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My maternal grandmother, Fredericka Caroline Persson, was born in 1863
in Rebbelberga, Sweden. Little is known of her early life there. When
she was sixteen, she came to the United States on a boat as an indentured
servant. This meant that a family sponsored her and paid her fare to the
United States. In return, she had to work a certain length of time for
them in order to pay off the debt. She worked as a maid for this family
in New York and learned English. When she had repaid her debt, she traveled
across the country and settled in San Jose. She always said that she ate
her first meal in California at the hotel in Milpitas which was a train
transfer point at that time.
Fredericka obtained a job as a maid for the Agnews family in San Jose.
There she met her future husband, George Penn Johnson. After they were
married in 1883, they moved to Auburn, California, where George had a
new job in a gold mine. They settled in a cabin near the mines on Duncan
Hill and began their family, which eventually numbered seven children.
Later the family moved to a newly constructed white clapboard house on
three acres in Auburn. Fredericka had a large garden, berries and fruit
trees, along with a cow and chickens. This helped her keep her family
well fed after George and she were divorced. The property was supplied
with water from a ditch which ran through it. Water was siphoned from
it to water the garden, and there was a pump at the kitchen sink to get
the water into the house for washing. Drinking water was dipped from a
bucket which was pulled out of a spring. Everyone drank from the same
blue-mottled enamel dipper which just went back into the bucket eat time.
I still have that dipper.
At first, there was no electricity in the house. The lighting was by
coal-oil lamps, and cooking was done on a wood cookstove. The living room
had a black iron stove for burning wood for heating and the chimney went
up through the ceiling. With no indoor plumbing, chamber pots were used
in the bedrooms at night, and an outhouse was behind the house.
On washday, the water for the clothes was heated on the wood cookstove
in a copper wash boiler. Then the hot wter was dipped into a galvanized
wash tub that was up on a wooden bench. The clothes were then scrubbed
there on a washboard with bars of Naptha soap, rinsed, and hung outdoors
to dry. In order to iron the clothes smooth, heavy flat irons which were
heated on the wood stove were used. Two irons were needed--one to be re-heating
on the stove while the other was being used for the ironing. For the ironing
board, a flat covered board was upported between the backs of two chairs.
Fredericka was well-versed in the needle arts of the day. She taught
me to knit, and helped me knit a sweater for my doll. I still have a yoke
that she crocheted for me for a slip.
Although she had no formal nursing training, she was called upon to be
a midwife at many local births, and gradually she began adding to the
family income by nursing the sick when they needed someone at their homes.
She may have even been hired to help families away from Aubun at times.
My mother, Annie, told a story of how she, her sister Emily, and my grandmother
were taking care of children at a family's home in Pacific Grove around
1909. My mother and Emily filled a candy jar with shells from the beach;
we still have this jar and shells from that long-ago summer.
In 1918 during the influenza epidemic, my mother and our family lived
in Alameda. My grandmothercame and took care of us. She also took care
of our family members whenever they needed her. It was easy to travel
by train and local streetcar in those times.
Fredericka usually wore her hair twisted up in a bun at the back of her
neck, and a long cotton dress, or skirt and blouse. She wore a hat whenever
going out in the style of the day. She was of medium height and was a
large woman.
In the early 1930s, it ecame too difficult for my grandmother to continue
living alone in her house in Auburn. So she moved to Oakland to live with
her daughter, Annie. There she had a stroke. In 1932 they moved to Hayward,
and her health continued to deteriorate. She died in 1935 and is buried
in the Oddfellows Cemetery in Auburn.
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