Across three states
Alfred Johnson & Ida Fagerberg
Alfred Ludvig Alford Johnson (26/10 1846 – after 1879)
D2 branch [1.2.11.8.1.3]
Son of Frank Alford & Hannah Johansdotter
Ekeby, Östergötland
Emigrated to America
Ida L. Fagerberg (1857 – 1951) (m. 1878 in Kansas, div.)
Sweden
Emigrated to America
2 children
Primary sources + living sources
03-02-2021
Alfred grew up in a remote Swedish cottage, but came to Joplin in southwesternmost Missouri via New York with his parents in 1866 when he was 17 years old.
Älgaberget cottage. Photo: Esben Alfort 2019.
In 1877, he got the Swedish girl Ida L. Fagerberg pregnant. He was by then 32 years old and she was 20. She was likewise a Swede by birth, so their family became entirely Swedish-speaking at home, but they were all able to speak English.
A year later, his widowed mother married John Johnson, and Alfred decided then to likewise take the name Johnson.
It is difficult to trace this couple, but they soon settled in the important industrial town of Fort Scott across the state border in Kansas with their two sons. However, they were divorced while the boys were still young. In 1910 Ida is living with her sons in Twin Groves township, somewhere outside Carl Junction.
- 1. John Edward Johnson (1/4 1877 – 1944)
- 2. Frank William Johnson (14/11 1879 – 11/10 1958)
Sometime in the 1910s they all moved to a farm in Narcissa in Oklahoma, just across another state border. The area was known to the family, as her former brother-in-law John Alford had lived there with his family, and in the 1930s his daughter Katie and her husband once more moved in as their neighbours.
The landscape around Narcissa is very flat. Source: Google.
The Johnson family ran the farm together for the rest of their lives and are buried together in the nearest town of Miami, Oklahoma. None of the sons ever married. In his old age, Frank moved to 418 A St Southeast in Miami, Oklahoma. The sons both had blue eyes and dark hair.
Ida Johnson and her sons grave in Miami, Oklahoma. Source: Findagrave.com.
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Research data
There is a story out there that Alfred drowned on the way to America. His prayer book is said to still bear the marks from being completely wet through. The question is whether the drowning is a fabrication arising from the wet prayer book, or whether it was actually one of Alfred’s brothers who drowned? Clearly, he survived.
Even so, there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding this couple.
- name (others’ spellings): Alfred Ludvig (1849-1860)
- name (others’ spellings): Ida Johnson (1910); Ida L. Johnson (1940)
- b. Ekeby 1849: v37219.b34.s60
- hous. 1849-1860 Ekeby: v25383.b114.s102(1849-1852); v25386.b315.s293(1852-1860); Malexander: v27197.b110.s201(1860)
- hous. 1910-1940 Twin Groves: 1910; Narcissa: 1920; 1930; 1940
- Frank WWI reg.: 1918; WWII reg.: 1942
- John WWI reg.: 1918
Dale Edward Starchman
I am Dale Edward Starchman, Ph.D., in Canton, Ohio. I am the son of Lottie Alford Starchman, daughter of Axel Edward Alford and grand daughter of Frank Alford. In 1962 I drew up an Alford family tree based on Lottie’s memory. That large size diagram states that Axel was 10 years old when they arrived in N.Y. It also states that her uncle Alfred Alford changed his name to Alfred Johnson (for unknown reasons), married Aunt Ida, had 2 sons (John died in 1943-44 and Frank died in 1958), divorced from Ida when boys were young, and is buried in Ft. Scott, Kansas. Ida, John, and Frank are buried in Miami,Oklahoma.