Girl From Stone Lake
by
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Introduction
My family, Dad, Mother, three brothers and sister
Henryetta arrived at the lumber camp at Draper Wis. before Christmas, and I was
born a couple of months later in the dead of winter.
It was summer when we moved into a little shack on a
small far;, at first we had gunnysacks hung for windows and doors, and the
porky-pines kept trying to chew holes in the floor.
The old wooden wheel wagon was loaded with all our
belongings, even the kitchen stove, four of us kids and Mother and Dad. My two older brothers rode horseback and
brought the cows. It was fifty miles over the dusty roads to the ranch.
The boys taped the pig’s mouth shut so he wouldn’t
squeal, hopped on the freight train to Chicago. They made the newspaper.
Uncle Theron lived for a short while at Parker, S.
Dakota before his untimely death by what appeared to be murder in the first
degree.
The young love-struck man blew his brains out in the
family out-house; his ghost hung around for years.
She tells the story of Mother being lost in THE LOST
SWAMP.
Brother Clarence married Elizabeth on Saturday; he
was laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery a week later.
Dad was restless and, when heard the lonesome sound
of a freight train’s whistle, he would hop a freight train and ride.
Ivy grabbed her shotgun just as old Dillard was
kicking in the door, but Dillard was fast with a gun. In a moment both Ivy and
her new husband lay dead on the floor.
Pet and I continued cutting pulpwood with the old
crosscut saw, trying to keep the wolves from the door.
Some years, after Dad left Mother, he and Alice, and
their five children, with all their earthly belongings, started out walking,
trying to hitch a ride from Greeley Colorado to California.
The story of old Granny from the wild west and her SHOT
GUN.
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About the Book
She was
born in a shack in a lumber camp in the back woods of Wisconsin.
Dad left
his home in Pleasant Valley, Minnesota as a boy of sixteen, bumming his way to
Yellow Stone Park in Wyoming, where he drove a four horse wagon and fought the
wild bears!
Dad and
Mother were married in Colorado where he worked on the trains. They moved a
lot, to Texas, Kansas, Georgia and Little Rock, Arkansaw.
Dad and
Mother left Little Rock in a model T Ford with three children, heading for
Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When the car broke down, they traded for a team of
horses and a covered wagon, and continued their journey.
My
sister Henryetta was born in that covered wagon at Henryetta, Oklahoma.
After a
couple of years in Sioux Falls, they were on the road again to Draper,
Wisconsin where The Girl was born.
Granny
drove her horse and buggy to the gate of the Ludlow Mine, reached down and
pulled out her shotgun and said –“Get out of my way or I’ll blow your head off!”
When the
Ludlow Colorado Mine massacre was over, all that was left was a bunch of ashes
and a few pot-bellied stoves.
Al
Capone and his gang of hoodlums would stop at the farm, put the car in the barn
under some hay, and spend the night.
About the Author
I was born in a shack in a logging camp, in the
backwoods of Wisconsin just before the Great Depression of 1929.
There were six children and two adults living in
that little shack; in the back woods of Wisconsin.
AI Capone built his hideaway home just five miles
from us.
I was a frail, sickly child, born into poverty, and
I overcame, beating the odds to become prosperous later in life.
It was a struggle to get an education... and enough
food to stay alive.
I give the credit to my mother and grandmother
(Granny) for my strength and determination.
Granny was a true pioneer she was raised in the
southwest part of Colorado, where the Gun was the Law... Granny once told a
rancher not to bring his cattle to her watering hole the next day or he would
get a bullet from her 44. However, he
did return the following day, Granny pulled her gun up, said "Get off my
property" he quickly told his cowboys to move the cattle out, and he never
came back.
My father was a smart but restless man, always on
the move looking for the Pot of Gold at rainbows end.
He delivered all his children but one; he really
could do just about anything he set his mind to do.
I pray this book will be an inspiration and
encouragement to all who reads it.
Author
Bertha Hamilton Johnson