Rolf Johnson

Rolf Johnson was nineteen in 1876 when he began writing his diary. That year he moved with his parents from Illinois to Phelps County, Nebraska. Rolf's parents were from southern Sweden and came to the United States in 1854. They were part of a great swell of almost ten thousand people who left Sweden because of bad economic conditions and religious oppression in the 1850s. They settled in Illinois but when the great drought of 1873 hit they moved to Nebraska. Due to the Homestead Act, the Johnsons could file a claim with ten dollars and get 160 acres of government land. All they had to do was "prove up"—live on it for five years and make certain improvements. Rolf Johnson's diary gives a lively depiction of what it was like for a family to make good their claim. Rolf's earlier diary entries while...