Epp Department Store in Lushton - 1917 ad

Our neighboring towns were once were thriving communities: Saronville, Verona, Eldorado and even Lushton:

1917 Newspaper Ad for the Jacob Epp & Son Department Store in Lushton.

The Class of 1942's 50-year Reunion

This photo appeared in The Clay County News after the alumni banquet in 1992

This was the 50th reunion for the Class of 1942.

1917 - 4th of July Contributing Businesses

We have here a list of businesses who contributed to Sutton's 1917 4th of July Celebration - at least a partial list of the businesses 100 years ago.

1917 auto headlight frenzy to comply with state law.

A 1917 ad in The Sutton News offered headlights to comply with a new Nebraska law restricting auto headlights to casting light no higher than 42 inches above the ground. Several companies hit the market with new lenses.

Turn Your Ford into a Tractor - 1917

This ad appeared in The Sutton News in 1917. Had not seen any previous reference to the "Sutton Pullford Co." nor do I remember anything about slapping tractor tires on a car to act like it is a tractor. I suspect neither the product or the company had a long life.

1922 Sutton Basketball Team - World-Herald article in 1967

The 1922 Sutton High Class A State Basketball Champs received coverage in a World-Herald article by Conde Sargent in 1967.

Our earlier post about this team is at   Sutton's Top All-Time Sports Story

You Should Tell Your Story

You really should write down your story.

We’ve told the story of two of Sutton’s expats in the past two articles. Both of those men did things that were written about in newspapers, magazines and Wikipedia. They were somewhat famous people, but even the not so famous live lives worth remembering.

The population of Sutton has fluctuated around 1,500 for most of its existence. So, how many people would that be – it must be at least six to ten thousand. And each lived a life filled with stories. And that includes you.

The Germans from Russia organization several years ago urged members to write down the immigration stories of their parents, grandparents and other family members. We have a few of those in our museum. Completing these projects are time-critical, even urgent as only a few people know the stories and the stories will disappear as people do.

Sutton pioneer John Maltby kept a diary including during his voyage from Boston to the Australian gold fields, traveling rivers in India and pioneering in Nebraska. The diary is among 13 boxes of his materials at the state historical society. Browsing Maltby’s diary gave me a pleasant afternoon a few years ago.

Or someone’s story can be much more benign.

My father, Clarence Johnson, began his journal at the start of 1935. I resolved
many disagreements, misunderstandings and conflicting memories.

My father began keeping a journal on January 1, 1935 and wrote in it typically on Sundays. It settled
 many discussions around the supper table. If my parents disagreed about when or if something happened Dad would announce, “It’s in the book”, go to the appropriate volume and return either triumphant or quietly to confirm Mom remembered better. About 50-50.

It’s kind of cool to read what your dad wrote the day you were born.

Are you afraid you don’t have anything interesting to say? So what? Your grandparents had their toddler days, likely school days, they met and courted, fell in love and were married, made a life for themselves, made a living, raised kids and grew old. You knew them late in life. Do you have any curiosity about how they lived their earlier lives? Doesn’t it stand to reason that your grandkids and other younger people will have that same curiosity about all those things you did?

If you haven’t written down your own story, consider doing it. Really consider doing it.

So, what do you say and how do you say it?

Well, you can start at the beginning. I’ll illustrate.

I was born on June 23, 1943 to Mildred (Cassell) and Clarence Johnson.

OK, a start. Do I know anything else about that day?

“I was born in the midst of World War II when many common items were rationed. Every person had a ration book that allowed purchase of sugar, flour, coffee, meat, gasoline, tires, etc. I was born at 4:45 am at the Hastings hospital. My Dad drove back to Sutton later that day, stopping in Clay Center to pick up the new ration book that I was now entitled to, a book of stamps authorizing my parents to buy more items than they could the day before.”

You likely have lots of family pictures, perhaps labled
but maybe not. A little effort on your part to label and
preserve photos will earn the appreciation of your
offspring, and can add a chuckle to your day.

Isn’t that a story worth preserving? It’s personal, but it does provide a bit of background. You certainly have similar stories.

You’ll want to mention your grandparents and other relatives. You don’t have to go an entire genealogy thing; that’s another project. But you should record what you know about those people.

For instance:

My grandfather David Cassell died two years before I was born. My mother told me that on Sunday morning he would shave, take a bath and smoke a cigar, and that was the only occasion he did any of those three things.

We only have a few pictures of the man and that little piece of information is what I think of when I see those pictures.

My other grandfather died when I was six. My most vivid memory of him was the day he ran over my toy truck I’d left in the driveway. I didn’t learn the meaning of “distraught” until years later, but when I did, I knew that’s how Fred Johnson felt that day. (He got me a new truck.)

Your story will be better focused and easier to write if you identify your audience first. You will be one member of that audience yourself. Memories are fragile. Once you start recalling little details, more will come back, but not always.

I kept a good journal and took a lot of pictures on a lengthy trip to Europe 14 years ago. Using that journal and the pictures as a reminder, I can reconstruct many of those days, a thing I know would not happen without those clues.

Your relatives are a part of your story, don't leave
them out. This is my uncle Mike Cassell who
worked in the Sutton Lumber Yard for... ever.

But you should share your story. I write for my grandkids. They don’t know it, and I don’t require them to care. But aiming at them provides my focus.

Your story will likely include your school days. I attended country school from K-5^th grade. That is a memory that a diminishing population has. Our Wolfe School museum is the ultimate show-and-tell for that purpose, but our personal memories fill out that story. Again, for instance:

Our country school had a storm cellar dug into a hillside on the school grounds. It was intended as a safe place for pupils in case of a tornado. The cellar was crawling with snakes. The young teacher had asked the school board (including my father) to clear it but it wasn’t happening. One spring afternoon she cancelled classes and led a bunch of boys, and girls, in a snake-slaughtering episode, ending with 42 (as I recall) snakes stretched out on the driveway. K-8 kids don’t do much of that anymore.

That story seems worth saving.

My contemporaries on the farm grew up while farming was in transition (isn’t it always?). We saw the last of stacking hay, shelling corn, threshing and other tasks soon to be altered, automated or obsolete.

My most painful memory of growing up on the farm was fixing fence. No matter how many tasks you worked to completion, there was always fence to fix. It was infuriating to move back to Nebraska 12 years ago and see large herds of cattle confined by a strand of horsehair-sized electrified wire. I spent my youth repairing and rebuilding “miles” of four-strand barbed wire stapled to closely-spaced buried creosote posts, railroad tie corner posts and carefully designed gates. Where is the justice?

Your story, the story of your life is worth remembering and saving for others. Think of the tales we tell at family reunions, to friends over dinner or at the bar, in letters…  Scratch that, we don’t write letters anymore. Emails, tweets and texts are not conducive for what I’m talking about. All the more reason…

My grandparents took this family photo in the fall of 1911 - yes, the horses were important family members for early farmers.
My grandparents raised at least seven of their nine children in this house on the west side of Section 3 in Logan Township,
until recently occupied by Jim and Virginia Moore until it was badly damaged in a fire. I claim that my mother is in this
photo as that is my grandmother just to the right of the four-horse team and she would give birth to her ninth child, my mother
in May 1912.

You may have left Sutton for a time, for college, a job, even a vacation when you had experiences worth remembering and telling about. Or you left home for another reason.

There is sensation I experience when I’m outside in that hour before dawn on a cool morning with no wind and birds singing. A memory sweeps in and I’m standing at attention in the breakfast line outside a chow hall at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. It’s 5:00 am, the birds are singing, no one speaks (absolutely no one speaks!) as we take repeated single steps into the chow hall. I was only in basic training for five weeks but that scene in imbedded and recalled when I find myself outside, before dawn on a still day with birds singing.

Do you have anything like that, a thing that triggers a memory? A song or a smell or an object may do that for you. Tell that story and allow people to see that part of you.

When you tell your story, a lot of it will be centered on your family. Tell your kids and grandkids about meeting your spouse, what was it that led to your marriage, how you lived as a new family, how the kids changed that, and the grandkids. Let your family take center stage for their portion of your life. You will trigger their own deep memories.

You should be willing to bare a bit of yourself. Brag about your successes; own up to your failures. What are you most proud of; what do you wish you’d done differently; what advice to you have for your reader (again, grandkids make a good target audience).

I’ve focused on the “writing” of a memoir here. There are alternatives. Make a video or at least an audio recording. Your computer likely has a camera (or you can plug one in). Sit back and tell your story. Choose a comfortable pattern. Fifteen or 20 minute segments on one or two subject at each setting isn’t a strain.

Technology allows you to put preserve your files several ways. You could share your memories via email or on at a common location (Google Docs). Lots of ways.

Many years ago, I sent each of my cousins a two-hour VHS tape (that’s how long ago) where I’d described my version of our genealogy story as I had it at the time. Should update that – the information and the format.

We very often hear people say that they wish they’d asked their grandparents more questions before it was too late. The onus may not have been on you to ask questions, but on grandma to offer the answers unprompted.

If so, then the onus is on you to offer the answers about your life before your grandkids know they have questions. And furthermore, how are they going to know what a cool character you were if you don't tell them.

Did my great-grandfather understand that? James Demetris Rowlison kept a journal while with the 82^nd Indiana Infantry throughout the Civil War. We have six months of that journal.

My great, grandfather's civil war journal is now reaching his sixth generation of grateful descendants. 

Herbert Johnson - Sutton's Cartoonist

Renown cartoonist Herbert Johnson

was born in Sutton on October, 30, 1878 

Herbert Johnson (1878-1946)

It is trite to say the amount of information on the internet has ballooned. It is more accurate to say it is still ballooning.

The people at youtube claim that the amount of new videos uploaded is approaching 500 hours every minute. If you are disappointed that you might be missing some good videos, chill out. You can’t keep up.

Government agencies continue to make their archives available online. Genealogists really appreciate that.

Clubs, associations and just about any organization is creating or expanding their online presence.

Herbert Johnson's cartoons usually featured his depiction of the "Common People". 

If you did some research just a few months ago, you may want to look again. We learned that last month when several articles about Sutton’s Walter Wellman showed up that we had not seen before. An obscure magazine posted three articles Wellman had written about his exploration giving us in Sutton a much better picture of the life of that Sutton native.

It’s happened again. We had earlier learned a little bit about Herbert Johnson. We knew he came from Sutton, was a cartoonist for student publications at the University and later drew numerous political cartoons during the 1930’s. We even have a book with 90 of those cartoons. He drew more cartoons for the covers of Saturday Evening Post and Country Gentleman magazines.

But we knew nothing about most of his life. Until now.

Among the items that we found about Herbert Johnson was an issue of “The Scroll”, a publication of the Phi Delta Theta international social fraternity. The publication had asked our fellow to write a sketch of his life. This account was written about 1914 covering his early life, before notoriety may have dimmed this portion of his life. We’ll take advantage of it here.

Our hero was a rather distinguished looking fellow.

Herbert Raymond Johnson was born in Sutton on October 30, 1878. The family appears in the 1880 census where J. W. Johnson, age 29 identified himself as a broker, we can guess real estate. Herbert’s mother was Mary A. (nee Bagley) and he had an older brother Joseph W. age 3. We learn later that Joseph was also his father’s name. A seventeen-year old brother of Joseph was living with them.

In his sketch, Herbert Johnson quotes William Allen White when he said he enjoyed “the inestimable privilege” of being born in a small town.

We get a taste of man from the boy:

I have always been temperamentally opposed to the tyranny of vested interests, and at the ripe age of nine, feeling that my personal liberties were being unduly curtailed by the stand-pat policies of the family government adhered to by my parents, I insurged, and ran away from home, hitting the trail for the Black Hills.

He returned after a few days “to submit to the domestic steam roller.”

The family moved to Lincoln when Herbert was 13. He attended public schools for two years and then got a job as a clerk and bookkeeper in a general store in western Nebraska.

Another two years later he was on vacation in Denver when he visited the office of Mr. Wilmarth, the cartoonist for the Denver Republican. He did a few sketches and was offered to job as assistant for $20 per week.

He had never had any formal art training but had always been able to draw pictures “better than anything else except ride horse.”

He went to the Kansas City Journal where he was in charge of the art and engraving departments. An article at the time identified him as the youngest art manager in the country.

In 1899 Hebert Johnson returned to Lincoln and the University where he earned his way managing a college weekly. This piece of information surfaced some time ago on one of the University websites. And, of course he still neglected to take any art classes.

He was back living with his family in the 1900 census with three younger brothers, all would have been born in Sutton. Herbert listed his occupation as “cartoonist”.

His health failed so he went to California to work in the Yosemite Valley shoveling snow off trails, cutting timber, fixing roads and general labor.

In 1901 he wandered into Tucson where he became circulation manager for the Arizona Daily Citizen, screwed up and was fired. However, the only reporter on the paper quit and he was hired to take that job.

Herbert Johnson drew covers for the Saturday Evening
Post and Country Gentleman magazines, among others.

He then went to New York City and submitted five drawings to Life Magazine, one was accepted for $45 but little more came of that experience. Then onto Philadelphia where his career took off. He was in charge of the Sunday art department of the North American newspaper and became their regular cartoonist in 1908.

At this point in his life at age 29 he was drawing cartoons and illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, Life, Colliers, LaFollette’s, etc.

He had finally arrived.

By 1910 he was married to Helen Letitia Fowler Turner and they had an infant daughter named Heberta.

His father Joseph Johnson worked for the State of Nebraska as Railway Commissioner and as Food Commissioner.

The 1920 census found the family in Philadelphia where Herbert listed his occupation as cartoonist. Herberta was ten and had an eight-year old sister Katherine. The household included Herbert’s widowed mother-in-law and a 31-year old servant, who was identified in the practice of the time as “Mu”, mulatto.

Herbert’s political cartoons during the 1920’s were in solid support of the Republican Party and the administrations of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

The Johnson family met the 1930 census enumerator out in the northeast suburbs of Philadelphia in Montgomery County where Herbert valued his home at $100,000. Not bad in 1930. Though his 1940 census estimate of the home value is a tad more. It definitely is some number of millions, the first digit is blurred. The transcriber interpreted a value of $9,000,000.

This article appeared in The Sutton Register on June 29, 1939, part of an exchange between John Heinz in Sutton and
Herbert Johnson. He did remember his early (before age 13) years in Sutton including the "Blue Clay" swimming hole.

The election of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal policies of the Democratic Party predictably led Johnson to a new style of cartooning with a new harshness and edge. He did not like Roosevelt. He did not like anything about the New Deal. His opposition crossed the line into quixotic.

Our collection of 90 cartoons from this era came to us from a grandson of Mr. Johnson in Berks County, Pennsylvania. His wife had seen a post on our blog several years ago. In it we mentioned that the book of cartoons was listed on amazon but was out of print. We received an email offering us one of the volumes, we took it…

This early 1936 cartoon reflects Johnson's hope that Republican voters would
return to his party to defeat President Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Didn't happen.

We more recently received an enticing offer from a dealer in memorabilia. He had a book of 384 original cartoons by Herbert Johnson. His photos of the book indicated it was a scrapbook with four cartoons pasted onto each page. We asked for more information and learned that his asking price was $25,000. It was not that enticing.

We passed.

Herbert Raymond Johnson died on October 13, 1946 after 53 days in the Abington Memorial Hospital in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania as he neared his 68^th birthday.

This is another in our series of research efforts and articles about natives of Sutton who have left this area and achieved fame elsewhere. We’ve seen here that Herbert Johnson did not forget where he was born and raised and that he enjoyed “the inestimable privilege” of being born in a small town. We need to return the favor and remember him with a certain level of pride that he was once a part of our town.

Herbert Johnson at the easel in his studio, likely in his Montgomery County home outside of Philadelphia.

Sutton's Big Centennial Pageant

This ad in The Clay County News in June, 1967 announced the towns BIG centennial pageant celebrating the 100th birthday of the State of Nebraska.

1917 Sutton Alumni Reception

This story about the 1917 alumni reception at Sutton High appeared in The Sutton News on Friday, June 8, 1917.

Sutton's first graduating class came in 1886 and two members of that class attended this reception.

And, thanks to Gwenda Mau's invaluable alumni directory, here is the list of the members of the Sutton High School Class of 1917: