1905 Payroll and 1903-1905 St. Paul City Directories, family account. Arvid Wahlberg was born in Sweden in 1875 and emigrated in 1901. He married Clara Mathiason. Clara made lace curtains for the governor's residence, 25 University Ave. W. in St. Paul during William Rush Merriam's term (1889-1893). Her granddaughter, Mary Jane Wahlberg Hand, recalls that Clara was lacemaker for the King and Queen of Sweden before emigrating. Arvid and Clara's son Lloyd Arvid Wahlberg was born in 1912.

Arvid worked at the Capitol as a blacksmith, sharpening the tools for the stonecutters. Most blacksmiths working in construction were unionized at the time, but there is evidence that at least one was not, so Arvid's union status at the time is uncertain. The couple moved to St. Cloud, where he worked as a blacksmith in the stone quarries there.

Arvid was a founding member of the United Granite Company, as noted in the following entry from History of Stearns County, Minnesota. Vol. 1 by William Bell Mitchell, (Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr., 1915), p. 484
United Granite Company
Organized June, 1908, the members of the company being William Shield, president; C. A. Swenson, secretary; John Erickson, treasurer ; Alfred Naugen, Erick Olson, Herman Johnson, Arvid Walberg*, Karl Karlin, Karl Anderson, Leonard Engquist. Number of men at work, 26; wages for the year, $18,000. Large monuments have been shipped to Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin, Ohio and a number of other states. Fully equipped with the latest and best machinery.

*NOTE the misspelling of Wahlberg. Such errors in transcribing names were common in texts of the early 20th Century.