JOHNSON HISTORY FAMILY MANUSCRIPTS

OUR PIONEER MOTHER
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CHAPTER V

LOS ANGELES

      We arrived in Los Angeles that day and made camp at the corner of Sixth Street and Hill. We had a hard day of it, driving over the Cahuenga Pass and through the adobe mud in Hollywood, (though at that time there was no Hollywood, for only one house stood there).
      There were a few days of clear weather, then came on a terrific rain storm. There was a German family near our home, which was our covered wagon. They asked us to come to their house to do our cooking, as it was too wet for a campfire.
      We used their stove for a day, then found a shed of two rooms which we rented for ten dollars a month. This shed stood on the corner or Fourth and Broadway.
      The shed leaked almost as much as our covered wagon, but we stopped the worst of the leaks and set up the stove, and my husband went out to Arroyo Seco for wood.
      When fair weather came, Neils went to the Arroyo to get wood to sell to the people in the city of Los Angeles, which had a population of from six to eight thousand.
      After he had gotten his load and was on his way back his wagon turned over on the bad roads. The wagon tongue was broken, but he straightened and mended it, reloaded his wood and come home. A woman offered him three dollars for his load, but he said, "oh, no, I'll burn it in my own stove before I'll sell at that price."
      Our money was going fast, so we decided to tent out again. We located at Fifth and Pearl, (now Figueroa Street). This was the site of Los Angeles' old woolen mill.
      When we were at Fourth Street, we had to pay fifty cents for the water we got from a neighbor's well but here we hot i from the little mill stream.
      My husband had gone away to work for we supposed the worst of the winter rains were over, but no, this was the wet winter of 1867-1868. A great rain storm came upon us; our tent was poor protection in such a downpour.
      The small children went to bed, and we older ones pulled the wagon cover over them and ourselves. The rain fell on the stove and I could not keep a fire so we stayed in bed all night and nearly all day. We did this for several days till the storm was over.
      A woman who lived a block away, put on her husband's rain pants and coat and rubber boots and came over to see how we were getting along. She found us in bed, and called, "I haven't very much room at my house, but it is warm and comfortable, and if you do not mind two calves in the house, come over and welcome."
      It was pouring down rain, and I thought we were better off as we were. We all managed to keep well during all that winter.
      After a week, Neils returned, and we moved into a house at the corner of Fifth Street and Main. One day three Indian squaws came down the street, reeling drunk. They tried to jump over the Zanja, which ran across Main Street. Two of them were able to get over, but the third one jumped into the middle of the stream and finally managed to crawl out wet and muddy.

SOLEDAD

      My husband could not get steady work, so decided to take all the money we could spare, buy groceries, and take them up to Owens River to sell.
      He bought the goods of A.C. Shouvin and started out.
      When he got as far as Soledad he found that he could get some unsurveyed land there and knew that the settlers would be coming in, so he stopped right there and set up a grocery store. He left the goods in the care of a man who was living there and returned to Los Angeles for the family.
      When my husband told me of his plan of going into the grocery business, I exclaimed, "I'll never sell a drop of liquor to anyone." All stores sold liquor at that time.
      When we returned to Soledad we found that the caretaker or our goods and another man had stolen about forty dollars worth of them; for when we opened boxes of soap, and barrels of sugar and other boxes, we found they were not full.
      We kept exact account of the missing goods, supposing, of course, that Mr. Shouvin had made the mistake, but one of the thieves became annoyed with the other man and came and told us.
      They had stolen sugar from each barrel. When my husband was ready to return to Los Angeles for the family he had about three hundred dollars. He did not like to be carrying it around with him, so he almost decided to bury it deep down in the sugar, but on second thought he carried the money with him which was good fortune for us, for no doubt the thieves in stealing the sugar, would have found it.
      We had a large tent partitioned into two rooms. We used one-half for the store and the other for our living room. I did our cooking in a shed made of pickets.
      Bears! There were many bears in this part of the country. At night when we heard the cows calling to their calves, we knew the bears were near. They would come up close to the tent and the campfire. When we would hear a sudden noise out there in darkness we knew that a bear had gotten a calf, but we could do nothing.
      One "bell" calf, a yearling, was killed by a bear and half eaten. The bear buried the remainder, which was found a day or so later. This calf belonged to the man who had stolen our goods so he blamed us for his loss, for he said, "No bear would go after a bell calf." But when he found the buried remains he apologized, and also paid us for the groceries that he had stolen.
      We did very well with our business, but a store was no place to make a home for our growing children, so Neils carried the goods to Owens River and sold them to the merchants there. While he was attending to the business I packed up our household goods and when the first freight team came along I paid the driver twenty dollars to take our family and goods to Los Angeles.
      When I reached the city I rented an adobe house of two rooms at the corner of Sixth and Spring Streets. There was a weeping willow in the yard. The house and tree were still there when Lenora was eight years old, and she said that it was her house and her tree for that was where she was born.
      I hired a nurse and paid her in advance. My husband came, and at the same time there came a terrific storm. The house leaked; I needed the doctor and the nurse, but the storm was terrible. We were unable to get them in time, so my husband and I had to care for our baby daughter, - Olive Lenora Johnson, December 23, 1868.
      The nurse was with me three days, then she went shopping up on Temple Street and was gone all day. The children would get into mischief as there was no one to look after them, my husband being at work.
      Mrs. Shouvin came to see me in the afternoon. I was weak and hungry, so I told my troubles to her and cried a little, but she cheered me up and went to her home and brought back some hot tea and warm food which surely made me feel better.
      The nurse returned in the evening to tell me she could not stay, but said that she would do my washing for the money that I had paid her. She did the washing once, then I never saw her again, though she was paid for two weeks work.
      When Lenora was two weeks old, we decided to go back to Soledad. We started early in the morning so we could reach there by evening. My husband had taken the children a day or two before and had gotten them settled. When we were within six miles of home, the horses were too tired to go farther, but we just had to get to the children, and we had no accommodations for staying out at night when it was cold and cloudy.
      The horses would not move, but Neils thought that they might go if they thought they were running away; so he took off the bridles and fastened the lines to the halters.
      As their blinds were off, they could see what was behind them--the wagon, the freight, and the people. this frightened them and away they ran those six miles.
      The next morning one of the horses was wholly blind, because of the strain of the big run. He soon recovered.
      While we lived here, we turned the cows out to pasture in a canyon. Hanna had a little riding pony and in the evening she would ride after the cows and drive them home. One evening she did not return at the usual time. I became so worried that I asked her father if it would not be well to go see where she was; but he was sure that she was all right--that, perhaps, the cows had strayed farther away. I walked up and down the road listening and trying to peer into the darkness. The waiting was agony, for I feared that she might have met with bears.
      My husband saddled a horse and was just starting out to hunt when we heard the tinkle of the cow bell and soon Hanna came, driving the cows. She was such a faithful little girl. She had hunted till she had found them.
      The roads to this place were not much more than cow trails, and our goods had to be carried on pack horses. One horse was loaded with a trunk, a table, a churn and a looking glass. The table leg caught in the branch of a tree and the horse was pulled off the trail, and he rolled down into the creek. He fell on his back and thus dammed up the water. We rushed down and cut the straps that held the goods, and he quietly got to his feet, unhurt. Then we looked over the wreckage. The trunk was in the water, our clothes became wet, the table let was broken, and our cherished mirror was in several pieces. We repacked the horse and went on our way to our new home.
      We tented here a few months, then moved into Brown's Canyon a bought a quit claim deed to some land and ran our cattle out on the range.
      We built our house entirely of logs, and to this day we all speak of the time we lived in the "Log House."
      Our baby son, Walter Levi Johnson was born here, October 27, 1871.
      There was a better building site not far from the log house so we moved and built another one. This time we built entirely of shakes, and this home was ever after spoken of as the "Shake House."
      We secured our drinking water from a stream that ran just below the house. We had piled up stones around a deep narrow pool and into this we would lower a pail and dip out the water. One day I sent Lenora down to get a small pail of water. Walter, who was three years old went with her. I called to, "Don't let Walter fall in," and I went to the garden to pick peas. In just a moment here came Lenora screaming that Walter had fallen in. I ran with all my might down the bank to the pool and pulled my baby out. I held him up by the heels, rolled him in and over my arms, getting all the water out of him, and soon he was our own little boy again, alive and well. This near-tragedy began and ended all within three minutes.
      Our last little baby daughter, Emma Louise Johnson, April 16, 1873, was born here in this canyon in the shake house.
      All my life I had had a great deal of sewing to do, and I did it all by hand. One of the most joyous surprises of my life was when my husband, returning from Los Angeles, brought a sewing machine to our canyon home. What a wonder it was to us all, and what a time saver it was to me.