These are the roots of the Johnson Family who lived in the Hannaford area in the early 1900s.
Oscar Johnson came from Stockholm, Sweden, and settled in Michigan in the Muskegon and Whitehall area. From there he moved the family to Red Wing, Minnesota, in the late 1800s. After a few years he settled at Hope, North Dakota, in Steele County. In 1916, they came to the Hannaford area. They lived four miles east of Hannaford, one mile south in Greenfield Township. His wife, Marie Gudmondson immigrated from Denmark. They had five children: Laura, Albert, Francis, Hilda and Esther. Mrs. Francis (Elva) Johnson, Sr., was born in Wisconsin, the daughter of Swedish immigrant parents. About the turn of the century, Elva used to travel with her brother, Rev. Nels Lind, who was an evangelist with the Mission Covenant Church. She played guitar and sang with him. They traveled extensively in Wisconsin, Minnesota and eastern North Dakota. Nels and Dora Lind took the whole family of 12 children with them on their preaching tours. The practice was at that time to stay with someone in the community for at least two or three weeks. Elva stayed in the Dakota area and worked in Fargo as a seamstress, also cooking in the old cook cars. She worked for the Hoggarth Brothers at Kensal, and other people in the area. She and Dad met at Hope, North Dakota, when she was working for Oscar Johnson in the threshing crew cook car. Francis and Elva were married in 1910. They had seven children: Francella, Loraine, Clayton, LaCroy, Clifford Osborne, Amber and Francis, Jr.
I remember Dad telling me that Grandpa Oscar used to walk from their home west of Hope to work on the Fluto Bridge east of Cooperstown. His pay was $.50 a day. He used to relate to me how he and Albert used to buck the straw away from the threshing machine when they were real young kids. The early machines didn't have a self-feeder, nor a straw blower, hence the buck rake and hand feeding. One man stood in front of the cylinder and had a cutting table on each side of him. A band cutter on each side would cut the bands and the man feeding would gather the bundle, first one side, then the other, and feed it into the cylinder, and so on. In later years, of course, the machines had self feeders and straw blowers. Oscar then had a steam engine and threshing machine with Albert and Francis, and they threshed for people in the Hope community before coming to Hannaford in 1916. The early reapers had no way of tying the grain so they would take a handful of straw and twist it together, then put it around a loose bundle and twist it again. Farms were few and far between and they told how they would have people stay at their place who were unable to reach their destination. Grandpa used to walk from the Hope area to Valley City for groceries with a sack on his back.
In the early 1900s, the automobile came into being. The early Model "T" had no battery, and they were started by cranking them. The lights got the power from a magneto on the fly-wheel. There was no regulator on the amount of electricity and the faster the engine ran, the more electricity it produced. So many times if you got going too fast, the lights would burn out, so we always carried a lantern with us. We also took tire patching and a hand pump. If you had a flat tire, you just pulled over to the side of the road, patched the inner tube and then mounted it, pumped it up, and you were on your way. If you didn't have a full tank of gas, you could not make it up longer hills, as it was gravity flow. I remember turning around in the middle of a hill and backing up the rest of the way. The roads were poor then, and anti-freeze wasn't in use, so around November 1, we used to put the car on blocks, let the air out of the tires, and drain the radiator. It stood that way until spring. Horses were the means of transportation all winter long.
The winter of 1931, I was in the first grade at the Stromme School, where Borghild Haugen was teaching. We'd had quite a lot of snow, and the roads were impassable. County Superintendent of Schools was Matilda Johnson Overby. The atmosphere was in a state of expectancy as we were being visited that day by the Superintendent. We heard the airplane circling overhead and then saw it land north of the schoolhouse. It was Bruce Wright from Cooperstown, and Matilda Johnson was with him. I believe this was the only time the airplane was used to transport the Superintendent to area schools.
Winter storms were quite numerous in the early days. One in particular stands out vividly in my memory. The day was nice and balmy, the snow as melting and after a long winter, people were out and about. Walter Hemmingson was staying at the C. K. Stromme farm helping with the winter chores. He decided to walk one mile north and visit the Ed Poucette family. The weather was warm so he dressed light. Brother-in-law Howard and Francella Curtis were staying at the Mark Curtis farm at Karnak. They decided to hitch the horses and drive to Hannaford for supplies.
The fact that people were busy with other things on such a nice day, very few of them heard the storm warnings. It was March 15, 1941, and as it was a Saturday, I was home from school. Howard and Francella arrived at our place about 6:00 p.m., from Hannaford. They were going to have the evening meal with us and then continue on to the Mark Curtis farm. I was in the living room listening to the old Wards Airline battery radio. At 7:45, I heard the wind hit the house with a fury. I looked out the window and saw it was storming. I went to the kitchen and told the others. Dad, Howard, and I decided to go to the barn to finish evening chores. We bundled up good and started out, and about 100 feet from the house, the wind blew the lantern out. That short time we had been out, our pockets were full of snow. We knew we could never make it without the lantern, so Howard rigged up a car battery with a bulb and we carried that. The second time we took some binder twine and tied it to the house and started out again. We got about halfway to the barn and ran out of twine so we returned. The third and last time we got about two-thirds of the way there. However, we knew that we had an open space of about 150 feet before we got to the barn. After some discussion, we decided to return to the house, as the danger of getting lost wasn't worth it.
Walter was on his way home when the storm overtook him. He wandered around in the field west of the Stromme School, finally coming to a fence line. He followed the fence line until he came to the cottonwood grove in the school yard. He stood by a tree all night, until the storm started to subside. As soon as he could see some distance, he struck out for the Stromme farm and reached it. His feet, legs, and face were frozen badly and he suffered complications from this the rest of his life.
Sunday morning the storm was over, it was bitterly cold, and about 10:00 a.m., we saw a team of horses coming up the driveway. It turned out to be Mark Curtis. He thought Howard and Francella had gotten caught by the storm. As it was, everything turned out alright; however, 70-80 people lost their lives that night. Some of the closer ones were Whitey Johnson, from Cooperstown; and three of the Taylor boys from Dazey. With poor roads and very little communication, it made it much more difficult.
So, with the passing of time, the old pioneers, and the town merchants have disappeared like the buffalo that used to roam the plains. Whether good or bad, we'll leave it for others to pass judgment as to whether or not these were the "Good Old Days."
Source: Hannaford Area History North Dakota Centennial 1889 - 1989 Page 169