John Johnson

[ 12 ]

JOHN JOHNSON, third of the chil­dren of Swan and Kjer­stin John­son, was born at Wiby, Swe­den, on Octo­ber 6, 1860. He fol­lowed his par­ents on their var­i­ous jour­neys — to Chica­go in 1868, to Bement, Illi­nois in 1870, and to Genoa, Nebras­ka in 1878, liv­ing on the farm home one and one-half miles west of Genoa until after his father’s death when he, his moth­er and younger unmar­ried chil­dren moved to Genoa.

Quite ear­ly in life, when about six­teen, he was afflict­ed with rheuma­tism. This con­di­tion final­ly became chron­ic and he was con­fined to the use of a wheel­chair for the rest of his life.

He had a very cheer­ful dis­po­si­tion, a very keen mind and a large stock of humor. He always seemed the cen­ter of the fam­i­ly, and every­body brought their prob­lems to him. He kept up the cor­re­spon­dence for the fam­i­ly, kept the books and accounts for his two broth­ers in the gen­er­al store there, and also for many years kept books for a lum­ber yard in Genoa.

He drove a horse and bug­gy around town for many years, and as he was a great friend of all chil­dren, he gen­er­al­ly had a load of them with him.

His moth­er cared for him faith­ful­ly and lov­ing­ly for forty-sev­en years until he passed away on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1925. He had a gall blad­der oper­a­tion at Colum­bus.

John was a devout Chris­t­ian, a faith­ful mem­ber of the Methodist Church, always attend­ing their ser­vices as long as it was pos­si­ble for him to do so. He was missed more than most of us will be. Some­one always pushed his wheel­chair to church and wher­ev­er he want­ed to go. He is buried in the Val­ley View Ceme­tery at Genoa, Nebras­ka.

Leave a Comment