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An apology to the Johnsons: there is currently only one photo of the Ruth Johnson
family on this website.
Your editor has a some good photos of the family, and they will be
posted in due time, but as of now they are still in his "To Do"
file.
Ruth Hannah Elizabeth Anderson Johnson (1886-1970)
Born September 25, 1886; Married 1909 (Oscar Farnum Johnson d. May 15, 1963); Died June 25, 1970
Children: Gilbert Oscar Victor Johnson, May 3,
1910; Bernice
Elizabeth Hannah Johnson,
Mar 14, 1913; Raymond Gordon Johnson, Mar 23, 1915;
Alvera Myrtle Johnson, Apr 3, 1919;
Melvin Eugene Johnson, July 9, 1926
Ruth Anderson Johnson was the oldest child of
Victor and
Johanna Anderson.
She was born in
Chicago on September 25, 1886, only a few months after her parents
arrived
from Sweden. When she was very young, her parents took in boarders
to
supplement the
money that her father made as a carpenter ($1.50 per day.)
She was converted and baptized in Lake View
Swedish Baptist
Church in Chicago. When
she was a
teen-ager, her parents moved to Missouri and then to Des Moines. Ruth
completed tenth grade in high school and then went to a business
school
to
learn
office skills. She
returned to Chicago to live and work.
She married Oscar Johnson, who had emigrated to
United
States from Sweden in 1900.
He was a carpenter like her father.
Ruth and Oscar had six children (one died a few
days after birth). They lived in Chicago until about 1916 when
they
moved to a
60
acre farm near LaPorte, Indiana.
The farm was too small to support the family and
father worked as a carpenter when possible. While in Laporte, they
worshipped
in
what was then the Baptist Tabernacle (now Grace Baptist) where
many of
the
services
were in Swedish.
In 1928 they moved to Michigan City, Indiana. While living there, they
became
charter members of Evergreen Baptist church, where father usually
served as
a
trustee and mother as the adult Bible class teacher.
In 1959, shortly before their 50th wedding
anniversary, they
moved to Wheaton,
Illinois, where three of their children were then living
(Bernice, Melvin, and
Alvera).
Oscar Johnson died in 1963, Ruth in 1970. All of their lives they were active
in
God's work, and were especially known for their hospitality. It seemed that every
visiting
preacher, evangelist, and missionary stayed in their home--a fact
that
enriched their lives and those of their children.
Ruth was the one who translated from Swedish to
English the
autobiography of Victor
Anderson that is in the hands of most of the family's
descendants.
- Alvera Mickelsen, 1984