Dancing across the Atlantic

I wasn't sure where to start the entries for this blog, so I am just going to jump in and get started. All four of my mother's grandparents immigrated from Sweden between 1881 and 1902. David Johnson was my maternal grandfather Cliff Johnson's father, or morfarfar (mother's father's father in Swedish) and was the last of my great grandparents to arrive in "Amerika."  He is also the one I had the fewest facts about and already had written his biography, so I started with him. I colorized the only picture I have of him as a young man, which you can see below. It appears to have been taken between 1902 and 1906, but is most likely from around 1904 when he had been in the United States long enough to buy a pocket watch and an expensive set of clothes.

Colorized portrait of David Johnson taken around 1904

    David Johansson, born September 13, 1879 in the Swedish province of Dalsland, was the fifth of his parents Johannes Olsson and Johanna Olsdotter's six children. He left Alsbyn, the village where he was born, to go to the United States when he was 22. Alsbyn was located in the parish of Torrskog in Älvsborg County (lan).

The Swedish Household Examination record for 1900-1912. This shows David's widowed mother, Johanna Olsdotter, his older sister, Thea, David, and his brother Axel living in Alsbyn. David left for "Amerika" on May 5, 1902 and his brother Axel on March 28, 1903. The birth dates are written incorrectly.
(County: Älvsborg; Parish: Torrskog; Volume: 169791; Record Type: Församlingsbok; Year Range: 1900-1912)

David and the two neighbors he was travelling with left  Torrskog to travel to America on May 5, 1902.  At that time  England was the only country at the time to board the large ocean liners that crossed the Atlantic. This meant that you could not go from Sweden to New York directly, but had to take a long and complicated series of ship and train rides to get from home to your final destination. Many Swedes left from Gothenburg or other Swedish ports, but others left from Germany or Norway. Christiana (Oslo) in Norway was one of the popular ports located just 95 miles from Torrskog and David and his companions chose this route. Their ship went from Oslo to Hull in England on a shorter route known as "feeder routes." 

After their arrival in Hull, they probably took a short rest and then boarded a train across England to Liverpool, on the west coast of England like most travelers did. On May 15th, 1902, 10 days after their trip began, they boarded one of the world's largest steam ships at the time, the Oceanic, part of the White Star Line.

In contrast to many emigration stories, David recalled the six day crossing of the Atlantic as a fun filled time with great weather and dancing on deck. He had the luck to set sail on the Oceanic, one of the largest ocean liner's at the time, which took 6 days to cross compared to the several weeks older ships had in the past. From 1899 to 1901 the Oceanic was the largest ocean liner in the world at 704 feet long and 63 feet wide. It held 1,710 passengers : 410 in first class, 300 in second class, and 1,000 in third class, which is what David would have been travelling. See the videos below to learn more about the ship and a typical crossing.

Facsimile of the List or Manifest of the Oceanic, you can see the listing for "David Johannesson," second from the bottom. One of his companions was Victor Henriksson.

(Year: 1902; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 0277; Line: 29; Page Number: 44)

David and his two friends arrived at Ellis Island on May 21, 1902. He had $38.00 in his pocket, which would be the equivalent of $1,292.00 in 2022, and a train ticket to Prentice, Wisconsin.  His older brother, Edward was the first in their family to emigrate to the United States and had sent him the money to join him in Prentice.  His two companions joined him as far as Chicago and then he continued alone. You can see David listed on the manifest above as David Johannesson, along with his destination in Prentice. At some point he Americanized his name to David Johnson.

After he joined his brother Edward in Prentice David worked at the tannery in town owned by the United States Leather Company for $10 a week, the equivalent of around $340 in 2022.  Many tanneries were built in the area as the hemlock bark from the trees was used in tanning hides.  As trees were harvested in the east tanneries were forced to go west to find the bark they needed and it was cheaper to tan it where the bark was. This tannery in Prentice was destroyed in a series of two fires in 1906 and a dairy was built in its place.

Postcard of loggers in Wisconsin.

Like many of his fellow Scandinavians at the time, David worked as a lumberjack in the north woods in Wisconsin for a few years. In order to get to the logging camps he took the train from Prentice to Phillips, Wisconsin and walked the rest of the way. Working as a lumberjack was hard and dangerous work and could only be done when it was cold and they would wait until spring thaw to send the logs downstream. Men working in the lumber camps could burn up to 8,000 calories a day and the camps served good food or the men would go somewhere else. David met his future wife Clara Almeda Adeli Frisk in the lumber camp where she was working as a cook.

In his first summers in the U.S. he travelled with other men from Prentice to North Dakota for the harvest  and they spent the season cutting and threshing grain. These jobs were hard work, but they could make good money in a short amount of time.

By 1904 Clara had convinced him to move to Minneapolis. She arranged for him to board with the Nobbelin family and helped get him a job in the shipping department at Electrical Engineering. The rest is a story for another day!