Jansson (Claro G.) South American Steam Driven Lumber Mill Photograph Album, No date

Summary

Title:

Claro G. Jansson's South American steam driven lumber mill photograph album

Dates:

No date

Abstract:

The subject of this album is an all steam driven lumber mill in South America.

Extent:

1 Linear Feet

Language:

English .

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Claro G. Jansson's South American Steam Driven Lumber Mill Photograph Album, MS 841, California State Railroad Museum Library & Archives, Sacramento, California.

Background

Scope and content:

Includes 26 photographs in a souvenir album photographed by Claro G. Jansson, Uniao Da Victoria. The subject of this album is an all steam driven lumber mill in South America. There are photos of the steam locomotive switcher, the company housing, a fold our panorama of the entire mill including the company housing, the logging site with the small 2-8-2 locomotive. A number of photos inside the mill show the large circular saws, band saws, and the finished lumber in a large warehouse.

Biographical / historical:

Claro Gustavo Jansson, born Klas Gustav Jansson, (April 5, 1877 - March 10, 1954) was a Swedish photographer who became a Brazilian citizen. Much of his work recorded the conflicts of the Contestado War as well as the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932.

Born in the town of Hedemora, in the Dalarna region of Central Sweden, about two hundred kilometers from Stockholm, he was raised in the Lutheran faith and lived in his hometown until 1890 when the family moved to Sundsvall, further north.

Arriving in Brazil in 1891 with his father, Anders Jansson, his stepmother and five younger siblings (leaving only Anna Jansson, his oldest sister, in Sweden), he went to live in the small town of Jaguariaíva, in the state of Paraná. From there, he moved to Lapa in the same state, sixty kilometers from Curitiba, where he helped care for Barão dos Campos Gerais, who was ill in the last months of his life. In this city, he witnessed the tragic events of 1893, when the bloodiest battle ever fought on Brazilian soil, known as the "Siege of Lapa", took place there. Forced by a captain to join a government detachment that was leaving Lapa shortly after the end of the siege, he fled on horseback during the march and returned to his father's house in Jaguariaíva.

Soon after, he ventured to the region of Porto União, where he worked as a foreman for teams that harvested yerba mate. While working in this same area, he ventured into the pine forests of western Santa Catarina as far as Misiones, in Argentina, where he lived for a few years in Barracón, a city now called Bernardo Irigoyen.

Widowed by his first wife (the Brazilian Benedita Mattoso, from Porto União), and already the father of three daughters, he married for the second time the Swedish Eleonora Deflon, the daughter of friends who had emigrated from Sweden on the same ship that the Janssons came on. Eleonora lived in the Military Colony of Alto Uruguai (in what is now the municipality of Tiradentes do Sul), Rio Grande do Sul. With her, Claro had six more children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

From Misiones, where he also worked transporting logs along the Uruguay River to the ports of Buenos Aires or Montevideo, he returned to Brazil, once again in the region of Porto União da Vitória, where he established himself as a photographer. At this time, he accompanied and photographed the entry into Porto União of the troops of Colonel João Gualberto, then Commander of the Public Force and later Patron of the Military Police of Paraná, who, coming from Curitiba, was heading towards Iraní with the first troop that would attack the "jagunços" raised by Monk João Maria and camped in that area. Among these is the last photo of Colonel João Gualberto in life. At this time, he also took a photo of the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who passed by the place by train.

Some time later, he worked as the official photographer for the Lumber Company, a North American lumber company owned by the magnate Percival Farquhar, whose companies would also build the São Paulo-Rio Grande Railroad. He then moved to Três Barras - today Santa Catarina, the headquarters of the Lumber Mill, from where he continued to photograph the movements related to the Contestado War until the end. There are photos of fanatical leaders such as Bonifácio Papudo and Alemãozinho, as well as military leaders such as General Setembrino de Carvalho. While still in Três Barras, he photographed the passage of people from São Paulo and Santa Catarina who fought during the Tenente uprising of 1924.

In 1928, he moved to Itararé (São Paulo) in search of certain profits with the construction of the Itararé-Fartura Railroad, which ended up never getting off the ground. However, he decided to settle permanently in this city, from where he also photographed the revolutionary movements of 1930 and 1932. In 1930, he photographed the front and also the passages of Flores da Cunha, Glicério Alves, Assis Brasil and Getúlio Vargas through Itararé.

During the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, in addition to Itararé, where he photographed João Batista Luzardo (The Ambassador), he also visited Buri, the place where the most violent fighting of the Southern Front took place, in Itapeva (then Faxina) and Capão Bonito, following and photographing the events.

In many of his travels between the 1910s and 1930s, he photographed important cities, leaving behind several collections, including Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Santos. He photographed many railway construction projects, including the construction of the famous Metal Bridge over the Uruguay River in Marcelino Ramos, in Rio Grande do Sul, and also made a collection of the Curitiba-Paranaguá Railway on a beautiful photographic trip.

He died in 1954 in Curitiba, where he was hospitalized - and where he was buried - and left behind a vast amount of material that is now disseminated and used by Brazilian students and interested parties. In November 2003, a biographical book was published by Dialeto, a publisher in São Paulo, in which part of his work can be seen. On this occasion, his works were exhibited at the Museum of Image and Sound of São Paulo (MIS) for two months. It is interesting to note that the planned period for this exhibition was only twenty days, however, due to its great success, the MIS ended up extending the period to two months. Also in his hometown, in Hedemora, articles were published highlighting his work.

His brothers Carlos, Israel, João and Emílio married in Brazil and left a large number of descendants. Axel, the second-to-last, returned to Sweden and joined his older sister who had stayed there. Anna had been to Brazil in 1909 with her husband, Otto Stark. However, they did not adapt and returned to Sweden; she never saw her father or her other siblings again. Axel graduated as an engineer and retired from the Stockholm city hall - despite his longing, he never returned to Brazil, although he never forgot Portuguese, his school language, in which he learned to write. Claro's second son, Gustavo Adolfo Jansson, retired as a photographer in Itararé and died in January 2004. Following in his father's footsteps, he left a vast photographic collection and contributed greatly to the book with his father's biography published by Dialeto.

From Wikipedia, Mar. 21, 2025 https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claro_Jansson

Arrangement:

Single album

Physical location:

Big Four Building

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:

Photograph albums
Lumber mills

Places:

South America

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:

Library Archives staff

Date Encoded:

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2025-09-30 17:16:58 +0000 .

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research by appointment. Contact Library Staff

Terms of access:

Copyright has not been assigned to the California State Railroad Museum. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the CSRM Library & Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the CSRM as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Claro G. Jansson's South American Steam Driven Lumber Mill Photograph Album, MS 841, California State Railroad Museum Library & Archives, Sacramento, California.

Location of this collection:

California State Railroad Museum Library and Archives

111 I Street

Sacramento, CA 95814, US

Contact:

(916) 323-8073

Library.CSRM@parks.ca.gov

Website