Patricia Ann (Martinson) Johnson - Aunt Patty

 Aunt Patty, my Uncle LeRay's wife, died earlier this month. 

 I am so grateful Brittany and I were able to stop in McPherson to visit Aunt Patty about 3 weeks before she died. She was in great spirits that day and we talked for quite a while. 

I'll miss her phone calls and how she relentlessly pursued answers to my questions about our family history as I wrote my book.

Pastor Daniel Perry, New Gottland Covenant Church in McPherson County, Kansas officiated and gave the best message at her funeral. The day was memorable in that the sanctuary was standing room only and a huge thunderstorm came over during the service and only her immediate family braved the 60 mph winds and rain at the New Gottland Lutheran Cemetery. They came back with a few broken umbrellas and wet clothes but, their positive attitudes were intact, just like Aunt Patty would have liked.

Before I left the church, I asked the pastor if he'd send me the message. 

 

I'll let his own wonderful words tell you about Aunt Patty.

 ***

 My Grandparents, Ida Nelson and Arthur Johnson, were married on November 30, 1918. The following was a speech, written and delivered for his parents, by their son and my uncle, Don Johnson, at the program of their 50th-anniversary open house celebration. It was held in November 1968 at the New Gottland Covenant Church near McPherson, Kansas.

November 1918

My Parents 50th Anniversary Speech

Arthur and Ida Johnson

By Donald J Johnson

 Arthur, probably realizing that the approaching winter would be hard and cold, decided that it would be nice to have a wife. They had met in Kansas City, Missouri, but Dad was now back on the farm in Kansas. He left Galva by train on November 28, 1918, and headed for Osage City, Kansas, where Mother’s family resided. After a day or two of deliberation, Ida was convinced that they should get married in Topeka, Kansas. They made that journey to Topeka and were married on November 30, 1918.

1958 On their farm near New Gottland

 Following the wedding, they continued on to Kansas City, Missouri, for the night, and then on to Excelsior Springs, Missouri for a few days, where Ida toured the city, and Arthur remained in their room recuperating from the flu. The happy newlyweds returned to Galva as the blizzard of 1918 was raging, and they continued their honeymoon at the Galva Hotel.

 Their carriage chauffeured by Arthur’s brother Reuben, and his cousin Joe Johnson, got lost in the blizzard. A few days later, Teddy Nordstrom, a friend of Dad’s, arrived by team and wagon to escort them to their new home. 

1968

 
Six children were born to this union: Helen Margaret, Earl, Donald, and Helen Lucille were the children of their first family, and LaDonna and LeRay were children of their ‘second family.’ LaDonna and LeRay were so much younger that the folks felt as if they had two families. 

 This is the Thanksgiving season, and we would like to thank the folks and God for the privilege of being raised in a home where much love was shown. Even though we realize that the times must have been difficult, and money was frequently a problem, they provided us with interesting and memorable experiences.

1978

 Journeys to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins at Osage City and Kansas City, in our Model T Ford touring car were always looked forward to and enjoyed. The trip to the Rio Grande Valley to visit grandparents. To Padre Island where the pigs ate our dinner, and on to the gulf of Old Mexico, where I fell out of that old Ford into a mud puddle will always be remembered. 

 Thank you, Mom and Dad, for the discipline that was given to us while we were kids, and I was probably the hardest one to handle. I believe that I know more about discipline than the others, as I seemed to get in the most trouble. They taught us to know right from wrong by various methods, such as Dad wielding the razor strap, or mother washing our mouths out with soap and water, or maybe spending the evening in a dark room.

 

1985

We also learned that we had better tell the truth or else suffer the consequences. That learning must have prompted me to report to Dad, and he nearly fell from the seat of his horse-drawn mower with laughter when I told him that I threw the hairbrush at Earl and broke the cupboard window, but it really wasn’t my fault because Earl ducked. 

 Earl never got in trouble that I remember. I guess he never did anything wrong, or else he was more able to avoid detection after he committed a misdeed.

 LaDonna and LeRay were brought up differently. They could do things that were worse than anything that we older ones ever thought of doing, and they didn’t have to suffer the consequences than we did.

Happy Anniversary!

 

Arthur, Ida, Helen, Earl, Don,
LeRay, and LaDonna
About 1940

 

100 Years

My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the next installment.

 Trips and Vacations

by Earl Johnson

One of my earliest recollections was a trip our family took to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas when I was about 5 years old to visit our grandparents. We made the trip in a 1921 Model T Ford, and it took us almost a week to get there. I can remember driving across the state of Oklahoma on 81 Highway. 81 was not paved at the time. It had been raining and we drove in a rut for a good distance. An air-cooled Franklin was in the rut ahead of us and rolled over, possibly because the different wheelbase did not fit the rut. I remember how proud we (Don and I) were of the old Model T which made it through without tipping over.

Don, Helen, Ida, and Earl on Padre Island

Before leaving on the trip, we went to Wichita in our 1917 Model T with the intention of trading for a better car. I remember looking at an old Dodge with an enclosed cab and disc wheels. We liked it but because of the enclosed cab and disc wheels (carbon monoxide dangers and difficulty installing chains), Dad elected to buy the 1921 Model T touring car.

We spent almost 3 months in the valley with our grandparents that year (approx. 1925-1926) It was a different
life for us with palm trees and citrus orchards, meeting people from Mexico, and seeing the Gulf of Mexico.

I remember one side trip to the Gulf of Mexico where we, including the car, went to an island for a
picnic. After getting to the island, we left the car and took a long walk along the beach. While we were gone, some pigs got into the car and into the picnic lunch, so we had nothing to eat while on the island.

I also remember trips across the border into old Mexico since we at Alamo and McAllen were only about 7 miles from the border.

The Texas trip was the only long trip I can remember during our growing-up years.

We did go to Osage City, Kansas about 130 miles once or twice each year to visit Grandpa and Grandma Nelson, and Mother’s brother Emil and family. Then perhaps 2 or 3 trips to Kansas City, Missouri to visit Mother’s sisters and their families and other relatives.

Family Group at Johnson/Nordling Reunion
Wamego, Kansas 1937

Also, for several years, we went to Wamego, Kansas for the Johnson – Nordling reunion (halfway between K. C. and McPherson). This was Dad’s family. (About 129 miles)

We also went to Wichita perhaps twice per year to visit Edwin Johnson’s. Mrs. Johnson, “Melia”, was Mother’s 1^st cousin. They had 1 son, Wilbur, about our age. The Johnsons were prosperous and owned the Johnson Bros Auto Supply along with two other brothers. Wilbur had lots of toys and often, when they came to visit us in McPherson County in their big Packard, they would bring us toys if Wilbur was tired of them. Years later I worked for Johnson Bros for a few months while in training for aircraft work in Wichita. Theirs was a wholesale and retail business. They even dealt in La France fire engines for a time.

 

100 Years

My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the first installment.

Family by Earl Johnson 

Earl Johnson

(written sometime in the 1990s) 

I was born in Osage City, Kansas, on October 23, 1921, at my grandparents’ home in Osage City, Kansas. My parents were Arthur T. Johnson and Ida (Nelson) Johnson of rural McPherson County in Delmore Township. My grandparents were John A. and Ida Johnson, and James and Jenny Nelson. All four grandparents were born in Sweden and immigrated to America. Two of my great grandfathers also lived in Kansas. They were Jonas Johnson and Håkan Mårtinsson and they are buried in Kansas. 

 New Gottland, in McPherson County, is a Swedish community and was settled by Swedes in the 1800s. Grandpa Johnson came to Red Wing, Minnesota in 1869 from Sweden and then homesteaded in McPherson County, Kansas. We still have the original homestead papers signed by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892. 

 Jonas Johnson settled on the next quarter north of John and had three daughters and two sons.  Grandpa Johnson married the daughter of his neighbor, Ida, when she was 17 and he was 36 years old. John and Ida Johnson raised 5 sons and 2 daughters on the homestead. They were Emil, Arthur (my father), Martin, Albin, Mabel, Edith, and Reuben. 

 They also had another son, Arthur, who was the first born and was killed when he fell off a wagon and broke his neck at the age of five. Emil never married and was buried in New Gottland Cemetery. Albin had two daughters, Faith and Hope, and was an Adventist Preacher in the backwoods of Tennessee. Martin had one daughter and lived in Texas. Mabel married Charles Lindblade and lived on the Johnson homeplace. They had three children: Betty, Roger, and Wendell. Edith never married and worked for years at the Adventist Hospital in Tennessee. Reuben married Marge while living in Chicago and later moved to a farm near Arkadelphia, Arkansas. They lived there until retirement. Marge is buried in a cemetery near Arkadelphia. 

 Grandpa Johnson later bought out another homestead just east of the original land. This was very hilly ground and mostly in pasture. He also purchased another quarter and also an 80 on good flat land. At one time he had a full section. 

 The home they lived in started out as a dugout, then a basement, and later a framed two-story home over the basement. It was an interesting house with a porch around three sides and also had a bathroom with a tub and sink. Water was pumped from a cistern underneath the bathroom. The toilet was outdoors. The house still stands but is uninhabitable and in terrible condition. The barn and all the outbuildings are long gone. The windmill tower and two concrete water tanks are still there.  

 They farmed with horses and oxen and raised hogs and cattle. They were fortunate to have 5 sons to work the farm. We have some interesting papers on what grandpa had to put up in collateral in order to buy the land and other things. 

 When grandpa was nearing 60 he was unable to pay anything on the principal for the flat land. He asked the bank to take the land back but the bank didn’t want it. They agreed to excuse the interest and let him try again. In just a few years Grandpa struck oil on his land and he was able to pay off all his debt and retire. Grandpa and Grandma took a trip to the Rio Grande valley in Texas and they bought land and built a house there. They spent their winters in Texas and their summers in Kansas until Grandpa died at 92 years. Grandma died in 1952 at the age of 93. They are buried in McAllen, Texas. 

 All the Johnsons in the McPherson County area had nicknames because there were so many. Dad had the name “Swearin’ Johnson” and Grandpa Johnson was “By Gosh Johnson”. 

 Grandpa Johnson smoked a pipe most of his life. He quit after being bitten by a black widow spider and he also received his second eyesight and did not use his glasses for the remainder of his life. Grandpa was a strong Democrat among many Republicans in Kansas. Someone once asked him in my presence, “Are you as good a Democrat as you always were?” He said, “When I’m in Kansas I’m a Democrat. When in Texas I’m a Republican.” He loved to argue. 

 Grandpa, in his older years, loved to walk and could walk 10 miles a day. If I tried to pick him up when meeting him on the road he would say, “Go on, go on.” When he did ride with me and I took him to town, he would point to 60mph and say, “Put it up there.” He would usually give me a dollar when I took him to town, a big sum in the 1930s. LaDonna, LeRay, Don and I, and our parents visited Grandma (in Texas) in 1947. 

 My mother's parents, James and Jenny Nelson, came to Kansas and settled around the coal mines of Osage City. Grandpa worked in the coal mines and also farmed. At one time Grandpa along with their only son, Emil, operated their own coal mine. Emil was injured in a fall which left him crippled for the rest of his life. 

 They had 6 daughters and one son. They were Anna, Ida (my mother), Emma, Edna, Hilda, Helen, and Emil. Grandpa and Grandma were married in Osage City, Kansas in 1889. They owned a home northeast of Osage City in an area called Dogtown. They also had an 80 which they farmed south and east of the home place. Grandpa had at least one brother and one sister that came to America. John Nelson, and sister Elna Nelson, who married Hans Christianson. Elna was the mother of Melia Johnson who married Edwin Johnson of Osage City. Elna had one grandson, Wilbur, who moved with his family to Topeka. 

 Grandma Nelson had her father and at least one brother and one sister who came to America. Håkan Mårtinsson was her father and had been a tailor in Sweden. Nils Hawkinson, her brother, farmed near Lindsborg, Kansas, and had 6 sons and one daughter. They had a nice bottomland farm on the Smoky Hill River. We visited them often and knew them all. Grandma’s sister Betty went to California, and I know very little about her and her family except that she enjoyed dogs and fed them at her table and mourned them after they went to the dog cemetery. 

 Grandma Jenny and her sister were maids in a castle in southern Sweden. Family stories lend that it was a summer palace. Their father, Håkan Mårtinsson was a tailor and his wife Ingar Nilsdotter assisted him. She was an excellent tailor herself. 

 Grandpa Nelson lived to be 92 and died in Kansas City. He is buried in Osage City. Grandma died at age 66 from diabetes and is also buried in Osage City. Their daughter Hilda died in her early 20s from an illness. 

 Grandma kept a beautiful yard and many flowers and was an excellent seamstress. I attended her funeral. Mother’s sister, Helen, was married to a man who was a spiritualist. As Grandma lay in the living room, he warned everyone to keep the doors and windows closed and to keep the cats out of the house. 

 Grandpa Nelson spent his later years between my parents’ home in Kansas and daughter Edna’s home in Kansas City. He was a handsome old man with heavy white hair. Grandpa always had a heavy Swedish brogue and often got his words turned around. Someone asked him to paint his house and he said, “Alright, I come yesterday.” He liked to drink a bit in his younger life, and we heard some funny stories from Mother about that. 

 We would go to Osage City once or twice a year and always enjoyed going to Uncle Emil’s candy store which was next to the movie theater. Uncle Emil later became Clerk of the City of Osage.

Happy birthday, Johannes Ivarsson!

Johannes Ivarsson was born on July 8, 1816 in Byarum, Jönköping, Sweden on Bodabygget farm. He

Plätt Farm, Byarum parish, Jönköping

was the second child of Ifvar Knorr Assarsson and Eva Johannessdotter. Johannes had four sisters and two brothers.

He grew up in the area of Byarum and when he was twenty-eight, he purchased land on Plätt farm where his older sister Lena, also lived with her family, near the town of Vaggeryd.

A year later, on the 31st of May 1846, Johannes married Inga Christina Svensdotter and they began their family with a son, Johan. (Johan was later known to his family in America as John August Johnson who settled in McPherson County, Kansas.) Johannes and Inga Stina had three boys and three girls in the following years. Johan, Britta, Emilia, Christina, Sven, and Anders.  

In 1846 dysentery swept through southern Sweden. Christina (age 4) and Sven (age 2) contracted it and died on the same day. One week later, Johannes also died of it on September 14, 1846.

A Tale of Two Traveling Books

Two books. One is off traveling and the other is safe in my genealogy office.

Dad’s book:

Earl Johnson, about 1944

Sometime in the early 90’s, I was digging through a box of old books that had just been purged from the library of the school in which I taught. As a book lover I was distressed by the quantity of books that had been slated for removal and destruction, in order to make room for more current reading material. I understand the need for updating school libraries but still felt the need to rummage through the outcasts. 

Among my finds was an old gray book about the US Merchant Marines. It was in my stack because my dad had been in the Merchant Marines during WWII. My thought was that it might make a nice gift for him as it had some nice old pictures of ships and men doing their jobs aboard them.

Around Father’s Day that year, I visited my parents in Missouri and casually presented the book to Dad. What I thought might be something interesting for him to look through on a rainy day got a greater response from him than I had expected. 

Inside, were pictures of the actual ship, off the coast of New York City, that he had trained on as a young man. He held on to that book for the rest of his life and once in a while, I overheard him showing it to someone or telling about that book and how I had found it.

About 2014, the book was lost during the clean out and selling of Dad’s condo a few months before he died. Likely, it was donated along with many of his other books.

I like to think someone has since picked it up at a used book store and it has continued its life somewhere else. Who knows? Maybe someday it will come back to me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mom’s book:

A few months ago, my dad’s sister, Helen, left a message asking me to call her when I had a minute. She sounded excited and said she had something interesting to share.

Vera Johnson, about 1951

When I returned her call, she told me about a Wichita neighbor who was moving and had given her some old books she couldn’t take with her. As Aunt Helen looked through them, she noticed something remarkable.

Opening the cover of author Helen MacInnes’ book, Rest and Be Thankful, she found the name of a previous owner, Miss Vera Dibbens, dated August 27, 1949. The name had been crossed out and updated with Mrs. Vera Johnson. This book had belonged to my mother when she was living in Kansas and before she married my dad!

I have no way of knowing how long ago the book left my mother’s possession. My parents moved away from Kansas for good in 1989 and she died in Branson, Missouri in 2004. 

Needless to say, the book is in my custody for now.

Travel Tuesday - Sweden Trip

Last post, I wrote about a Swedish cousin, Gunnel, who found me on Ancestry and made all of my genealogy research on that branch of the family much more real! 

Once I knew I had relatives in Sweden, I had a great desire to meet them. Gunnel had sent me pictures of the part of our family who had stayed in Sweden through email. My sister, Kris, and I began to plan a trip to Sweden that fall and it seemed to be the perfect retirement celebration for me as I retired this spring from 35 years of teaching. I emailed my cousin, Gunnel, with our plans and learned that she was very excited to meet us also. 

This was the first visit to Sweden for Kris and I and we immediately felt as if we were home. We grew up in a very Swedish-American culture so actually being in Sweden validated so much of our lives and childhoods in ways nothing else could. On our way to Jönköping, we visited the western and southern cities of Gothenburg, Ängelholm (to meet Susann, an ebay / Facebook friend) and Malmö / Copenhagen. Then we were on to Jönköping and our family!

Altogether, we met 14 relatives! Our cousins welcomed us with open arms and we immediately felt like family!  We stayed with Gunnel for a few days and celebrated Midsommar with them in Jönköping and later, in Dalarna. 

One cousin's husband, who is also a genealogist, presented me with a large notebook containing his work on the history of our family. Besides the family tree information, it's full of pictures of family and beautiful color pictures of the inside of some of the homes belonging to them over the years! 

We all traveled south of Jönköping to the towns of Vaggeryd and Byarum. We visited Plätt Farm where my great grandpa John August Johnson and his younger brother, Gunnel's grandpa Anders, were born and raised. We ate traditional meals and talked over fika at an old house at Byarums hembygdsgård.

I was overjoyed and very touched with the warm welcome and acceptance! 

We just got home a few days ago and the last month still feels like a dream! I would never have believed this could happen to us, even two years ago!

Take-Away: Never give up on the missing branches in your family tree and always try to keep a public tree open! Someone might be looking for YOU!

Never Give Up - Friday's Faces from the Past

My family tree has a few researched branches so long they could span the ocean, and they do! I can't take the credit for most of the information. Much of it was accomplished years before I ever began my research.

Memorial stone in Byarum Parish, Jönköping, Sweden
My loose translation: Memorial To the memory of the

532 Byarum residents who 1853-1930 emigrated to America,
to seek their livelihood.
My great grandfather, Johann August Johannesson, was one
of the 532 that left Byarum in 1869.

I have had help and I've been fortunate to meet some wonderful cousins along the way who dropped crumbs for me to follow when I needed it.
Other branches have only grown a few inches in all the years my family has been working on our genealogy.

One of the most stubborn branches has been my dad's Johnson and Nelson lines. All four of his grandparents came to America from Sweden in the mid 1800's as young, mostly single adults. We had vague stories of Sweden, and a few names that had been passed down, but little else.

If you know anything about Swedish names before the 1900's, you know that each generation received new last names depending on their father's name.

August Johannesson really was Johannes' son! Johanna Håkansdotter really was... you guessed it, Håkans' daughter!
That makes for very difficult searching made even harder by the fact that I didn't speak much more Swedish than "thank you," "yes," and the names of some traditional dishes.

It was a very slow growing branch! 

The information I had on my Swedish ancestors existed on my Ancestry.com tree for years without comment, as the branches around them grew with new information and newly found cousins.

I spent time in Lindsborg, Kansas at the Old Mill Museum learning how to research using the Swedish records. Every time I found a new person or fact, I'd go to my family tree and enter the data. Years of searching and waiting ended abruptly one day last spring when I opened a message from a

Anders and his family in their home in Jönköping, Sweden

woman in Sweden claiming that her grandfather, Anders, and my great grandfather, John, were brothers. John had come to America while Anders had remained in Sweden.

The pictures started coming and I found myself looking into faces of family. Familiar family resemblances! I never dreamed this would happen after so much time.

After many questions, much research, and major breakthroughs in my understanding of Swedish records, I am proud to call Gunnel my cousin. We write back and forth and share new and old bits of family news.

And... I've started planning a trip to Sweden!

Never. Give. Up.

Sharing the Work

I recently came across this picture when looking through my uncle's genealogy files. It was taken on my grandparent's Kansas farm during harvest one year, long ago. Grandpa Art Johnson is seated in the middle, Grandma, Ida, is on the far right, Art's cousin Harry and his wife are standing on the left and Grandma's sister, Helen, sitting in front.  Everyone except for poor Harry found some personal shade beneath those wide-brimmed hats. I've been told that Grandpa always wore one when he was working out in the fields.

I'm sure they worked hard the day they took this picture but, I have a feeling they also had some laughs.

Amanuensis Monday - An Entry from Uncle Reuben's Travel Journal

I transcribed the entry, above, from Great Uncle Reuben's travel journal for my class during The Uncle Reuben Project this year. It took my 2nd graders a little while to realize he was referring to bears. I wondered about the reference of Bruiser so I googled it along with words such as "Chicago," which is where they were living at the time. I believe he called the bear Bruiser because the Chicago Cubs had a mascot that was a bear named Bruiser. Uncle Reuben had a sense of humor!

This is a follow-up post to my series on Uncle Reuben.
The new blog site for: The Uncle Reuben Project
I have also written about the project on Scholastic.com. Top Teaching/Shari Edwards

Uncle Reuben's Canoe!

This is a follow-up post to my series on Uncle Reuben.
The new blog site for: The Uncle Reuben Project

Recently, I discovered that one of my uncles actually has the canoe that Uncle Reuben traveled in when he went down the Mississippi River in the early 1930's. Now I have more research to do! Here are some pictures I took of it yesterday.