Meet Edna

Meet my great grandmother Edna (Weitz) Johnson. She was born on October 15, 1880 and died on August 8, 1966 (just two days before I was born). In fact, she was buried the day I was born. My father served as a pallbearer at her funeral.

 

I got to know my great grandmother through stories my father shared with us and because we are fortunate to have several journals that she kept (1899, 1932, 1936, 1937, 1938 and 1940).

 

Edna was a teacher, a farmer’s wife, a mother, and a grandmother. She lived through two World wars and the Great Depression. She liked baseball. For a woman during that day and age, she was often outspoken and opinionated. She loved her family and worked hard.

 

I have read her journals many times and have always wanted to preserve and archive them digitally. Truthfully, it is easier and more fun to do that in small chunks (or in this case ...a blog post a day).

 

While, preserving her voice, her life, her stories is something I mostly want to do for our family history, Edna has a personality that I enjoyed getting to know through her journals. While my family is fortunate to have journals from other relatives, their personalities aren't as distinct. Their journals document. Edna talks to her journals like they are her friends. As a result, we get to know her on a more intimate level. It also helps that she is documenting her life during historic times. For all of these reasons, I felt there was value in sharing her with the world.

 

I decided to start with her 1936 journal because it was an election year and she puts her succinct but strong opinions on paper about Roosevelt and Landon …stay tuned, those are coming closer to Election Day.

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ABOUT THE PHOTO: Left to right: Lucille, Edna, Alice, Hank, Helen, my grandfather, James Lawrence (but everyone called him Bob), Henry Alden Johnson (Edna's husband), and Morse (Morse once attempted to pass a pick-up truck on his bicycle ...but that's another story for another time).