daughter of Lars Hagelin and Christina Andersdoter
wife of David Sandberg
mother of Roy D, Floyd, Adolph, Milton, Donald, Leon, Lyle H, Mildred, Ruby, Charles, Bernice

Emma was only 6 when her mother died and she went to live with Soffie and Andrew Bloom. Despite Soffie's abusive treatment, Emma learned to read and write in both Swedish and English, and could understand German. Shortly after confirmation she ran away from the Blooms and got a job at a boarding house in Brainerd. She worked for a doctor's family in Minneapolis and in private homes in Duluth before her marriage to David when she was almost 24 years old.

She had great gardens and they always had lots of food - Emma was an excellent cook. Every fall her goal was to get the storage cellar filled with 30 quarts of everything, boiled on the wood stove. Besides the peas and the corn, and the tomato and the rhubarb sauce, there would be carrots buried in sand, squash and pumpkins.

Emma was also a good seamstress, and made the children's clothes when they were small. She belonged to a quilting club of about 20 women who would get together and each make a block for a quilt, and assemble the blocks on the quilting frame in the parlor.

She loved pansies and morning glories, and grew a prized snowball bush in the yard. After a hard day's work, she would often carry five-gallon pails of water from the swamp (perhaps 3 blocks from the house) to pour on her flower beds.

She enjoyed life and always made even the very most common thing seem special. After she and David moved into Brainerd after the war she cooked in restaurants and worked in a bakery.

After David died she lived with her oldest brother John in Kansas City, and when her health deteriorated in 1962 she went to live with her son Roy in Centerville, Iowa, where she was cared for until her death.