.[8]
Nielsen returned to Rockford after the war,[9] and died on 18 August 1971.[10]
Endnotes
[1] DNA: Parish register, Sankt Stefans sogn.
[2] Ancestry: New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957.
[3] Ancestry: Iowa, Select Marriages Index, 1758-1996.
[4] Ancestry: U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995.
[5] Ancestry: U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 (1940).
[6] Ancestry: U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 (1942).
[7] U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 (1944).
[8] Ancestry: U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946.
[9] Ancestry: U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995.
[10] Ancestry: Winnebago County, Illinois, U.S., Deaths, 1844-1992.