Gustaf George Thylin was the sixth child born to Karl Johan Thylin and his wife Hedvig Hedda Hedström. George was born on 19 October 1897 in Borlänge, parish of Stora Tuna, Kopparberg Län, which is in the province of Dalarna, Sweden.

The coat of arms shown is for both the county and the province of Dalarna. The county name was changed from Kopparberg to Dalarna in the mid 1990's.

George was christened as Gustaf Georg Thylin in a church established in 1469 called Stora Tuna. Click on the photo below for more information on Stora Tuna. The christening bowl had been in use since the 1500's. He was confirmed in the same Lutheran Church in 1911,when he was 13 years old.

George graduated from Hushagens Folkskola (Grammar school) on 10 Jan 1911 at age 13. After leaving school, George worked at the Stora Kopparbergs steelmill in Sweden from 1912 to 1916. At the urging of his two older brothers, Henry and Laurits, George decided to emigrate to America. Between 1851 and 1923 almost 45,000 Swedes left the province of Dalarna for North America and George was one of them.

George sailed as a steerage passenger on the "SS Hellig Olav" leaving from Christiania (Oslo), Norway on 12 January 1917 and arriving in New York on 26 January 1917. The "SS Hellig Olav" had a top speed of 15 knots and a capacity for about 1700 passengers. She was built in 1902 for the Scandinavian American Line.

The Manifest of Alien Passengers lists George Thylin as 19 year old Swedish labourer, born in Borlänge, whose final destination was to join his brother Henry in San Francisco. The manifest described George as 5 foot 8 inches tall with blond hair and blue eyes.

George joined his brother Henry and his family in San Bruno, California. He went to work at the Judson Steel Works in South San Francisco with his brother Henry until 1920. During this time George lived on Taylor Avenue in San Bruno and was a member of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers of North America.

When George was 22 years old, he worked for the Red River Lumber Company located in the northern California town of Westwood which was established in 1913 and is dominated by a huge statue of Paul Bunyan. He lived as a lodger there, in 1920 with 45 other mill workers, in a bunk house on Birch Street. Westwood was a thriving company town of 5,000 people at that time. In 1921, George returned to work in the steel mills with his brother Henry.

At the age of 27, on 28 April 1925, he became a naturalized US citizen at Redwood City Superior Court as Gustav Georg Thylin.

In 1926 he went to work for the McCloud River Lumber Co in the northern California town of McCloud. George also worked for lumber companies in Loyalton, California. In December of 1927, George returned to Sweden for a visit and stayed with his mother and father. He saw his brother Axel and his sisters Hildur and Hedvig. He returned on 17 May 1928.

In 1929, George moved to San Francisco and went to work for the Crocker First National Bank. It was in San Francisco that he met Anna Theresa Ahlberg at a dance at the Finnish Hall. She had come to America in 1928. They were married in San Francisco on 2 November1931. He was thirty-four and she was thirty-two. After their marriage, they moved to a rented flat in San Francisco's Mission district where their son was born in 1932.

In August of 1934 , George bought a two story house in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district. The family moved into one flat and rented the other one to Theresa's sister Gerda and her husband Svante. A daughter was born in 1936. George continued working for the Crocker First National Bank in San Francisco until his retirement as a security guard on 1 November 1962. He had 33 years of service.

George and Theresa stayed in San Francisco until 1972 when they sold their house and moved first to Placerville, California and then to South Lake Tahoe. Later they moved to Seattle, Washington to be near their daughter and her husband.