My Genealogy Hound

JOHN M. JOHNSON, one of the early farmers of Sappa township, Harlan county, Nebr., was born in Sweden in 1849, and was reared to farming. His father, P. Johnson, was born in 1828, and is still a resident of Sweden, where he is engaged in farming. In 1870 he paid a visit to America, and was so much pleased with the country that he thinks of coming again. In 1848 he married Guner Anderson, who was born in 1819, and who bore six children, namely — August, now a farmer in Harlan county; Harry, in Furnas county, Nebr.; Christina, now Mrs. Anderson, in Sweden; Andrew, of Colorado, now on a visit to Sweden; Tilda, now Mrs. Bolin, in Sweden. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are both members of the Lutheran church.

In 1869 John M. Johnson came to America and for two years worked by the month on a farm in Illinois. In 1871 he came to Nebraska and settled on section 21, township 2, range 20, having a capital of $150. At that time there were only four or five inhabitants of Sappa township; Kearney was the nearest post-office, and the trading post was sixty-five miles away. The country was full of hostile Indians, and three hundred or four hundred camped about a mile from Mr. Johnson’s cabin. About three hundred soldiers, under Capt. Madden, of Fort Hayes, camped where our subject’s barn now stands, and the soldiers’ pit and target are still to be seen near the spot. Buffalo meat was the principal article of food, and buffalo moccasins took the place of boots. At one time Mr. Johnson had ten acres of corn tramped down by the buffalo, but he has had his compensation in killing two of them for food. Several times he saw and met tribes of Indians, but no serious encounter occurred. One morning, in 1872, he heard a noise on the roof of the dug-out, and he got his gun out and ready to fire, thinking the noise was made by Indians, but it proved to be buffalo hooking the roof. Another time he witnessed a herd of five hundred mire in a creek, and out of that number he got two. In the fall of 1873, Mr. Johnson, in company with three others, started out on a tour across the sand hills to Reckerce. Three days before Christmas they met a band of Pawnee Indians, who advised them to go back, as the country was full of Sioux, Utes and Cheyennes, but Mr. Johnson and his friends went on and reached Keckerce after having been without water for three days for themselves and team. They killed four buffalo during those three days. They went on to the Smoky river and came to a camp that looked as though white men had been there, and further on they found two men digging a grave for a companion named Brown that had been killed by the Cheyenne Indians the day before. They returned home safely with a load of buffalo meat.

In 1885 Mr. Johnson was married to Amanda Anderson, a native of Sweden and born in 1850. She came to America in 1871, and located in Illinois, whence she moved to Nebraska in 1885, being at that time a widow. Two children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson — Edward in 1886 and Walter in 1888. The parents are constant attendants of the Lutheran church. Mr. Johnson now owns a quarter section of land, with eighty acres under cultivation. In 1885 Mr. Johnson was elected a justice of the peace in Sappa township, and held that office until 1888, when he was elected a member of the county board of Harlan county.