5

The Lundeens and the Lindstroms

Long before the Pinkertons arrived on the scene, members of the Johnson family—at least the mother and children—did their best to get by in a difficult and unforgiving world.

Alvira Lundeen Johnson’s Swedish roots were deep and wide. In fact, her Swedish relatives have been traced to the era just before 1600, when Sweden was a world power. Christopher Hellsing, a doctor who resided in Uppsala, Sweden, was a relative of Alvira’s grandmother Anna Stina Hellsing. In a thick hardcover book, Christopher meticulously charted the Hellsing family tree going all the way back to 1590, the birth year of Nils Hellsing. Nils Hellsing had a son named Erik, who was born in 1619 in the province of Värmland, Sweden. Anna Stina Hellsing represented the eighth generation of that branch of the family tree. She was born on February 18, 1833, in Gravendal, Sweden, and was married in 1859 to Johan Jacob Lindstrom.

In the fall of 1885, the Hellsing-Lindstrom clan immigrated to the United States along with their children: Frederick Reinhold, Johanna, Carl Johan (Charley), Jacob Adolf, Gustaf George, Andrew and Anna Kristina, also known as Christine. Another child, Abraham Konrad, died at a young age in Sweden. The family’s journey to the U.S. likely began with a horseback ride from their home village, Älvdalen, to Mora. After a short boat ride from Mora to Insjön, they boarded a train to Gothenburg, where another boat was waiting for the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the brothers, Carl Johan, worked in Minneapolis for a time. A talented mason, he and his brothers made a living by pouring cement footings around graves. He also helped build Washington Avenue, one of the main streets in downtown Minneapolis. Charley settled into a routine, and he wanted to keep it that way. When his young bride from the home country, Anna, longed to return to Sweden for a visit with family members, Charley refused to let her go. “He informed her if she did go back to her former home, she didn’t have to bother to come back,” noted Jeanette Johnson, Christine Lundeen’s granddaughter. To Anna’s credit, she defied her husband’s orders. Charley’s wife journeyed back to Sweden and never returned. She wasn’t among the mourners when Charley Lindstrom died on April 29, 1934, just a year and eighteen days after Alvira Lundeen Johnson and her seven children were found dead.

Another of Christine Lundeen’s siblings, Johanna, died in Harris on Christmas Day, a day after Christine’s nineteenth birthday. Only thirty-one years old, Johanna died of a hemorrhage while giving birth to a stillborn child, according to cemetery records of the Fish Lake Lutheran Church in Stark, Minnesota. Christine “never talked much about her sister as far as I can remember,” said Jeanette Johnson. “The only thing left is a beautiful wool scarf with roses…that my grandmother gave me, saying that it had belonged to her sister Johanna.”

Christine took good care of her younger brother, Andrew. They faced a learning curve in adapting to a new country and deciphering a new language, and the young immigrants weren’t immune from the discrimination that new Americans still face today. “She had to walk to the church for confirmation. I don’t know how far it was,” Jeanette Johnson recalled. “And then when they started school, she had to hold his hand and help him. And then they got teased in school. They were called ‘greenhorns.’”

The patriarch of the family, Johan Jacob Lindstrom, died on April 9, 1912, in Rush City. The Rush City Post hailed him at the time as a “pioneer” in the community. “In Sweden, Mr. Lindstrom was employed in the great iron works of his native country, but followed farming in America, in which he was equally successful,” the newspaper reported. “His was a useful life and his character was above reproach. He was a good man, a devoted father and husband, and his life is a noble example to all who knew him.”

Anna Stina lived on for eight more years. She suffered a stroke on November 11, 1920, and died four days later at 7:15 p.m., on the seventeenth birthday of her granddaughter Alvira. As the Rush City Post described it, the “deceased was conscious until Saturday evening responding to the members of the family at her bedside until Sunday when she answered only feebly and fell into a dreamless sleep, from which she never awakened.”

Charley Lindstrom, one of Christine Lundeen’s brothers, made a living by pouring cement footings around graves. Author’s collection.

Anna Stina Hellsing, mother of Christine Lundeen. She’s pictured with Christine, left, and Christine’s sister-in-law, Christina Lindstrom. Author’s collection.

Christine Lundeen broke the news of her mother’s passing to her uncle Carl Hellsing, who lived in Söderhamn, Sweden, at the time. Christine was notified when death was near and was “at her side when the end came,” she wrote, adding that Anna Stina “breathed her last breath with a song and a prayer.”

Before that final prayer, Anna Stina Hellsing loved to sit in her rocking chair in the twilight of her life and dote on her grandkids. The elderly matron of the family would get up to find goodies for Freda, Alvira and the other Lundeen girls when they came for a visit.

Christmas was a special time of year. “One time when Johan and Anna Stina spent Christmas with mother and the family staying overnight, they were awakened early in the morning by a lot of noise. Mother and Alvira were happily discovering what Santa had left during the night,” Jeanette Johnson said.

By the time of Anna Stina’s death, Fred and Christine Lundeen were well-established members of the community.

Fred Lundeen, like Christine, arrived in the U.S. from his native Sweden at a young age. Mr. Lundeen was only twenty-three when he purchased eighty acres of farmland near Harris from his brother, William Lundeen. A warranty deed, dated July 30, 1885, shows the purchase price was $240, or $3 per acre. Settling onto a site just south of the Emil Johnson property, Fred Lundeen made the most of his investment. He built a sturdy house on the property, farmed the land and raised a family there after marrying Christine in 1893.

“I’m not sure how he and grandma met, but evidently he was considered a good catch, as grandma said she was the envy of all her girl friends,” Jeanette Johnson wrote years later. “There isn’t much I remember about grandpa, even though years later we lived on the farm with them when my father [Fred Peterson] took over the running of the farm,” she added. “I do recall, however, him and my dad reminiscing about the old country and telling ghost stories. They had a good time.”

Fred Lundeen was clean shaven and quite handsome in his younger days. When he got older, Alvira’s father sported a thick white mustache. “My sister, Betty, remembers grandpa’s mustache getting white with the buttermilk he loved to drink,” Jeanette recalled.

Fred Lundeen outlived his youngest daughter and her seven children by three years. Before his death in 1936, the aging man had been in poor health for quite some time. Christine Lundeen kept her mind off the loss of her daughter and grandchildren, in part, by throwing herself into a caregiver role for her husband and by leaning on her deep faith.

“I was in high school when grandpa passed away and can remember the casket in the living room of our house,” Jeanette wrote. “I had to get permission for time off from school to attend the funeral and had to explain that this meant a lot to me as grandpa was living with us at the time.”

Christine Lundeen died on the last day of January in 1972. She was survived by two daughters, eight grandchildren, twenty-five great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.

At her funeral, a well-meaning minister did his best to pay homage to a remarkable woman who had endured so much suffering during her 100 years, one month and six days on earth. His job wasn’t easy. How do you sum up a century of living in a ten-minute homily? He read some passages from 2 Timothy (“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race”), he talked about the “very real pain” of “separation” and he assured Christine’s mourners that true believers will someday “meet with Mrs. Lundeen again before God’s throne.” The minister alluded to Great-Grandmother’s 100^th birthday celebration, which had happened so recently there was probably still some leftover cake to be had. “In spite of the joy in the fact that Mrs. Lundeen was allowed to finish off her 100^th year of life, and in spite of the wistful feeling of envy that I personally have felt—and I imagine others have felt—that we might be allowed to see such a tremendous period of history and such a wonderful slice of life and God’s creation, there is still an inescapable fact that her life was for all practical purposes finished.…We must face suffering, we must face trial and pain, and we do get older from the day we are born.”

He didn’t say anything about Alvira and her seven children. He failed to mention that they, too, had “fought the good fight” and finished the race, though their race was more of a sprint than a marathon. And, yes, Alvira and her children “got older from the day they were born.” Sadly, they didn’t get old.

Christine Lundeen lived out the last years of her life at the Green Acres nursing home in North Branch. A onetime poor farm, Green Acres was dark and scary in the eyes of a kid. The acres didn’t seem so green to young visitors. As a little kid, not much more than six years old, I remember cowering in the station wagon with my older siblings when a scary old man pressed his face against the car window. The poor guy was probably harmless, but in a kid’s imagination he may as well have been Jack the Ripper.

Ed and Ella Carlson ran Green Acres from about 1935 to 1940, recalls Ralph Carlson, Ed and Ella’s son. He, too, remembers it as a disturbing place. “At that time it wasn’t just old people,” Ralph said after a meeting of the North Chisago Historical Society in June 2017. “It was a lot of mentally disturbed people, too. But they had a player piano. That kept me interested while people were screaming or whatever.”

Green Acres is long gone—screaming residents, player piano and all. Now, the former poor farm property is an open, windswept grassy field surrounded by single-family houses for middle-class folks. Green Acres was replaced years ago by one of those modern care facilities in a different part of town. No longer an old folks home, the new place is a senior “community” with fancy “amenities.”

About the only reminder of the old place is the poor farm cemetery next to where the building used to sit. As the name implies, the secluded little cemetery functioned as a final resting place for indigent folks who resided on the poor farm. Tiny weather-beaten headstones, engraved with barely readable names, still dot the cemetery landscape in a clearing within a wooded area. The whole place isn’t much larger than a tennis court. A few of the stones lie flat on the ground. “The cemetery, we try to protect it from the developers,” Carlson said. “I think it’s still valid, but there was a lot of unmarked graves there. We have tried to find out who they are. A lot of transient people ended up buried there because there was no other place.”

Unlike those visits to Green Acres, trips to the West Coast to visit Christine’s daughter, Freda Peterson, were always enjoyable. Freda, my maternal grandmother, was one of four daughters born to Christine Hellsing Lundeen and Fred Lundeen. Her sisters were Olga, Ellen and Alvira.

Olga lived in Minneapolis with her husband, John Zacherson, and their children. The elder Zacherson supported the family by shoveling coal for the railroad—a gig he had for more than fifty years. Olga would come up to the Lindstrom-Lundeen family farm near Rush City in the summertime. “When she came, she always wanted fresh milk, right from a cow,” Jeanette Johnson said with a laugh.

One of the Zacherson sons, Bruce, was very close to Jeanette. As an older man, Bruce loved to ride his bicycle on the scenic Cannon Valley trail south of the Twin Cities. He was up there in years, and an unabashed smoker, but he still kept a surprisingly steady pace. Bruce and his riding companion would stop for a soft drink and a buffalo burger at a little beer joint just off the trail. Wearing a ball cap and sucking on a cigarette, he loved to talk about his days in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Ellen Lundeen Scherer, Olga’s younger sister, lived in Rush City with her husband, Matt, and their children. She wore big, round glasses with thick lenses, which magnified the sad eyes that had seen so much hardship.

Fred and Christine Lundeen with their daughters—(from left) Ellen, Alvira, Olga and Freda. Author’s collection.

The Harris fire wasn’t Ellen’s first brush with tragedy and premature death. A few years before the fire, Matt and Ellen’s son Richard was struck and killed by a car near the family’s home. Richard Scherer was only four years old and is laid to rest at First Lutheran Cemetery, just a few steps from the grave that holds Alvira and her children—and even closer to the final resting place of Henry Johnson, Albin’s brother. Affectionately known as “Dickie,” the little boy was hit by the car on November 9, 1929, and he died from his injuries three hours later. Dickie was crossing the pavement when he was struck by a Ford traveling south toward Minneapolis. Three young women in the car “stopped and picked up the boy, and took him to the Grant Hotel, where he was attended by Dr. Holmes,” a local newspaper reported. “Later, he was taken to his home, where he passed away. Everything possible was done to save the little fellow’s life, but he was injured so badly it was of no avail....He received two scalp wounds, leg broken in two places and other injuries.” Funeral services were held at First Lutheran Church in Rush City.

Decades later, at her mother’s funeral, Ellen did her best to stay composed. She nervously clutched a tissue as the preacher assured the mourners that “the day is coming when we can meet Mrs. Lundeen again before God’s throne.”

Matt Scherer, Ellen’s husband, died in the early 1960s. In a bizarre coincidence, Matt suffered a fatal heart attack while sitting in the barber’s chair, which is precisely how Matt’s own father had died years earlier.

Matt was an avid hunter and fisherman, and he knew how to handle a firearm. He passed along his formidable shooting skills to his boys. One son in particular, Ralph, was a crack shot with a rifle. The elder Scherer was “quite a hunter,” but “when his son got to be a better shot than he was, he quit hunting,” recalled Betty Kollas, Alvira’s niece. When he wasn’t hunting or fishing, Scherer worked at a flour mill in Rush City. He tried in vain to get his brother-in-law Albin a job at the mill.

After the fire, Matt kept a gun close to his bed. “He thought that maybe Albin had it in for him, because Matt worked at the mill in town and Albin needed a job [and Matt couldn’t get him in],” Jeanette Johnson said.

Ellen’s younger sister, Freda Peterson, never had it in for anybody—with the possible exception of the annoying guy who peddled appliances on TV and interrupted her favorite shows. Freda and her husband, Fred, lived in Hood River, Oregon, a town that could have inspired a Norman Rockwell painting or a John Denver song. Fruit trees bogged down with cherries, fresh country air and breathtaking views of Mount Hood and Mount Adams fill the senses of all who pass through. A cannery worker for years and a domestic servant in her younger days, Freda was a terrific cook. Her potato salad was world class. She had a quick wit (“Willie Nelson is nice to listen to, as long as you don’t have to look at him”) and a fun personality. Professional wrestling was must-see television every Saturday night. She never drove, but Fred had a classic car with funky push-buttons instead of a shifting arm to work the automatic transmission.

Matt Scherer, left, is joined by “Willis” and John Zacherson. Matt reportedly kept a gun by his bed after Albin disappeared. Author’s collection.

A Swedish immigrant, Fred Peterson ate the same breakfast every morning: oatmeal with coffee as black as midnight. His favorite blue overalls were like a second skin. He wore long underwear year-around, claiming that the undergarment kept him cool in the summer and warm in the winter—like a thermos. Though Swedish was his native tongue, he would sometimes stay awake at night trying to remember a certain phrase in the mother language. His mastery of the language may have faded over the years, but his thick Swedish accent never went away.

Grandma and Grandpa Peterson looked forward to having visitors, including relatives from the old country. Though the visiting Swedes spoke flawless English, Fred and Freda got a chance to brush off their Swedish when the honored guests were in town. Sometimes the conversations morphed into “Swenglish,” a combination of Swedish and English.

One thing Grandma Peterson didn’t talk about in any language was the untimely death of her sister and seven nieces and nephews. Even into the 1980s and 1990s, she never brought up a subject too painful for her to broach. No doubt, Freda took Alvira’s death hard. The sisters were very close in age and in spirit. “They were together all the time,” Jeanette Johnson said.

As a child, Alvira had blond hair and a cherubic face. One old photo depicts a young Alvira with long curls resting on her shoulders. She stares into the camera with wide, innocent eyes, oblivious to what the future would hold. “She looked so nice,” Jeanette said. “I have a picture of my mother standing straight and tall, thin as a stick. And Alvira is so nice with curly hair. Grandma always had them dress so nice for Sundays and special things: white socks and patent leather shoes.”

Freda Lundeen Peterson, left, and her sister Alvira were very close. Author’s collection.

Of course, Alvira didn’t always dress up so nicely. Like any other farm kid, she enjoyed getting some mud on her shoes once in a while and playing with the animals, including pigs. “My mother said, when they were kids, they had pigs for pets. And they say that pigs make good pets. They are clean, in spite of what you think, most of the time,” Jeanette said.

Christine Lundeen was deeply religious, and she saw to it that Alvira and her other daughters were well-schooled in the ways of the Christian faith. Alvira was confirmed in about 1917, while her future husband was working as a lumberjack and farmhand in Canada. In a formal confirmation photo, young Alvira stares at the camera with a pensive look and a hint of melancholy. Sitting in a high-backed chair, she wears a pretty white dress and matching shoes; her hair is tied up in back with a large bow.

Alvira’s life wasn’t so carefree in later years. Indeed, her adult life must have been difficult with seven young mouths to feed. Naturally, this was long before modern conveniences such as microwave ovens and disposable diapers. Just doing the laundry must have been a full-time job.

Alvira Lundeen Johnson, left, and Freda Lundeen Peterson. The sisters were good playmates as children. Author’s collection.

As a kid, Jeanette visited the Johnsons from time to time. Alvira’s house wasn’t especially big, but the family had a barn and plenty of animals, including a pet dog whose remains would later be found in the debris and ashes of the farmhouse.

Much like her sister, Alvira was a good cook. As a kid, Jeanette had a chance to eat at the Johnson place on occasion. And the food was delicious. But Jeanette’s visits were preceded by a stern warning from her grandmother that she should not overindulge. “We went over there sometimes to visit because grandma said that we should, you know. But whenever we did go over, she said, ‘Don’t eat too much, because they don’t have much.’ But she felt that we should go over there. And the kids, they liked to play too,” Jeanette recalls.

Alvira Lundeen Johnson’s confirmation photo. Author’s collection.

Freda Lundeen Peterson, left, and Alvira Lundeen Johnson were big animal lovers. Author’s collection.

What was life like for the kids?

The family was poor, to be sure. It’s a safe bet that the children didn’t have a lot of toys, given the family’s financial situation. At Christmastime, when she was little, Jeanette wondered why Santa Claus never stopped at her cousins’ house. But the children did have a few playthings. A faded blackand-white photo shows one of Alvira’s boys—perhaps Kenneth or Harold—riding a tricycle. He’s wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt and high-top shoes. The tricycle is one of those nifty, old-fashioned rides, with an oversized wheel out front. He has a firm grip on the handlebars, which are equipped with a handy-dandy bell to let people know that he’s on his way. Bike helmets were a thing of the future. Instead, the Johnson youngster is wearing his own special 1930s-style headgear, a tight-fitting lid that looks like a stylistic combination of swimming cap, old-style leather football helmet and winter ski cap. He’s cruising past a two-story, wood-paneled house—presumably the same house that would light up the country night just a few short years into the future. He had no way of knowing, of course, that the structure would soon be condemned—not by building code officials, but by bad luck, providence, fate or whatever other cruel forces intervened on April 11, 1933. He had no clue that he would meet his death there.

One of Alvira’s boys, believed to be Kenneth or Harold, rides past the house on a tricycle. Author’s collection.

Life on the farm wasn’t all fun and games. The kids—at least the older ones—surely had plenty of chores to do. Down on the farm in those days, every able body was expected to pitch in. But they also had pets, including at least one dog, and lots of open space in which to run around and play games. There was plenty of fresh country air to breathe and places to explore for children with abundant energy.

In one undated photo, three of the brothers stand in front of a large bush with their cousin Bruce, from the big city. A dog sits patiently with the boys, looking pleased in front of the camera. On the far left is Clifford, who stares back at the photographer with sad, puppy dog eyes. A beaming Harold stands beside him. To Harold’s left is their cousin Bruce. Kenneth, on the far right, is dressed in overalls. With his head cocked slightly to the side, he gives the photographer an inquisitive look, as if to say, “I’m bored with all of this picture-taking. Let’s grab a fishing pole and get us some bluegills.”

In another photo, Clifford and Dorothy are pictured with their backs against the house. They must have had the sun in their eyes, because both kids are squinting. Clifford is dressed like a typical farm boy in overalls that don’t fit quite right. Dorothy, wearing a flowing white dress, smiles broadly at the camera, seemingly happy in spite of the family’s hardship. A closer look at the photo offers some clues about the family’s financial situation. Put another way, it’s safe to say they didn’t get to the store very often. Both kids’ shoes are scuffed and tattered. Clifford’s are particularly battle-worn, with gaping holes in front.

The school-age Johnson kids attended classes at Chippewa Hill School, a classic one-room structure that offered basic education for kids in grades one through eight.

Three of Alvira’s boys and their cousin from the city, Bruce Zacherson. From left are Clifford, Harold, Bruce and Kenneth. Author’s collection.

Betty Kollas offers some insight as to what school was like for the Johnson kids. She attended classes at Chippewa Hill in the 1930s and 1940s, shortly after the Johnsons were there. The school was about a mile away from Betty’s childhood home, which was near the Johnson place. If the kids were lucky, they hitched a ride on a horse-drawn wagon. But most of them walked, regardless of the weather conditions.

“We walked the driveway and then we walked on another road with a slope that connected to what I knew as the Government Road, because it was kept up by the government,” Kollas said. In the winter, “I would walk to school and my eyelashes would get icicles on them,” she remembers. “Mom would want Dad to take me to school, on horses, I suppose. And I said, ‘Nope, I’m going to walk. Nobody else has a ride to school.’ I wasn’t going to be a sissy.’”

The schoolhouse certainly wouldn’t compare with today’s $100 million schools, which are equipped with theaters, flexible learning spaces, security guards and big athletic fields with press boxes. But by the standards of the day, Chippewa Hill School was actually rather big and quite nice. “Basically, it wasn’t that bad. You could almost call it a ‘progressive school.’ If you had gone through the first grades and kept learning, you saw and heard everything. So by the time you were in eighth grade, you had a well-rounded education,” Betty said.

Clifford Johnson, left, and Dorothy Johnson in front of the house. Author’s collection.

The Peterson family. From left are Freda, Fred, Betty and Jeanette. Fred Peterson initially believed that Albin’s body would be found in the ruins of the home. Author’s collection.

The school had trouble finding teachers to work in the country, Betty recalls. The underpaid teachers typically lived with local farmers near the school. The teachers did their best to stock the building with supplies and equipment.

Inside the single room were a library, an entry, a small kitchen and a cloakroom, which was filled at times with the powerful aroma of onion sandwiches brought to school by some of the less-fortunate kids. Maybe the Johnson kids were among those who had to settle for meatless lunches, though perhaps they occasionally enjoyed chicken or beef from the animals raised on the farm.

During recess, Chippewa Hill students played baseball or softball on a field in front of the school. “I got orders that, ‘When the ball comes your way, you hang onto it,’” Betty said. “And I could catch that ball pretty good. And my fingers got so swelled up I couldn’t even make a fist. It’s a wonder I didn’t get arthritis.”

Firewood, a broom and other cleaning supplies were stocked in the “fuel room” to keep the place warm and tidy. The schoolhouse also had a “great big stove” and a “big chimney across the whole room,” Betty recalls. A young scholar who lived close to school was asked to arrive early during the wintertime to stoke up the fire and make sure the place was nice and toasty. “Sometimes it would get so hot it would turn red. It’s a wonder it didn’t burn down,” Betty recalled. “But it kept the school pretty warm.”

Of the seven Johnson kids, at least three were old enough to attend school: ten-year-old Harold, nine-year-old Clifford and seven-year-old Kenneth. Five-year-old Dorothy was probably too young to attend classes in those days. Then there was four-year-old Bernice, two-year-old Lester and fourmonth-old James.

Mrs. Lundeen was especially close to Harold. Perhaps she had a soft spot for the eldest son because she saw three of her own boys die in infancy in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Christine’s boys—Elof, Adolf and Edwin—were buried in an unmarked grave at Taylor Cemetery in Rush City. Johan Jacob Lindstrom, the boys’ grandfather, was placed in the ground there before his remains were moved to First Lutheran Cemetery in Rush City.

Christine never talked much about the boys or the loss of Alvira and her children. Perhaps the grave was unmarked because the family couldn’t afford a nice piece of granite engraved with the boys’ names and words of comfort from the Bible. Or maybe Christine didn’t want to be reminded of her loss. Years later, Betty and Jeanette purchased a gravestone inscribed with the children’s names and birth dates so future generations could pay their respects.

As for the Johnson kids, Jeanette Johnson imagines that life must have been difficult for them and their mother. Not just because they were poor, but because Alvira and the kids had to put up with Albin. “What a life she must have lived with that man,” she said. “He couldn’t have treated his family very well.”

After the fire, the entire community drifted between shock, bewilderment and mourning. Hundreds of mourners packed into the small Lutheran church in Rush City for the funeral of Alvira and the children. Chippewa Hill School was shut down for the memorial service.

A story that ran in the Rush City newspaper covers the funeral in a surprisingly matter-of-fact way. Under an all-caps headline that reads “LAST RITES FOR MOTHER-CHILDREN,” the story reports that “about 350 people crowded the First Lutheran Church to witness the last solemn rites pronounced in the burial of the victims of one of the most terrible tragedies that has ever occurred in this community.” The obituary continues:

Christine Lundeen and her grandson Harold. Author’s collection.

The eight in one flower-decked casket were borne to the First Lutheran Cemetery, where they were interred in the family lot belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Lundeen, parents of the mother. [Alvira] was confirmed in the First Lutheran Church at Rush City and married to Albin Johnson, son of Mr. and Mrs. Emil Johnson of Harris. Seven children were born to this union: Harold, age 10; Clifford, age 9; Kenneth, age 7; Dorothy, age 5; Bernice, age 4; Lester, age 2; and James, age 4 months.

After informing readers that the “music was rendered by Mrs. Arthur Nelson and Mrs. Einar Larson, who were accompanied by Mrs. Chas. C. Wilson,” the story gets around to saying a few nice words about Alvira. “Mrs. Johnson was a gentle character whose love and care for her children and home spoke of the untiring and courageous disposition, which were her chief characteristics.”

The story dances around the topic of the fugitive husband/father, even though a manhunt for Albin Johnson was in full swing by April 15, the date of the funeral. Still, the spirit of the missing farmer hung over the mourners like yet another dark cloud that was about to burst.

Jeanette Johnson recalls that Albin’s name came up at least once during the memorial service. “I remember the service. The church was packed—packed,” Mrs. Johnson said. “The preacher announced that they were looking for Albin Johnson.”

The Rush City Post article barely mentions the seven children, but Jeanette Johnson hasn’t forgotten her young cousins. She still gets emotional when talking about the children who were taken away far too soon. She has a black-and-white photo of a group of students from Chippewa Hill School, herself included. With a shock of blond hair, a young Harold Johnson sits in the front row.

Jeanette, close in age to Harold, recalls playing with him all those years ago. The kids exchanged valentines and often visited each other. In a sense, Jeanette filled the role of the big sister that Harold never had. “We had a wagon that somebody made for us, and I used to pull him in the wagon. He was younger than me,” she said. Then her mind drifts back to the tragedy. “Oh, that was terrible,” she said. “What a shock that was to the whole area there.…The church was packed with people for that funeral. All of them in one casket. All of them.”

Alvira Lundeen Johnson in front of the house. Author’s collection.

Chippewa Hill School. Harold Johnson is sitting in front, far left. Cousin Jeanette is fourth from the left in the back row. Author’s collection.

A valentine from Harold Johnson to his cousin Jeanette. Author’s collection.

Jeanette Peterson Johnson pulls her cousin Harold Johnson in a wagon. Author’s collection.