The mystery of Alexander Elge – finally solved!

When we first visited the Johnson ranch, back in 2007, Margaret gave me a copy of her history of the Johnson ranch. According to this, the ranch was first settled by Alexander Elg and his wife Sophia, in 1879, which is supported by old land records. According to Margaret´s history, brother Jacob – Everett´s grandfather – takes over the ranch in 1888, after Alexander´s death. There is no record of his death, or of what becomes of his wife Sophia.

Jacob was born in 1852 in Liljendal, Sweden, a son of blacksmith Johan Elg  and his first wife, Kajsa Håkansdotter. Kajsa dies when Jacob is only one year old, and Johan later marries Anna Olsdotter. In total, 14 children are born in these marriages, of which 10 boys and 2 daughters survive. Most of them will later emigrate.

Back in Sweden I start to search for Alexander, but he is nowhere to be found in the parish records, and there are no gaps in the record where he could have slipped through. However, it is not unheard of for emigrants to change their names.

I have two suspects, all other sons are accounted for in Swedish parish records.

Erik Johan Elg, b. 1844, cannot be found in Swedish records. I find a Johan Erik Elg, b. 1844, who emigrates with his wife Kristina to Chicago in 1869, from a place near Liljendal. I have no direct evidence that this is our Erik Johan Elg.

Per August Elg, b. 1850, emigrates in 1868, no destination noted.

Returns from the dead..

Here the story could have ended, but a couple of years later I get in touch with another branch of the family, in Montana. They are descendants of two brothers and a sister from Johan Elg´s second marriage, who emigrate to Montana to dig for gold.

It takes a while to follow their emigration, as they emigrate from Oslo, and do not appear in Swedish emigration records. But finally I find the passenger list from their arrival in New York, March 19, 1887, on the s/s Britannic. And now it gets interesting! The list shows:

* Alexander Elge, 26, US citizen

* Marie Elge, 18, spinster

* Edward Elge, 20, laborer

* Otto Elge, 24, farmer

* Beata Elge, 24, wife

* Ernfrid Elge, 3, son

Alexander is listed with the rest of the family. Note also that all have changed the spelling of the family name, the ”-e” makes it easier to pronounce for English speakers.

It seems too much of a coincidence that two mysterious Alexanders should appear in the same family. More likely it was Alexander´s wife sophia who passed away in Laramie, and Alexander decided to make a fresh start.

Debra Jacobs found a marriage records which shows that Alexander August Elge from Sweden marries Eva June Smith in 1895, in San Bernadino. This seems to indicate that Alexander is Per August Elg. There is a problem in that the passenger list from 1887 lists his age as 26, which would place his birth around 1860, rather than 1850, a bit young to have married and started the Laramie ranch by 1877. On the other hand, the Alexander Elg who marries in San Bernadino in 1895 is 45 years old, which matches Per August's birth year of 1850. And, unlike the arrival record in New York, the Norwegian departure record lists his age as 36, matching Per August’s birth year.

On the wrong track?

By now I was feeling rather confident, when a register search turns up a person who was actually named August Alexander Elg, born in the same province in 1853, and also a blacksmith like ”my” Elgs. Not only that, the family emigrated in 1882. Have I been barking up the wrong tree all along? A search of the parish records showed that this man was from another part of Värmland province. And US census records show that after emigration the family settled in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life with his Swedish wife, without any gold-mining adventures.

 Final confirmation

Final confirmation of my original story arrives, when I find a digitized newpaper story in the collection of the Swedish National Library. This story was published in several Swedish newspapers in March 1887:

The – not – lost son. Under this heading, one of our correspondents reports:

A blacksmith at Liljendal named Elg had 14 children, of which 10 sons and 2 daughters survive. 18 years ago, the then 18 year old son A. emigrated to America, where he has predominantly occupied himselm searching for gold, first in California with mixed success, but later in the Rocky Mountains in Montana, where in company with an English prospector he discovered a rich gold vein; also he is part owner with five others in a silver mine in the Rocky Mountains.

On October 5th last year, he embarked on the long and expensive journey back to Sweden, to provide for his parents in their old age, and arrived there in good health on November 9th. There is no mistaking the joy on his arrival, his father had assumed he was dead as they had not heard from him for seven years. 

However, now the golden boy opened his purse and purchased all kind on necessities for the household. Later he deposited a substantial amount with his father to meet future needs.

On March 1, he started the long journey back to his mines, but this time in the company of an 18 year old sister and two brothers, one of them accompanied by his family.

The 1890 census shows Alex Johnson listed as a boarder with Per August/Alexander´s half sister Maria Sophia Elge and her husband Nels Nelson, who ran a boarding house for miners in Helena Montana.

Per August ”Alexander” Elge passed away on April 3, 1896, and is buried in Redland, California, just outside San Bernadino, where he married Eva June Smith only a year before

Everett Johnson, 1921-2011

Everett passed away on Wednesday, August 24, 2011, two months after celebrating his 90th birthday in a large circle of family and friends. Everett is survived by his wife of 64 years, Margaret, a daughter, Joyce, and a son, David, with families, a sister, Carol, and three grandchildren.

Everett was a grandson of my great-grandfather's cousin Jacob Elg Johnson, who emigrated to the US in 1880.

Link to Everett´s obituary

At the age of six, Everett moved with his family to the family ranch, now known as the "Mountain View Ranch", west of Laramie, and lived for the rest of his life there.

Margaret Johnson´s history of life on the ranch

A 1961 article about life on the Johnson ranch

Alex Elge/Johnson - the mystery deepens..

In a previous blogpost (November 2009) I mentioned the mysterious Alexander Elge/Johnson, who is nowhere to be found in Swedish records. In the 1900 US Census for Helena, Montana, Alex Johnson, born Aug 1861 in Sweden is a boarder in the family of Nels & Marie Nelson. Marie is Maria Sofia Elg, who married Nels Nelson in Helena, Montana, in 1889. The family´s address is 1050 Bedford Street.

The birth date matches the age in the 1887 passenger manifest, which makes him too young to be Per August Elg, and also too young to have settled the Johnson ranch in Laramie.

This was a lucky find as I was searching for Maria Sofia. Unfortunately, there are too many Alex Johnsons in the census database to go through them all to see if he can be found under this name in other censuses.

Since my previous post I have double-checked all possible Swedish records:
There are no departure records for any of the 1887 Montana emigrants. No doubt they slipped away through Norway, without notifying the authorities. Swedish parish records for the Johan Elg family show no Alexander - or any son born in 1861 - and there are no gaps in the record.

Furthermore, there is no Alexander or Sophia at all in Swedish emigration records from their part of the country in 1877-79 (when Alexander and Sophia first emigrated according to Margaret Johnson´s history of the Laramie ranch), and no possible Elg from any part of Sweden during the same years.

Yet, Alexander Elge, born abt 1860, travels with Frans Otto, Edward and Maria Sophia according to the 1887 US Arrival records, and in 1900 Alex Johnson, b 1861, is living with Maria Sophia´s family..

Life on the ranch..

We are just back from two weeks visiting family in Minnesota and Wyoming. As time allows I will publish bits of history discovered on my journey. To start off, here is a wonderful glimpse of life on the ranch back in 1961. This should be read as a companion to Margaret Johnson's "History of the Johnson Ranch ( http://web.telia.com/~u85435856/emigration/johnson1.html ).

/ Lennart

Good Life is Even Better on ”Park” Ranch

Robert Beasley, The Cooperative Consumer, Oct 31, 1961

Johnsons stand over the spillway from the Big Laramie River into the Pioneer Canal, which carries water to the Johnson Ranch.

If farming is a good life, Wesley Johnson’s style of farming, or ranching, must be the best life. Johnson doesn´t plant or cultivate or strain to harvest any crops. He doesn´t even own a plow.He can see some of America’s most beautiful scenery every time he glances from his home’s windows. The trout-filled Big Laramie River flows through his “back yard”.

Johnson’s “Park Ranch” is 20-some miles southwest of Laramie, Wyo. It gets its name from its many little tree-circled meadows or “parks” carpeted with native grasses. The parks are perfect winter quarters for cattle.The ranch straddles the Big Laramie where the river flows out from between mountains onto the Laramie plain. The Johnsons’ buildings and most of their land is on the river’s north bank. Some of the land is on the south bank, spread out across the first gentle rise towards the peak of Jelm mountain.

Johnson’s uncle bought the ranch back in 1878. When he died, it passed on to Johnson’s dad. And Wes Johnson bought the place in 1924; he moved on to it in 1927. He and his wife, Carol, and their son and his family operate the ranch now.Besides those grassy-floored “parks”, the ranch’s most important assets include a couple of “rights” – the right to take irrigation water from the Big Laramie River and a permit to graze cattle from June 16 to Oct. 1 in the mountainous Medicine Bow National Forest six miles from the ranch. The Irrigation rights were granted to the Johnsons back in 1879 and ’80. That makes them old enough to be valuable in the West, where the man with the oldest rights gets first claim on the often limited supply of water.

The Johnson herd – basically 100 Hereford cows and their calves – leave their winter quarters in the ranch’s parks in the spring and walk five miles north to a spring range. In June, they clump up the trail to the cool, relatively insect-free national forest.In the summer, the Johnsons do their only “crop work”. They put the hay from the native grass in the parks around the ranch up in neat, “buck-fenced” stacks. And in September, they trail their Herefords down from the national forest.The cows spend their winters munching the native hay; their calves – except animals kept for the breeding herd – are sold to feeders. Johnson calves usually go to feeders in the Red Oak, In. area. In mid-february, the cows begin dropping their calves. As soon as all the calves have arrived and have been branded and vaccinated, the year’s cycle begins again.

Rustic corral on Johnson ranch is busy place in late winter and early spring. Calving is done in buildings at right. Later, calves are branded and vaccinated in the corral.

Mountain Meadow Drama

During our day on the Johnson ranch, we watched the first act in one of those little dramas that make livestock raising such rewarding, interesting work.A neighbour had spotted a Johnson cow, apparently in trouble on the summer range in Medicine Bow National Forest. Everett checked. He came back with unhappy news: The cow was suffering from foot rot, a mean, debilitating condition happily rare amomng range cattle.

We went with the Johnsons – Wes, Everett and Everett’s wife, Margaret – into the forest to look for the cow. We found her, thin and limping on a swollen left hind foot, in the edge of some timber just off a mountain meadow. Her calf, blocky and bright, quick and spooky, darted through the woods ahead of the cow as the Johnson men, armed with ropes, went after her. They caught her in a few minutes.

With the calf watching apprehensively but from a distance, Everett needled antibiotics into the cow’s flank, splashed a healthy dose of iodine on the bad foot, and jammed some elephant-sized pills down her throat. He and his dad wanted to truck the animal back to the ranch, but they hesitated running her calf down into the dangerous timber. So they left the cow, tethered to a tree, with good hay and a tub of water in easy reach.

The Johnsons wrote later that they decided to bring the cow down from the mountain by truck. They built a stockade around her in the woods, left the stockade gate open and waited “for nature to take its course”. When the calf stepped up for dinner, Everett closed the stockade gate on him. And he and his mother rode home, where good care and feed healed her quickly.

The rancher’s work is by no means finished when the cattle are trailed to the summer ranges. The herd is checked constantly for injury or disease, and medication is administered on the spot. This cow, afflicted with a bad case of foot rot, is given a penicillin shot by rancher Everett Johnson in the Medicine Bow National Forest range near Foxpark.