[Albert Harrison Johnson] was born October 21, 1856, in Iowa. His mother left his father when he was small and he had a stepmother. She didn't take very good care of him, and finally she left his father. I think he was about 8 or 9 years old for I have heard him tell about how he got lice in his hair and the neighbor lady washed him and combed the lice out. He and his father used to eat lots of vegetables raw. He use to tell how his stepmother went to town one time and the team ran away. She fell backwards into a large bushel basket and they went down Main Street with her hollering, her feet up and head up, and him trying to stop the horses. He used to say that his father would get up and go to the barn and his step mother would put on the coffee pot and a loaf of bread on the table and go out to holler "Breakfast". If they didn't come she used to get the butcher knife after them.

Mother (Luthera Van Dusen) was born in Vermont and later her family moved to Iowa when she was about 10 years old. I think it was Marble Rock; anyway that was where father met her. He was 16 years old and she was 14 when they were married in 1872 [1875]. Albert J. Johnson was born on January 12, 1876 and Viola May Johnson on June 12, 1877. Father was selling Harris Harvesters and was traveling a good bit of the time. They moved to Walla Walla, in what is now Washington State, and lived in the hills. That was where I was born on July 1, 1878, and I was 3 months old when they went to Los Angeles on a ship. Mother was seasick all the way. Father went to work for old Lucky Baldwin, a large owner of orange groves and ranch holdings called Rancho Santa Anita. They were there three years when he got hold of some literature telling what a wonderful place Texas was, so he got the fever to go to Texas. They went, landing in Waxahachie, where father left mother and children at the depot and went out to look the town over. He talked to the people and came back to the depot and told mother those people were "too damn lazy to talk". He wanted to buy a ticket right back to California, but mother said, "No, you are here now and you must live here a while to see how you like it."

I remember the old place that was, owned by a man named Cunningham. I think it was 160 acres and Father raised cotton and corn. He had one section that he mowed for hay. It was just good grass in the spring that he baled and sold. He had a thrasher and he thrashed for people. We were 5 miles from school and we had to walk that morning and evening. We lived in an old house with two bedrooms, a large living room and kitchen. The well was a quarter mile from the house and we hauled water in a barrel on slides to the house. Sometimes when we wanted a cold drink we would go with the bucket to the well and carry it back to the house Those were the good old days when we really worked and didn't have a lot of things like we have now. Father and his family lived there seven years. Finally Lillie May was born there February 28, 1885, and William H.H.P Johnson on February 26, 1887. He was small when mother and father took the train to Iowa Park [Iowa Park, Wichita County, Texas] to look at the country. They liked it and father bought 320 acres. That was the old home place, 7 miles from Iowa Park. We made the trip in two covered wagons with mother driving one and father the other. It was just a week before Christmas when we got there and we were so glad. We had lots of fun running along behind the wagons.

Father built a two-story house with two bedrooms upstairs and the kitchen and living room downstairs. Mother and father slept in the living room, we kids slept upstairs in one room, and the hired man and Albert slept in the other room. We had a dugout that we went in when it stormed and father had guide rods on the house to keep it from blowing over when the wind blew. Father bought more land as time went on. He bought a section that we called the White Place, with a two story house on it. Later he moved the house and joined it onto the home house. First he moved it from the hill down to the lower land and fixed it up a little. My sister Viola got married to George Wells and they lived in this house for one year. Then Albert got married to Tilda Johnson and they lived in the White House. We called it the weaning house" because they just lived there one year.

Then Father moved the White house and built it onto the home place, the first house he had when he first came to Wichita County. Father still did public thrashing and in 1890 and 1891 mother did the cooking in the cookhouse for the thrashing men and I helped her. I was 12 and 13 those summers. In 1892 Estella Leona Johnson was born on July 1. Father had three thrashing machines and Mother and I did the cooking for 75 men one summer.

Father took the contract for building the Wichita Dam just a few miles from Wichita Falls. He worked all winter and summer. I think it was a year or maybe longer, but I know the 7 were at that job a long time. That year I think the crops were almost a complete failure. From that job they went to Henrietta, a town 50 miles from Wichita Falls and built a railroad. I don't remember how many miles of road they built. Father farmed 3 1/2 sections of grain and the crop was a failure again. He had to get other work again so he went railroading another time. On Boggy River he built several miles of railroad and he got a sawmill to make the ties he used. There was lots of timber there to make them. George Weeth ran the sawmill making ties and I cooked for the men, 15 and 16 men were there all winter and spring. The green bugs ate up all the crops that spring in Wichita County. Father had several sections and didn't have a bushel of grain. From this railroad job Father went to Arkansas on a large job, and it was from there that he shipped all his mules and horses and machinery to Corcoran [Corcoran, King's County, California] in 1905. He went right to work in the Tulare Lake clearing tules out of the land and he bought 320 acres of land 7 miles west of Corcoran. He did big farming in the Lake, leasing several sections of land to put in grain. He built a large warehouse of sheet iron, about 300 feet long and about 100 feet wide with a concrete floor to store the grain in. I have a picture of the warehouse and that is where we held the sale after father died.

In the year of 1923 he had a good crop. One of the men accidentally stepped down on father's foot and bruised it on top. Gangrene set in and he was taken to the hospital with the infected foot. Father died at the age of 67 on August 5, 1923 and Mother died on October 4, 1923. We put in a crop but it wasn't very good, almost a failure. Before father died, when he knew he couldn't live, he made mother promise to have the men put in all the crops again for the coming year and he talked to the men and they promised to stay with mother and help to carry out his wishes. After mother passed away we did all we could to carry out their wishes but the crops were a failure because we couldn't get water to irrigate them. Father was always very generous and did lots of charity work. He made his will before he died that since none of his own children got a good education, he wanted two of his grandsons to get a college education.

So he willed to Waldo Weeth and Elmer Peery, both grandsons, ten thousand dollars each, and requested Dr. Peery, father of Elmer, to be guardian over the boys and see that they got a good education, and they did. Waldo has made a wonderful farmer after a good college education and has done very well. Elmer Peery has made a good teacher and has gone far in his work. All this was from the blessing of their grandfather Johnson.

Father was elected Supervisor of Kings County and served two terms as I remember. He was holding the Chair at the time of his death. Mother used to do all of father's typing of his letters, and she helped him in many ways in his business. She was always at his side in all his business.

Brother William [cause of death omitted] died at the age of 36.

Sister Viola Wells died on February 22, 1936 [cause of death omitted] at the age of 59. Albert J. Johnson died on January 27, 1930, at 54, [cause of death omitted]. He left a wife and two sons; Neal, born May 14, 1903, and Albert Jr. born February 16, 1918.

To return to Viola Wells family- their daughter Pearl Wells was a graduate nurse who married and died [cause of death omitted] at the age of 20 on March 15, 1930. George Washington Wells, Viola's husband, died in 1950 at the age of 83. Son George W. Wells lives in Miami, Texas. Son Charlie Clifton Wells lives [information omitted] in Amarillo. Lillie Luthera Wells Daughter, Mrs. Anna Rea Russell, Mrs. Mable Nellie Laflin, George Johnson Wells, and Jim Woodrow Wells live in Miami, Texas.

Now George and I come next - George C. Weeth was born January 9, 1877 and died August 8, 1917. Myrtle May Weeth was born July 1, 1878, and we had nine children. Eugene Weeth, born October 6, 1897, died October 4, 1950 at 53 years; Minnie May Weeth Toney born May 31, 1899; Ruby Rea Weeth Kamilos born February 22, 1901; Waldo Watson Weeth born May 10, 1903; Lottie Weeth Ellett, born January 18, 1905, died July 20, 1950 at 45; Vida June Weeth Kirk, born June 28, 1906; Martha Halley Weeth Ross born May 23, 1910; [name and date omitted]; Georgia C. Weeth Trimble [date omitted].

Lillie May Johnson was born February 28, 1885, and married Dr. John Thomas Peery. They had two boys; Elmer J. Peery, born March 25, 1904; and John T. Peery, born March 3, 1910.

This is the end of the story of the life of Father and Mother and their children as written for Harold Weeth by Myrtle May Weeth at the age of 76.