Caldwell County MO Archives History .....CAPTAIN EDWARD D. JOHNSON OF MIRABILE AND KINGSTON 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com August 30, 2008, 4:15 pm

CAPTAIN EDWARD D. JOHNSON OF MIRABILE AND KINGSTON
	Narrator:  Mrs. Miriam Johnson McAfee of Hamilton, Missouri

	Civil War Troubles
	Home Made Clothes and Winter Food
	Corded Beds and New Organ

     Mrs. McAfee's father was Captain Edward D. Johnson.  He was one of the 
three wealthiest men in this vicinity at one time; the other two were J.D. Cox 
of Kingston and Sol Mercer of Clinton County.  He was also prominent in the 
Civil War history of the county.  His father was born in Ireland.  Edward D. 
moved from Ohio to Iowa and in 1854 he bought a farm half way between Kingston 
and Mirabile where he was a stockman.  His first farm was directly across from 
the old Eli Penney (later Orr) farm.  He later bought the James place.
     In 1864 he enlisted in the Mexican War.  In the Civil War, he was made 
Captain and raised one of the first companies for the Federal service in 
Northern Missouri.  He was the especial object of the hatred of the 
Confederate Thraillkill because two Southern soldiers were killed on his 
farm.  Mrs. McAfee says that on two occasions the Thraillkill men visited the 
Johnson home to kill him.  At the second visit he was gone; and Mrs. Johnson 
and the children hid the valuables in the orchard; put three or four dresses 
on each child and hid upstairs till the men went on.  The first visit Captain 
Johnson had been called home to see a sick child.  A Penney slave (Penneys 
lived across the road) heard that Thraillkill was coming to get him, so he 
went across the road to warn him.  The Captain ran out leaped on his horse 
jumped the horse and rider fence and escaped.  His wife took his guns out and 
pushed corn shucks over them.  When Thraillkill came, Martha Seeley, a Mormon 
neighbor read his title clear for coming into a house of sickness, so 
Thraillkill went away without his man.
     Her girlhood memories go back to home spun dresses made by her Mother, 
plain colors for every day, checked ones for best.  The checked goods were 
made of yarn colored in two shades, black walnut made light brown and blue 
madder made blue.  These two colors were used on the loom.
     The girls wore shaker straw bonnets with pink and blue gingham tails to 
school.  Then there were the slat sunbonnets worn continuously out doors to 
preserve a fair skin. Tan was no sign of beauty then.
     There were some interesting peculiarities about the home.  The front and 
back doors were secured at night by an iron bolt laid across hooks at the 
side.  There were two beds to a room under each bed was pushed a trundle bed 
which the long bed covers hid.  Captain Johnson used to crawl under a bed in 
the summer to sleep to avoid flies, for screen doors did not exist.  The beds 
were all four poster, corded with rope laced back and forth on hooks.  Beds 
had to be recorded about every two weeks by the husband, otherwise they might 
let the head down too low or let the two sleepers slide down in the middle.
     Captain Johnson was good to his women folks.  His wife was the first 
woman in her district to have a sewing machine and a large cook stove and his 
daughter Miriam (Mrs. McAfee) was the first one to have an organ.  It was a 
two stop organ and cost $200 and had a name which she had forgotten but which 
meant "I have found It."  The people came for miles to see it; it was then 
early in the seventies.  The only musical instrument anything like it in the 
district was a Melodeon owned by the Lankford family who used to load it in 
the spring wagon and take it to the Methodist church every Sunday.  
     The Johnson pantry and smoke house were always full.  Seven or eight hogs 
were killed every winter and one steer.  They smoked the pork and dryed the 
surplus beef.  In the kitchen were the flour barrel, the sugar barrel and the 
salt cask.  Captain Johnson took his own wheat to Crawfords Mill at Mirabile 
and waited for his own grist.  The night before corn was to be sent to be made 
into corn meal, the children shelled off the corn and then made great houses 
out of the cobs.  The Johnson family moved to Kingston when Mrs. McAfee was 
fifteen.
     Interviewed  February 1934.


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