Johnson, Fred LaForest, 1859-1939.

Fred LaForest Johnson was born in Pittsfield, Maine in 1859 and died in 1939. He entered Bowdoin College in 1877 and graduated in 1881. He joined the Signal Corps in 1882 and stayed until 1903. He was in the livestock business in Wichita, Kansas, from 1903-1905 and was a pharmacist in the same town from 1905-1919. He moved to California and served as the Deputy Assessor in Los Angeles County.

Harry Johnson, brother of Fred and born in 1873, was the youngest child in the family, followed by Mae and then Fred. Edgar was the oldest and married Emma Rogers in 1877. Mae worked in a mill in Pittsfield until she was able to get a teaching position in Fairbury, Nebraska in the early 1880's. Mae wrote Fred often and fully described her work and friends, books she read, and what little social life she had. She became engaged to Samuel Van Dorston from Kansas in June 1884.