A History of South Dakota and Its People - MAGNUS JOHNSON

Magnus Johnson has resided on his farm on Section 33, Palisades Township, for almost three decades and is widely recognized as one of the most prosperous agriculturists and respected citizens of Minnehaha County, South Dakota. His birth occurred in the province of Skaner, Sweden, on the 26th of October, 1847, and his father died when he was but five years of age.

He left home when a youth of sixteen and during the following nine years was a deep-sea sailor, touching at many of the ports of the world.

He sailed on American vessels for some years and in 1876, abandoned the sea at San Francisco, subsequently spending about eleven months at work on a river steamer on the Sacramento River.

Mr. Johnson then secured employment as a farm hand in California and was thus engaged for about seven years, on the expiration of which period he returned to Sweden on a visit. He spent the winter in his native land and in the spring of 1883, again came to the United States, bringing with him his intended wife, Miss Josephine B. Pearson, who had a brother living in Valley Springs, South Dakota.

Great Grandfather Magnus Johnson of Garretson and wife, the former Josephine B. Pearson of Sweden.

Thus it was that Mr. Johnson came to this state and here he was married immediately after his arrival. He paid nine hundred dollars for a quarter section of land in McCook County, three miles west of Salem, and two years later traded the property for his present home farm, paying five hundred dollars in addition. He has lived on this place in Palisade Township continuously since 1885 and has made many excellent improvements thereon.

In 1908, his two sons, Eddie and Charlie, purchased the northwest quarter of Section 6, Red Rock Township, paying eight thousand dollars for the property, which is now easily worth more than twice that amount. They are associated with him in his farming interests. In the conduct of his agricultural interests he has won a most gratifying and well merited measure of prosperity that has established his reputation as a substantial and leading citizen of the community.

To Mr. and Mrs. Johnson have been born nine children; seven of whom survive, as follows: Eddie Washington; Charlie Cleveland; Emily Sophia; who is the wife of Adolph Karlil, a farmer of Red Rock Township; Hilma Augusta, who gave her hand in marriage to Willis Sutherland, of Garretson; Julia M., now Mrs. Edward Eitriem; Alice V., at home; and Melvin Walfred.

Mr. Johnson gives his political allegiance to the Republican Party and his fellow townsmen, recognizing his worth and ability, have called him to positions of public trust. He served as supervisor for a period of seventeen years, acted as a member of the school board for about five years and has been constable during the past two years. Higher public honors have been tendered him, but these he has declined.

His religious faith is indicated by his membership in the United Lutheran Church, to which his wife and children also belong. His son Eddie has been organist in the church for the past twelve years and is also a member of the Garretson Band, manifesting considerable talent in music.

The life of Magnus Johnson has been one of activity and usefulness, crowned with success, and because of the fact that he has never taken advantage of the necessities of his fellow men in business transactions but has always been straightforward and honorable, he is accorded the confidence and friendly regard in those with whom he has been associated. *** THE S.J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 1915

Tribute to John Richard Longacre

PART I Preface

Allow me to introduce you to a man I’ve met just recently through newly discovered cousins. He died long before I was born, so I didn't have the privilege of knowing him in person. However, I would like to nominate him for special Fathers’ Day honors today because of his ordinary, yet remarkable, life.

Early Years

My great grandfather, John Richard Longacre, was born in Tennessee in 1839 – part of a family of Swedish extraction that immigrated to North America in 1643, arriving on the Swedish ship, the “Kalmer Nyckel” and first residing in the New Sweden area (Chester County) of Pennsylvania. John Richard’s mother died before he was 7 years old. His father re-married in 1847, and he moved with his family to Missouri.

No one knows what his early childhood was like, but we do know that his family was lovingly close, despite the hard times of the day. Numerous letters and pictures that they exchanged throughout their long lives survive and are testaments to their affection for each other, even after they had been separated by a continent, a war, and a lifetime.

It is evident that his family taught him how to read and write because he left at least two diaries and numerous letters for his descendents. His family also imbued him with self-discipline, self-reliance, basic business sense, as well as generosity and compassion for others and a strong moral character. All that is clearly evident from the surviving written record.

John Richard Longacre as a young man

I do not know what impetus was behind my great grandfather’s trek to the Oregon Territory, or exactly how old he was when he made the arduous trip; but a study of the times, as well as family records, suggests many incentives. His Missouri home was the jumping off point for the wagon trains headed west. Gold had been discovered in California when he was a just boy of nine, and the traffic heading west past his father’s farm swelled to more than 350,000 people by the time he was a teen.

One can only imagine how he may have wheedled and cajoled his father and stepmother to allow him to join the crowd of emigrants that gathered every spring in St. Joe, Westport, and Independence. In later years, members of the family who visited Longacre homesteads in Missouri told of observing deep, grass covered wagon ruts cutting across the countryside between the farms. They were told that those scars were all that remained of the Oregon Trail. The temptation for a young man to set forth on a great, western adventure must have been irresistible.

Wagons gathering in Missouri at the head of the Oregon Trail

Continued at Part II…

John Richard Longacre, Part II

Rumblings of the Civil War – Border Wars

In stark contrast to the festive anticipation displayed by eager emigrants forming wagon trains in St. Joe, Independence, and Westport, civil strife that would soon erupt into the Border Wars was brewing along the western border of Missouri.

Kansas City today embraces the early town of Westport, which was built just east of the Missouri Line, not far from Independence. Independence was the most popular "jumping off" point on the Oregon Trail. Here emigrants stocked up on supplies and prepared their wagons. There was a festive air in Independence in the spring. The newcomers collected information and misinformation, made friends and enemies, changed proposed destinations, and behaved in general as though they were on a picnic.
At Westport (Kansas City), an observer wrote:

Whiskey, by the way, circulates more freely in Westport than is altogether safe in a place where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket.

Missourians and Kansans joined the trek to Oregon by the multitudes in the months predating the official start of the Civil just to escape the bloodshed and impoverishment of the Border Wars, and it is likely that John Richard was one of those.

Several Congressional compromises attempted to determine whether Missouri and the surrounding territories should be slave or free. As a result, the people living in the counties on the western border of Missouri suffered from repeated raids on their farms and villages for more than seven years – three years longer than the Civil War raged.

There is no evidence through wills or oral family history that the Longacres ever were slaveholders themselves. Indeed, they seemed to be farmers, schoolteachers, and ministers. However, they considered themselves Southerners by heritage and so they were greatly affected by these political disagreements amongst their neighbors.

There is a great deal of information on the Web about the ruthless Kansas/Missouri Border Wars for anyone who is interested. Check out Missouri Partisans and Bushwackers and Jayhawkers If your sympathies lie with Missouri, look up Quantrill’s Rangers, and if your sympathies are firmly with Kansas and the abolitionists, you will want to look for Col. Charles Jenison’s Jayhawkers, Gen. Jim Lane, or Gen. Thomas Ewing.

Writing about the 7th Kansas Regiment (Jennison’s Jayhawkers), author Stephen Z. Starr says,

…they killed civilians and prisoners, they pillaged the loyal and disloyal alike, and they burned homes and barns wherever they went.

Indeed, long after the Civil War was over, members of John Richard’s family visiting in Missouri were shown the burned out remnants of Uncle John’s farmstead where the 62 year patriarch had been routed out of bed and forced to hold a lantern to provide light while marauders shot his son dead in 1864. He was then murdered himself, his farm and home burned, and his wife and daughters left homeless. They claimed that they could still see blood and bullet marks on the chimney where the men had stood, waiting to be shot. Long after the fact, John Richard’s younger brother, Elbert S. Longacre, wrote of the strife at Pleasant Hill:

Yes, twenty years since we parted – I had not thought how long the time was till you mentioned it…Still I have seen many sights and heard solemn sounds since that time.

I saw the lights of forty houses that were burned in one night around out old home. Forty families turned out in the snow by Kansas Jahawkers or thieves. I saw houses pillaged and robbed as though the red men of the woods were again among us. I heard the moaning of women and children whose husband, father, or son, as the case might be, had been attacked in the field at church, or perhaps dragged from the sick bed and shot.

I helped to bury the old grey headed father and son (old Uncle John Longacre and Wiley) both in the same grave, they having been called to the door and shot by trash that should have been neighbors.

But enough of that. I grew sick of it and resolved to go where if blood was shed it was a two handed game; where man might at least have some chance to avenge his wrongs…If I had room I would tell mor of the tiresome all night march, the charge, the retreat of dead and dying soldiers, of twice feeling the pang of the merciless ledd. If I could see you I could tell more and more and I hope you will come. Write soon and often.
E.S.L.

George Caleb Bingham, Missouri artist, illustrates the devastation in Pleasant Hill, MO, resulting from Gen. Thomas Ewing’s General Order Number 11. Members of the Longacre family lived in Pleasant Hill and were affected by this event.

Order Number 11

Noted author and historian Albert Castel wrote:

Order Number 11 was the most drastic and repressive military measures directed against civilians by the Union Army during the Civil War. In fact…it stands as the harshest treatment ever imposed on United States citizens under the plea of military necessity in our Nation’s History.

Continued at Part III…

John Richard Longacre, Part III

Leaves Missouri – Trek west

Whether it was the urge to set out to make his fortune in the West, or the desire to escape the Border Wars in Missouri, John Frederick Longacre left home some time in his teens, or early twenties, long before any of his family members had been killed, by the Jayhawkers (undoubtedly some of his neighbors had already suffered that cruel fate, however). My calculations determine that he came west between 1857 and 1860, but I could be off by a few years either way.

Records show that 40,000 settlers headed west departed Missouri by 1859. By 1860, another 15,000 escaped the Civil War after hearing of silver strikes in Nevada. Great Grandfather Longacre would have been 20 years old in 1859, an appropriate age to head west to seek his fortune, although he may have gone when he was even younger. After 1861, it was more difficult to make the trip because protective US troops had been called back to fight the Civil War, leaving the outposts lightly guarded from Indian attack.

Union Cavalry heading home from the Western frontier to bear arms against their Southern brethren

We do not know exactly how he got to Oregon – whether he came with a neighbor, or if he simply signed on as a hired hand on one of the numerous wagon trains. In later years, he simply told his family that he "rode a horse from Missouri to Oregon." It is possible that his uncle Richard (who was as close to his own age as an older cousin) accompanied him, at least part of the way. Later letters indicate that they shared this adventure, although Richard returned to live out his years in Missouri.

In 1870, Uncle Richard writes:

Well do I remember and never will I forget the many ups and downs we have seen together, the crossing of the snowy mountain, the mule falling off of the bridge into Venison Creek – all these things are fresh in my memory this morning.

You have to wonder whether Uncle Richard ever regretted that he returned to Missouri for the duration of the Civil War because he writes in the same letter:

I will tell you, John, that it is the Hardest times I ever saw. Money is scarse and hard to get. Everything we have to buy is very hie and everything we have to sell is so very low. I have sold my hole crop of corn, paid my debts with the money, and now we are all in great need and no money… I want you to write to me and tell me all a bout the times in Oregon. I can not make enough on my farm to supply my actual wants. Wright, Wright, Wright.

We have no way of knowing how the young men managed to accumulate the cash and considerable provisions needed for such a trip, or whether Richard accompanied John the whole distance and subsequently returned. Provisions and Prices for the Trip

In any case, John Richard Longacre was already in Oregon by 1862, safe from the havoc of the War Between the States that ravaged his brothers and cousins. He left a diary with a daily account of his activities for 1863 and at least one other known diary that has not yet been transcribed. He seemed well connected in Oregon by the beginning of 1863 at the age of 23. He was popular as a hired hand among many families whose daughters he escorted to church on Sundays and to dances after the workday was done.

In the early days he worked for various neighbors. His diary is meticulous in recording his daily activities – the weather, his work for the day, his social activities, his earnings, and his expenditures. His bookkeeping puts me to shame. He even included a page of jokes and riddles that he thought it important to record. For example:

Why is a person putting his father into a sack like a man going to an eastern city?
Because he is going to Bagdad.
My first is a preposition
My second is a composition
And my whole is an acquisition.
Fortune

…and so forth.

Business Enterprises

Typical daily activities included cutting rails, stripping poles, erecting farm buildings, clearing timber, clearing snow, hunting, mining, digging ditches for sluice boxes, etc. Leisure activities included escorting the ladies to church and to dances. He spent 7 months of 1863 working in the gold mines in the "Boise Basin", Idaho – presumably to establish his fortune. The experience netted him little wealth, but much knowledge. His careful documentation of earnings and expenditures is amazing to behold.

A.D.O. Browere (1814-1887), The Lone Prospector, 1853, oil on canvas.
Prospectors poured into Idaho to try their luck at the strike in the Boise Basin. By 1863, Idaho City had a population of 6,200 and had surpassed Portland as the largest city in the Northwest, thereby making Idaho one of the few territories to be settled from west to east.

John Richard's diary reveals that he was a generous man. More than once he donated part of his meager earnings to help bury a stranger who had been killed in the mines, or in a dispute over a claim. The ties with both his new home (Oregon) and old home (Missouri) were not broken either. There are many references to letters and pictures being exchanged with those left behind. Letters reveal that he sent money home to help fund the education of his younger brother who became a schoolteacher and farmer and who eventually joined him in Oregon.

The most poignant line in his diary concerns a young lady in Oregon, daughter of his neighbor and occasional employer. He was working in the mines to get a stake to buy a claim of his own when he received word that Mathilda had been married the previous Saturday. He says little about it beyond the 5 word mention, but the next entry notes that he knocked off work early that day and spent $2.00 on whiskey (an exceptional expenditure because his purchases of strong drink were rare and never amounted to more than 75 cents). Later he writes of seeing her at her parents’ home after he returns to Oregon and refers to her as “the idol of my heart.”

Oregon Years – Attending the Ball

One of the most surprising aspects of John Richard Longacre’s early days in Oregon was the number of dances he attended. Dancing was a popular activity during the Civil War, and he was a frequent guest and popular partner. Dancing in Oregon took much the same form as dancing in the Eastern and Midwestern states, with a complex form to the “balls” and elaborate etiquette connected with the occasion.

Members of the Victorian Dance Ensemble perform for Civil War reenactments, teaching authentic dances and wearing costumes typical of the mid 19th century. Many of the members belong to Union, Confederate or Civilian Civil War reenactment units, although some are merely interested in dancing.

It causes one to wonder at the difficulty of organizing a ball on the frontier: first you needed a place big enough to hold a number of dancers, then you needed a source of music, and finally you needed enough guests to make a lively evening. Presumably there were enough people in the community that played the fiddle, squeeze box, guitar, or spinet to provide the music; and I imagine that barns were often used for the ballroom. Apparently these deterrents were not very problematic in Oregon's early days because John Richard mentions going to a “ball” nearly every week in his 1863 diary before he leaves for the mines of Idaho and again after he returns. Often he includes information on the number of sets he danced and that he stayed at the danced until 2 AM, or danced all night, and then went to work at 5AM. Frequently these dances were held at his neighbors’ homes, and he stayed the night because he was working there the next day.

Although Oregon was a "free state", many settlers were from the South. So we can expect that dance music would include a mixture of both Northern and Southern favorites. The in the 1860s, the ball was seen as a way to forget the cares of the day for one evening.

A ball typically started with a Grand March like Stonewall Jackson's Way and included reels, quicksteps, gallops, polkas, quadrilles, and other traditional forms: The Hunters of Kentucky, Darling Nellie Gray, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or Red River Valley were songs that they might have played for dancing. Click on the hands to hear the music.

Almost all dances of the period were “social dances”, requiring all dancers to interact with each other in various formations. Dances and mixing with people was seen as a social duty. Rules of Etiquette for the Civil War Era Ballroom

All ages attended the dances, and gentlemen and ladies were expected to dance with everyone present. In any case it was a serious breach of etiquette to dance more than one dance with the same partner in an evening. It must have been difficult to start a romance that way because tongues would start wagging if a gentleman was seen to be spending too much time with the same lady. These rules appear to be written by the ladies because they are mostly designed to control the men! We can assume that John Richard was well versed in the rules of etiquette because he was always invited back.

Conclusion at Part IV…

John Richard Longacre, Part IV

1st Marriage

Despite broken heart he suffered while he was away in the gold fields in 1863, John Richard Longacre had captured the affections of a beautiful lady and had acquired enough property to take bring a bride into his life by 1867. He married Miss Mary Ann Fletcher of Oregon when he was 27. Their wedding picture is below.

Mary Ann is elegant in a stylish gown of the day, and John Richard Longacre is quite a dashing gentleman in his wedding suit. I might have fallen for him myself, had I been around in 1867! The newlyweds supported themselves by farming and land sales. John Richard joined a Masonic Lodge during this period, and their only daughter was born in 1873. Nearly a decade later the size of their family increased when they adopted a neighbor’s daughter after her parents both died in a flu epidemic sometime between 1881 and 1882.

2nd Marriage

Alas, shortly after the baby’s adoption, the lovely Mary Ann Fletcher Longacre also contracted the flu and the doctors were unable to save her. John Richard was bereft with no wife, two daughters to rear, and a farm to run. But he did not despair. He wrote a stream of letters to family in Missouri again and this time arranged a visit. The transcontinental railroad had been completed in 1869, so his trip home was much easier than the one that first brought him to Oregon.

The Oregonian Railroad, 1880

We don’t know if his trip east was designed to find him a new bride and a stepmother for his daughters, but that was the result. We don’t know how long he stayed in the east, but we do know that a young cousin, the daughter of a relative, caught his eye on this visit; and he began courting her.

Just before he was to return home to Oregon, he asked her to marry him. He was 46. The object of his affections, Susan Emeline, a school teacher, was 33 and happily settled in her single life. She turned him down. He headed for the train station, dejected. Suddenly, my great grandmother, Susan, appeared out of nowhere on the platform as he was ready to board the train and breathlessly told him that she’d changed her mind. Yes, she would marry him and start a new life in Oregon. And so she did in 1885.

The newlyweds head back to Oregon

Susan and John Richard quickly had two children of their own, pictured below.

Susan Longacre and Baby Bert
ca 1889 Oregon

Albert Sydney, b. 1889, and Linda Bell Longacre, b. 1887, Oregon, ca 1891

California years – farming in the Central Valley

When daughter Nellie Irene was born in 1891, she was suffered from asthma. Doctors recommended that the family move to a warmer, dryer climate, thinking that dry air would help her condition. So, without a look backward, John Richard sold his Oregon farmstead and land holdings that he had developed for more than thirty years and purchased farm land near Fresno, California in the San Joaquin Valley, which was technically a desert at the time.

Fresno California is the home of Free Republic, and it is quite a different place today than it was in 1892. I like to think that it is because of early pioneers, like my great grandfather, that it holds the designation as the last bastion of conservatives in California.

Fresno County agriculture today. Cultivated fields of the 1890s would not have been as vast as these, but they would have been equally hot and dry. Today Fresno County farmers manage their water problems through extensive artificial irrigation systems that were unavailable to John Richard Longacre.

Growing conditions in the Central Valley were quite different from those in rainy Oregon, with temperatures of 110 degrees in the summer common, and no rain at all from April till October. They nearly lost everything the first year. To make matters worse, baby Nellie died in an accident the first year they were there.

Through diligence, John Richard learned to farm in the hot valley and turn a profit, despite his early misfortunes. Susan Emeline raised the children and learned to manage their income artfully. In her later years when her grandchildren would ask why she walked everywhere and never took the street car, she laughed and said, “I just might need that nickel some day.”

John Richard’s eldest daughter, Ella, eventually moved back to Oregon to attend school and became a teacher; and his adopted daughter, Mary, also moved north after she grew up. Both daughters visited Fresno often and were close to their parents all their lives.

John Richard Longacre and his only son, my grandfather, Albert Sidney Longacre. Photo is taken before a Fresno, CA studio background intended to represent the Cliff House in San Francisco, a famous tourist spot of the era. There is more than one family photo taken in this studio at different times using this background.

John Richard took a keen interest in naming all of his grandchildren – much to the consternation of his daughter in law (my grandmother), who had other ideas for her children’s names! He eventually retired to the city of Fresno where he lived until his death at 90, a year after Susan died. He was buried in a Masonic ceremony. Linda Bell continued to live in John Richard and Susan’s retirement home in Fresno until the late 1960s. She taught Sunday School all her life. Bert’s life-long abiding interest was buying and selling real estate, patterned after John Richard’s early days in Oregon. John Richard Longacre and a great number of his relatives are buried in Fresno, California – home of Free Republic.

John Richard’s and Susan’s retirement home in the city of Fresno, California. By the time I was a child, the shrubbery had grown so high around this house that you could no longer see it from the street. My Great Aunt Bell, who still lived there, would serve us lemonade and cookies under an arbor of trees and vines that shaded the entire back yard. It was heaven on a summer day in Fresno’s 100 degree heat.

Nomination as Honorary Freeper

I also wish to honor my Great Grandfather on this Fathers’ Day, June 16, 2002, for providing a good example of all the qualities of outstanding fatherhood that are still valid today:

Devotion to family -- parents, siblings, cousins, spouse, and children

Generosity

Bravery

Integrity

Morality

Optimism

Humor

Enthusiasm

Honesty

Diligence

Hospitality

Creativity

Loyalty

Practicality

Responsibility

Although I sincerely doubt that John Richard Longacre would have ever wanted to be called a Republican, given the era in which he lived, I am sure that he would have gladly called himself a Conservative.

Therefore:

Whereas John Richard Longacre lived the life of a pioneer settler on the home turf of FreeRepublic more than a hundred years ago,

Whereas John Richard Longacre was never afraid to try new things,

Whereas John Richard Longacre was an example of an eternal optimist throughout his life,

Whereas John Richard Longacre greatly enjoyed the art of social dancing in his youth, he would be an excellent addition to any future Balls, Cruises, and Social Occasions planned and organized by the members of Free Republic.

Whereas John Richard Longacre never faltered in the face of personal or financial setbacks, whether it be the loss of a loved one (mother, sweetheart, 2 wives, daughter, cousins, uncles, friends) or the loss of money or property, I like to think that he would have been an enthusiastic part of the Free Republic Forum from its founding.

Be It Therefore Resolved that:

John Richard Longacre be made an Honorary Member in good standing of the Fresno Chapter of Free Republic, with all benefits and privileges therein and using the official screen name of Trailblazer.

[By my hand signed on this day] Afraidfortherepublic

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