Carl Axel Johnson, a Swedish hand on the Wright ranch at Crystal

Carl Axel Johnson died in Pocatello on the night of Wednesday, February 13, 1952, at the age of 70. The next day the Idaho State Journal printed a short obituary. By its account he reached the valley in 1914 and stayed on G. C. Wright's ranch for thirty-four years, retiring in 1948. A lifelong bachelor, he turns up only now and then in the valley news. For more than thirty years, though, his home was one ranch in the Crystal end of the valley, and the papers let us follow part of that life.

From Småland to Crystal

Both obituaries say he was born on June 6 in Sweden. The Journal named the province, printing it as "Smoland" (Småland), and the Salt Lake Telegram gave the year as 1881 and his parents as Carl and Anna Anderson Johnson. The site's family research notes that his World War II draft card gave his birthplace as Växjö, a town in Småland. Chicago was his first American home after he emigrated in 1905; Washington state came next, and only then Arbon Valley. The Journal says that was in 1914. The Telegram says he had been on the Wright property since 1914, but also that he had come 37 years before, which would be 1915.

The Beuten and Wright place

In October 1917 the American Falls Press farm writer who signed himself "The Pilgrim" described the ranch near Crystal where Johnson would later make his home. Its 640 acres were owned and worked together by two bachelors, Elmer Beuten and G. C. (Carl) Wright, "two Crystal young men" in the Pilgrim's words. Wright had been born at Franklin, Idaho, and Beuten had grown up in Illinois. Beuten had filed on his homestead in 1913. Wright had filed on one of his own in the spring of 1914, the year Carl Johnson's obituary gives for his arrival, and had later sold it and bought another settler's homestead to bring the partners' section together. The partnership itself began in the fall of 1915, so whose land Johnson first worked on in 1914 is not known. Each quarter section had its own house, a big barn had stalls for sixteen horses, and for plowing "seven horses are hitched to each gang plow." The Pilgrim does not mention a hired man.

The Crystal columns of the Press do. In December 1917, when Wright had finished hauling his grain and was leaving to spend the winter in Blackfoot, the paper reported that Carl Johnston would live on the Beuten and Wright farm that winter and look after the livestock for both partners. In January 1918 every horse on the ranch fell sick. The column said that Mr. Johnston, with help from the neighbors, had worked with them for a week and had so far saved them all; the sudden change in the weather was thought to be the cause. At the end of March Wright came back from Blackfoot and Beuten from Chicago, and Carl Johnston moved back onto his own homestead "west of Henry Breeze's."

The Press spelled the name Johnston, but the man was very probably Carl Axel Johnson. His homestead patent, issued June 16, 1920, was for 157.25 acres in Section 7 of the Crystal township, which the site's research places directly west of the Breeze quarter. His obituaries also put him on the Wright property from those years. The partners' wheat did well that year. In September 1918 Deputy Sheriff George Hanson, who had seen much of the county at harvest, gave Beuten and Wright the blue ribbon for yield: the lightest part of their 400-acre field was making better than thirty bushels an acre, and much of it forty.

Years with the Wrights

Carl Wright married Elnora Trullinger, a Crystal teacher, and the site's research finds Carl Johnson living with the family in the 1930 census as a boarder. Wright died in 1939. In the 1940 census Johnson was the hired man in the household of the widowed Elnora Wright and her son and daughter. That year she sat on the Arbon-Crystal program planning board. When he registered for the draft in 1942 he named Mrs. Wright as his contact.

The obituaries add a few more facts. Pocatello was already where he went each winter. In 1937 he went back to Sweden to visit his mother. After 1948 he left ranch work behind and lived in town the year round, and he died there four years later.

Much is still unknown: what work he did in Chicago and Washington, whether he kept his own homestead after 1920, and whether he stayed on the Wright place every year from 1914 to 1948. The two obituaries also disagree on one point. The Journal says he died at home and the Telegram says in a hospital.

On this site: the history of Crystal; the winter of 1917–18 in Wintering out: Arbon Valley families leave and come home; the Beuten and Wright horses in Horses and the first tractors in Arbon Valley; and Mrs. G. C. Wright's work beside the Haydens on the Hayden family page. If your family remembers Carl Johnson at the Wright place, we would be glad to hear from you.

The story as reported

Idaho State Journal, February 14, 1952, page 20. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.

On Wednesday night, February 13, Carl Axel Johnson suffered a heart attack in his house in Pocatello and died. He was 70, and the Journal noted that the death had not been expected. He had ranched in Arbon Valley for many years before retiring to town.

Pocatello was not new to him when he retired there in 1948, since he had been wintering in town. His arrival in Arbon Valley dated to 1914, and for the next 34 years he lived on the ranch of G. C. Wright.

He was a native of Sweden. The Journal gave June 6 as his birthday, without a year, and Småland as his home province. He left Sweden for America in 1905. Chicago was his first stop for several years, Washington state the next, and Arbon Valley the last.

He was a bachelor and a Presbyterian church member, and ranching had filled most of his years. The only relatives named as surviving him were three brothers, all living in Sweden.

Downard's Funeral Home was handling arrangements, and Saturday had been penciled in for the service.

A separate Pocatello report appeared the next day, February 15, in the Salt Lake Telegram. It supplied what the Journal left out: a birth year of 1881 and his parents' names, Carl and Anna Anderson Johnson. Its version placed his death in a Pocatello hospital and blamed a heart ailment. It also recorded a 1937 trip home to Sweden to see his mother. By the Telegram's account the service was to be held at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Downard Mortuary chapel, led by the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and he was to be buried in Mountain View Cemetery.