Astrid Rosing Sawyer

Astrid Scheel Rosing was from Copenhagen, Denmark,[1] the daughter of Ulrik Rosing and Anna Gustien. She emigrated to the United States as a girl in 1888,[2] with her siblings and their widowed mother.[3][4]

A Kisselkar truck belonging to Astrid S. Rosing Inc.; "I hesitated a long time before deciding to buy a motor truck," she explained to a 1915 trade magazine, "but now I wish I had bought it six months, yes a year ago."[5]

In her teens, hoping to earn money for singing lessons,[1] Rosing worked as a stenographer and typist at a building materials company in Chicago. In time, she learned the business, and formed the Astrid S. Rosing Inc., a successful building materials dealer.[4][6] She owned a fleet of motor trucks (still a novelty in 1915 Chicago)[5][7] and several warehouses and supply yards. "Men told me it was no business for a woman," she recalled later. "No, that didn't discourage me and I never for a minute had any notion of giving up."[2] She spoke to the Illinois Clay Manufacturers' Association convention in 1917.[8]

Later in life, Sawyer did literary translations from Danish to English, including a children's book by Torry Gredsted,[9] The Castle of Contentment: Letters from a Jutland Farm (1937) by Gunnar Nislev,[10][11] Kaj Munk's VIctory and He Sits at the Crucible (1944).[12] She also translated Hjalmar Meidell's Henry VIII and Catherine Howard from Norwegian to English.[13]

Sawyer was also co-founder and vice-president of the Chicago Equestrian Association.[14][15]

Astrid Rosing married American engineer, Walter Percy Sawyer, in 1918, in Chicago.[16] He worked at Astrid S. Rosing, Inc. "Never leave your work to find yourself a husband," she advised. "Let him find you."[17] They had a daughter, Helen Marion Sawyer. Astrid Rosing Sawyer died in 1954, aged 79 years, in Illinois.[18]