W-1878-OJDL.DOC

Generation + 1 #1 daughter of William Landau of Oberlin Ks

 

1878 Johnson-Landau

 

born

1878-04-10 Franz Oscar Johnson Mason Co IL

 1880-11-25 Dorathea Landau Logan Co Linclon IL

married

1904-09-25 Kanona KS

 

died

 

 

father

 

1856 William Landau

mother

 

1860 Nancy French

#1 child

1900-10-15 Harold Oscar Johnson Kanona Ks

1907 Inez Crabb

#2

1911-09-29 Dorothy Caroline Johnson Kanona Ks

(*)

#3

1913-05-09 Hellen Lucile Johnson Kanona Ks

1913 Dale L Johnson

#4

1915-03-05 Marine Rosine Johnson Kanona Ks

1913 James Leroy Van Horn

#5

1924-10-28 Myron Grant Johnson Kanona Ks

1929 Metta Schweitzberger

 

 

 

(*) crippled by arthritis had to stop teaching in 40' she lived with Dora, two wonderful ladies sustaining each other.

Dora (Landau) Oscar Johnson

Dora the oldest, born in IL, was about 4 years old when the family shipped their goods west to Lenora in winter of 1884, then moved on west to Kanona in spring of 1985, to take up residence in a Sod House.  Her sister Suzie was 4 mo old and baby brother Bill would arrive in a year.  Dora was mothers helper doing chores & raising the other kids.

Oscar was born in IL but I doubt if they knew each other, their families were pioneer KS neighbors and they were certain to have met on neighborhood picnics, the Kanona Methodist Church or when harvest crews of men and women gathered.

Dora & Oscar had a large home, and big red barn about a mile east of her folks, both at the edge of Kanona.  Later Harold, their oldest, took over their farm and Dora & Oscar moved onto William & Nancys, the Home Place.  It was there that Myron grew up and the many of us cousins went to visit.

Oscar continued to use horses till near the end.  Son Harold bypassed horses and used tractors from the start.  Harold had gone to Kansas State College in Manhattan and made us of current findings on best seeds and methods.  For Oscar, it was pragmatic to continue to use horses for certain work and he had a natural love for working with a team and livestock.  By visiting Dora & Oscars one could hear the sounds, breath the air, whif the odors, and experience the whims of nature as it had been when the first settlers arrived.

The Home Place was torn down plowed over about the same time Kanona was abandon, after WWII.  The farm homes of which theirs was representative are gone now, either modernized to cleared out.  Only the old western movies remain to depict the weathered farm builds as they were at the last of their era.  After Oscar died, Dora moved to Oberlin and Dorothy who had been stricken after her 21st birthday with severe arthritis lived with her.  They were of much comfort to each other.

Oscar was a big man of few words and good sense of humor.  He usually wore a large hat and a mustache as if born with it.  Both were wonderful gentle people who always greeted you with a friendly smile and pleasant words.

Top: Dorothy and Hellen. Bottom: Marine, Myron, Harold

 

Harold                                                                          Helen

 

Marine                                                                       Myron

Harold & Dorothy

Photo from 1021 Decatur Co Atlas

The Home Place

This was where William and Nancy moved their family from the Sod House and was the home of a sequence of family members -- to all the Home Place.  I believe Wayne, Earl, Oscar, & Myron each in their turn lived there until the buildings were finally torn down.  The Home Place was typical of the early farm homes and associated buildings . The house was square and pragmatically simple, with bedrooms on one side and the other half split into living room, sometimes called the Parlor, & dinning room.  A kitchen plus wash room was added on to the east, the back end of the house.  The immediate back yard was fenced off and included a Garden, Storm Celler, Well for household water and the Out House.  There was a hand pump with a spout on which you hung the water bucket to be filled.  There was also a dipper, for community use, and hung on the pump for any thristy passer by.  A bucket of water was placed in the wash room and from it water used for the kitchen.  The wash room was were the men, and women, washed up when coming from the field covered with dirt and honest sweat, everyone cleaned up before entering and sitting down to eat.

The nearby out house, periodically moved, was reasonably near the house yet away from the well's drinking water.  Between the house and the Barn Yard was a broad open area on or through which all kinds of equipment and vehicles could be parked or traverse.

The Barn yard contained the Barn, Feed Lots, a Windmill driven pump, which kept the livestock Water Tank full – it was accessible from the inner barnyard and the outer pasture.  The barn entrance, and water tank were a part of the buffalo grass pasture which extended to the east and north, a water shed area called a draw which made wonderful pasture but too irregular in slope or shape to cultivate.  The pasture was used by both horses and milk cows.  The cow's cut cow paths in the buffalo grass from constant use of the same route, these several routes funneled from the far reaches to the water tank and barn.  The horses and milk cows each had their own stall in the barn, and automatically took possession when they entered.  They usually took their fill of water before entering the barn often waiting till they got inside to relieve themselves, to the dismay of those who's chore it was to clean the barn.

Similar except in KS one sat balanced on a 2x4 T stool and held the bucket between legs to keep it clean.

William Landau, Oscar Johnson, Forrest Redman at entrance to Oscar’s or “home place” barn

Above the large barn door was the door to the Hay Loft through which the new supply of hay, usually alfalfa was transferee from Hay Wagon to hay loft.. Along one wall on the ground floor were the mangers into which hay, sometimes called feed, was dropped from the lost above.  A partially filled loft made an excellent place to play as there was lots of room and it was reasonably cool in the summers – shaded with wind blowing through – and warm in cool weather from heat generated by the barn yard manure.  Hay was periodically strewn on the floor of the barn to absorb the cow pies and urine.  It was the periodic duty of the younger help to clean out the barn which meant shoveling shit into a wagon and then depositing it on a garden plot to enhance growth of food or flowers.  The horse end of the barn was cleaner than the cow end as horse turds are easier to clear than cow pies.  When Harry Truman had them add fertilizer to the White House garden he called it Cow Shit, Bess with much difficulty got him to refer to it as manure.  In his youth Harry had cleaned cow barns and knew full well the name of what he was shoveling.

Milking invariably involved sitting on a Milk Stool, which consisted of two 2x4'a nailed into a T. A Milk Bucket was placed between the knees as you sidled into the flank of a cow, placed each hand on a tit and started squeezing, or stripping, milk into the bucket.  One could always tell from the sound how near done the milking was.  When starting there was a crisp tinny ring as the stream of milk splatted into the empty bucket, when near done each squirt penetrated a thick layer of milk suds before becoming part of the total.  This was a night and morning scene on every farm across the nation, in fact until some time after WWI many town folks still had a cow in the back to blend with their chickens and garden.  Many families were self sufficient except for things like needles, salt and baking soda.

The feed lot was mostly for raising hogs.  They were often fed a mixture of wheat bran (husk), a byproduct at the mill when making flour, and milk after the cream had been removed with the cream separator.  The cream along with eggs from the chickens were taken to town and sold to buy staples you could not provide on the farm.  Sometimes this included selling some chickens.  A hog or stear was killed now and then, butchered into cuts to be salted, dried, or smoke cured for later use.  Most of the hogs and cattle were sold to obtain cash for buying cloths and other goods.  The primary income product was wheat and some corn.  Much of the corn was used locally to feed cattle and hogs.  Huge amounts of wheat was hauled to the elevators, sold and shipped back east by rail.

The women were experts at tending the garden, canning vegetables, fruit, and  preserves, a name given to about any kind of special canning recipe.

They were also experts in doing the baking, washing, mending, and caring for the sick; the women really ran the households and all others tried to meet their standards, especially in keeping the house clean and going to church on Sunday.

Oscar and Dora; photo take at family gathering at the Redmans

 

Oberlin Herald 1970: Mrs. Dora Johnson Honored on Birthday

Mrs. Dora Johnson observed her 90th birthday Nov. 25 with all of her children present for the occasion.

They were Mr. and Mrs. H 0 Johnson and Dorothy Johnson Oberlin, and Mr. and Mrs. Myron Johnson, Johanna and Jim, Lenora; Mrs. Dale Johnson, Evanston 111; Mrs. JL Van Horn, Boseman, Mont; and also a granddaughter and family Dr and Mrs. Delbert Larson and family, Hiawatha Ks, who were all there Thanksgiving Day afternoon.

Other callers were the Earl Landau's Holden Simpson’s, Earl Tallys, Mrs. Rell Landau, David Simpson’s, Mrs. Norman Tally, Marjorie (Landau) Krisman, Mrs. Robert Sixbury, Mrs. Earl Laird, Mrs. Lloyd Emerson & Nikki, Mrs. Lowell Wennihan,

See Johnson Book