On November 27, 1843, Elisabeth was born in Torslanda, a rural district outside the city of Gothenburg in Sweden. Her parents, Gustaf and Beata, were well-off farmers. Given that she was a woman born in rural Sweden, Elisabeth was likely raised to be a devout Lutheran and “little was expected of her beyond a mastery of housekeeping, childcare, and basic animal husbandry” (138). When she was about to turn 17, she left for Gothenburg to seek employment as a domestic servant.

Since one law, the Servant Act, required unemployed people without financial support to seek jobs in domestic labor, servants were so cheap that even the lower middle-class could afford them. In fact, families took on so many servants that sometimes they did not have enough to do. At the same time, domestic service offered opportunities for women. Elisabeth’s older sister, Anna Christina, married her employer, a shoemaker, Bernhard Olsson. Anna Christina may have helped Elisabeth find work as a servant to Lars Fredrik Olsson, a landlord. Under Swedish law, Elisabeth would have been “expected to offer complete obedience” (141) and work through a contracted period of service. However, for unknown reasons, Elisabeth stopped working for the Olssons and relocated to a nearby district, Domkyrko.