Thorkild Shovelin  (1854 -1888) South Border

 Thorkild was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on March 5, 1854 and lived at 13 Snaregade. He was christened on May 31,1854. He was the son of painter Axel Thorsen Schovelin (1827-1893) and Oline Hansine Petrine Moos (1822-1893).

He graduated from Borgerdyd High School in 1871 and then studied law. He never received his degree in law and went on to become at teacher at his former High School for several years. He went to Chicago around 1878. In 1884 he moved to New York. He made his living as a poet and married an actress named Lillian. He died of a heart attack in a boarding house in Chelsea, 119 West 22nd Street in 1888. He was buried at Maple Grove  in a South Border lot owned by Rev. Stephen Merritt (1845-1917) who was a wealthy man, preacher and undertaker all in one. He owned around 500 plots in Maple Grove. There is no stone on this lot.

The Shovelin family were descendants from Thorvald Thorvaldsson Skoalin who was born in 1763 on the Skogar farm near Akureyri, Iceland, which at that time was part of Denmark. In 1873 Thorvald was sentenced to capital punishment for forgery of a bank note and was escorted to Denmark waiting for execution, but was reprieved in 1790. He settled in Copenhagen where he married and raised a single son, named Peter, who later became one of the leading booksellers in Denmark.

Peter had a number of children- among them a son named Julius, who became a liberal member of the Folketinget (the House) from 1852-1861 and director of The Federal Bank in the middle of the 19th Century. One of his other children, Axel (Thorkild's dad) became a well known painter. Thorkild's younger brother Julius became a high profile conservative politician and was a member of the Folketinget (1910-1918) and Landstinget (Senate) (1918-1932).

Today in Denmark, there are few families named Schovelin, but a few members have immigrated to Chile.