INTRODUCTION
I have always been fascinated with family history, especially my own, and yet have known little about my ancestors. To begin with: what were their names; where and when did they live; how long did they live; what did they look like; and how many siblings did they have? Beyond these basic facts were questions like: what kind of houses did they live in; where did they go to school; what did they do for a living; what pastimes did they enjoy; what religion did they practice, if any; what language did they speak; what did they die of? Finally, of course, I wanted to know what were their hopes and dreams, their fears and phobias, how they saw the world, and how they felt about their existence on this small planet we call Earth.
My father had an excellent memory and over the years told many stories about his life. My mother did not remember nearly as much as my father did, but occasionally something jogged her memory and she would tell us about an event, or what life was like in the old days. Like me, my maternal grandmother was also interested in her ancestors and did some research. I only saw it very briefly many years ago, but my understanding is that it is still on file at the headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, DC.
On the Johnson side of the family, my father wrote an article about our family for the Deuel County History (Deuel County Historical Society, Hansen Printing, Des Moines, Iowa, 1984). Also, my cousin Tom Ferris wrote down some important family history.
On the Reed side of the family, other than the basic research done by my maternal grandmother, I knew little. Then, in 1990 a book was published about the years my aunts and uncles spent growing up in Friday Harbor and Bellingham, Washington. The book, Underpinning, was written by my aunt Caroline Reed. She died before I was born, and before the book was ever published. The typed manuscript sat in a dusty footlocker for more than 40 years. Then one day my aunt Virginia got it out, and after some editing, had it printed in book format. The book is a goldmine of Reed family history and I have read it many times.
In a side-note, in 1970 I married Maria de Los Angeles Ramirez Mora in her hometown of San Rafael de Heredia, Costa Rica. As I got to know Maria’s family, and other Costa Ricans, I became aware that Costa Ricans placed little importance on their ancestry. It was thought my father-in-law, Juan Daniel Ramirez Paniagua, was mostly of Spanish origin, and my mother-in-law, Digna Mora Sanchez, was mostly of native American origin. But they had no details, In fact they didn’t even know the names of their great grandparents. No one seemed to write down any family history, and if they did, when a family member passed away, all written documents were thrown away. When I first met one of my Costa Rican brothers-in-law he told me some interesting stories about my father-in-law, but years later when I brought up the subject with him, he no longer had any recollection. But I remembered, and from that experience, realized how important it was that I write down my recollections.
Eventually aunt Caroline’s book became an inspiration. I realized someday some member of our family will be as interested in our heritage as I am, and it was my responsibility to continue the tradition started by my aunt.
JOSEPH C. JOHNSON
Here is the story of my great grandfather as told by my cousin Thomas Ferris in a letter to his children in 1990 —
Joseph C. Johnson [Joseph Lewis Johnson’s grandfather, and my great grandfather] . . . arrived at Chappell, Nebraska, in 1885 in a covered wagon with his wife, Laura, and his six children: Thomas, age 14; Chloe; Lucy; Helen; Mary (called Molly); and Stelle . . . Joseph was born in Caldwell County, Missouri, in 1842. His father, Christopher Johnson, was born in Ireland and his mother, Francis O. (Fanny) Bryant, born in Ohio, was of Irish ancestry. The Johnson family came to Clay County, Missouri, in 1838 as pioneers.
In 1858, when Joseph was 16, he left home and went to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he worked for several months as a teamster for the U.S. government. On one trip to Laramie, Wyoming, he was involved in a skirmish with hostile Indians at Horse Creek, Wyoming. Joseph then went to California where he worked in the mines at Hangtown for three months. He then went into the livestock business in Santa Rosa County. He returned to Missouri in 1860, arriving at St. Joseph on October 10th.
In the fall of 1861 Joseph enlisted in the Missouri “Six Month State Militia.” He then served for one and a half years in Company G of the Sixth Missouri Volunteer Cavalry and then in the 13th Missouri Cavalry until the end of the Civil War. Most of his Civil War service was in Colorado, but he was also in Missouri, Texas, and Oklahoma. He became familiar with the country around Chappell while he was stationed at Fort Sedgwick near Julesburg, Colorado, which is about 15 miles from Chappell.
After the Civil War Joseph made two trips to California working on wagon trains, then went into business in Bethany, Missouri. In 1870 he married Laura C. Lewellen who was born and raised in Pennsylvania.
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In my father’s article in the Deuel County History he fleshed out quite a bit more family information. Following are excerpts from his article —
The family lived in Bethany until 1885 when Joseph brought them to what is now Deuel County, Nebraska (in 1885 the area around Chappell was still part of Cheyenne County). Joseph homesteaded on the Lodgepole Creek about a mile outside of town. He bought more land, much of it at $1.00 an acre, until his ranch consisted of 1,760 acres and extended from the Lodgepole Creek to the South Platte River. The family built and lived in the first frame house in the area. The other settlers in those days were still living in sod houses. When I was a boy there were still a few sod houses out in the country around Chappell that were still occupied.
Joseph C. Johnson was killed by a train in 1917. He had become deaf and did not hear the train whistle He and his wife Laura are buried side by side in the Chappell cemetery.
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My father added a little more to my cousin’s story about my great grandfather’s death. —
Wheat prices from the Chicago Commodity Exchange were posted daily at the wheat elevators on the south side of Chappell. Being a wheat farmer, my great grandfather walked down to the elevators everyday to check the prices. This entailed crossing the railroad tracks. Some men who were passing the time playing checkers saw the danger my great grandfather was in as he crossed the tracks, and shouted at him, but he failed to hear both them and the train whistle. Apparently the locomotive just grazed his head, but it was a mortal wound.
Here is more from father’s article in the Deuel County History —
They homesteaded on the Lodgepole Creek, just a mile southeast of town and started farming and cattle ranching. As did most settlers on the creek, they built a dam and irrigated a small area near the creek. The pond created by the dam provided a place to fish and swim in the summer and a place to skate in the winter. Ice for the iceboxes, then used for refrigeration, was cut there and stored, packed in straw, in big pit on the south bank,
My grandmother died not long after arriving in Chappell, but I do not know the date of her death. My grandfather lived on the ranch until he was too old to run it, then moved to town where he lived in a little frame house across the street from the present location of the Thornburg’s Variety Store. He died in about 1917 when struck by a train while walking back to town from the Farmer’s Elevator. He had be become deaf and did not hear the whistle.
Very few people had settled in Chappell by 1885. The only resident I can recall my father mentioning was John O’Neal, who was the Union Pacific station agent. He had built a lean-to against the station from which he operated a general store. My father told me of a few farmers living on the north table land, but the only one I can remember is Knute Ekwall. When I was a boy the Neumanns, Gus Brown, Cy Brown, the Soderquiests, the Wolfs, the McHattons, McAuliffes, Pyles and Persingers all had ranches along the creek not far from town and I presume that they came to Chappell about the same time as my father.
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IRISH ANCESTRY
As far as the Irish ancestry goes, when I first heard this from my cousin Thomas Ferris I was working at Clemson University, South Carolina. I thought it was odd because I’d never heard that Johnson was an Irish family name. One day I was talking to Dr. Jerome V. Reel, who was a British historian, and mentioned to him about my Irish connection. Dr. Reel told me that the Irish Johnsons were actually Scotch Irish, sent by the British to Ireland to subdue the Catholics. Technically, he said, the Johnsons were not Scottish, but an English clan that lived in the highlands along the border with Scotland. He said many of them were a rough bunch who herded sheep and cattle by day and raided the lowlands by night, in search of horses to steal. Sounds like a colorful past, but who knows how much truth there is in it.
THOMAS MARTIN JOHNSON
My grandfather, Thomas Martin Johnson, was born in New Hampton (Harrison County), Missouri, on February 15, 1871. In 1885, at age 14, he walked to Chappell, Nebraska, behind a covered wagon from his home in Bethany, Missouri.
Here is more from father’s article in the Deuel County History —
My parents had three children: Laurabelle, born in 1900; Dorothy born in 1905; and myself, born in 1910. Laurabelle married Samuel Reed Ferris who was a druggist at the Thompson Pharmacy. He later had his own drugstore in Chappell. He joined the Army at the beginning of World War II and stayed in until he retired in the middle sixties, shortly after which he died of a stroke. He saw service in Germany and Japan. They had one son, Thomas George, who lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He is married and has seven children and two grandchildren. Laurabelle lives in Washington, DC.
Dorothy was graduated from the University of Iowa and became a dietician and statistician. She lived in Denver for many years and was last employed at the University of Colorado Medical College. She now lives at the Frasier Meadows Retirement Home in Boulder.
My parents were active in the affairs of the Methodist church, the Chappell schools and the various social and civic organizations. My father was the first Worthy Patron and my mother the first Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star Lodge. My mother died on Sept. 25, 1952. My father died on May 4, 1962, at the age of 91. During his long life he engaged in a variety of activities. Although his primary occupation was banking, real estate and insurance, at one time or another he taught country school, was the Chappell Postmaster, was assistant secretary of the Nebraska State Senate in Lincoln, was owner and publisher of the Chappell Register (1898-1908), and sold Rumley tractors. In about 1914 he went to Denver and bought one of the Chappell’s first automobiles, bringing home with hi a mechanic to drive and service the car. Together they started a garage which may have been the first such in Chappell. It was located in a cement block building next to the power plant. I particularly remember as I still have a scar on my cheek, the result of a cut received when I poked my head through the windshield when Laurabelle drove our car into the side the garage doorway. I can recall when we had no electricity, running water or central heat in our house. My sisters tell me that our house was he first house in Chappell to have those conveniences, but I cannot vouch for that. When I was small the only heat upstairs was a register in the floor of the bathroom which was directly over the coal-burning kitchen range. We had a coal fired “base burner” in the living room which was put up each fall and taken down each spring. We had a chicken house and barn in the back yard and my sisters say that they had to drive the cow out to the pasture every day. I believe that for a time after our barn was torn down, we kept a cow in Doc Doran’s livery stable down behind the power plant.
My father had great interest in growing trees and planted many trees in town and on farms that he owned. I often helped him haul water in cream cans to the cemetery to water the trees around the graves of my grandparents. The wind-mill on top of the hill never seemed to work. He once told me the first grave in the Chappell cemetery was that of his cousin, a boy named Williams, who was killed when struck by lightning while standing with my father beside the barn on our ranch. My father was knocked unconscious, but was saved because his mother worked over him until he was revived.
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I honestly cannot remember how many trips I made to Chappell to see my grandparents. I can remember three — one in the winter and two in the summer. I think all three trips were made on the train. The train did not stop in Chappell so we got off at Sidney. My brother tells me we went there in the winter when I was a baby. It was bitterly cold and windy the morning we drove to Sidney to catch the return train. We were going directly into the wind and as a result the car radiator froze up. Grandfather turned the car around and drove it backwards for the last few miles into Sidney. While waiting for the train Tom and Kate got into a coal bin in the station and became covered in grimy coal dust.
I remember my grandparents’ house as a large house with high ceilings. I was fascinated with the chiming of the grandfather clock that stood in the living room. I know there was a trip in the winter because at one time there were some black-and-white photos of me playing in the snow. One summer there was a terrible storm with dry lightning. On my last trip I spent quite a bit of time playing with a brass alligator nutcracker. When it was time to leave, as we were saying good-bye my grandmother gave me the brass alligator. That was the last time I saw her because a few years later she died during a heatwave. I had the nutcracker in Longview for several years, but never saw it again after we moved away in 1960.
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I have three vivid memories of my grandfather.
HOW TO CATCH A PHEASANT
The first one was when he drove us out on the prairie. Someone in the car spotted a pheasant and grandfather stopped the car so we could watch it. I was fascinated with it. With a broad grin on his face, grandfather asked me if I wanted to go catch it. The pheasant seemed to be darting around among the brush pretty fast and I sensed he was pulling my leg. Anticipating a chance encounter with a pheasant, he had stuck a salt shaker into his pocket before leaving the house. He pulled the salt shaker out of his pocket and told me the way to catch a pheasant was to run after it and put salt on its tail. Grandfather put the salt shaker in my hand and told me to go catch the pheasant. I looked up at him incredulously. When he realized I wasn’t going to fall for his trick, he said, “If you’re close enough to put salt on its tail, you’re close enough to catch it.” Everyone in the car broke out laughing. The joke was on me, but I had enough sense not to make a fool of myself running around on the prairie chasing a pheasant.
SUGAR ON MY CEREAL
The second memory was of having breakfast with grandfather. After waking up, my mother helped me get dressed, washed my face, combed my hair and sent me down to the breakfast table. Grandfather was the only person at the table. At that stage in my early life mom helped me with everything. I knew how to shovel food into my mouth, chew, and swallow, but that was about it. Grandfather told me he had just made some delicious oatmeal and asked me if I would like some. I shook my head yes. He then set a bowl of hot oatmeal in front of me and I just sat there and looked at it. “Would you like some cream on your cereal?” He asked. I nodded my head. He poured some cream on the cereal. “Sugar?” he said. I nodded my head again. He set a small bowl of sugar with a silver spoon in it next my cereal. My mother normally put sugar on my cereal for me, but after staring at my grandfather for a bit I realized I was going to have to do it myself. I lifted the spoon out of the bowl and clumsily dumped some sugar on my oatmeal. “No, no, no,” said grandfather, “This is how you do it.” With that he scooped a small quantity of sugar from the bowl and then tapped the spoon lightly as he passed it over the top of his cereal in a circular motion. I thought that was extremely clever and for the rest of my life that’s how I put sugar in my oatmeal.
THE SNAKE
The final memory was when grandfather drove us out on the prairie to visit the cemetery where my great grandfather was buried. Unable to read the tombstone, I wandered off and soon shouted “snake” at the crowd standing by my great grandfather’s grave. A huge, fat snake had slithered from beneath some sagebrush and was slowly coming toward me. My mother grabbed me and pulled me back. She said it looked like a rattlesnake. Grandfather said it was a bull snake and despite its menacing look, was harmless.
MY GRANDMOTHER
My grandmother’s name was May Blanche Loveland. She was born in 1877 in Pottawattamie County, Iowa. One of her uncles was a miller and a village in Pottawattamie County was named after him: Loveland Mills. The village no longer exists. My father speculates that her family moved to Julesburg in the early 1890s. May was working in the courthouse in Julesburg when my grandfather met her. They were married on October 10, 1898. She was a very small woman with curly hair. On my last trip to Chappell I was constantly playing with a brass alligator nutcracker. As we were leaving, she gave me the alligator. I think it got lost when we moved from Longview, Washington, to go back east. I believe my grandmother died in a heat wave in the late 1950s.
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