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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

 

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