Johnson, Olga

Olga Medgård Johnson was born on June 18, 1901 in Baerum, Norway, which lies just west of the Oslo city limits. Her parents were Johannes Johanneson Medgård and Sissel Olavsgaard; Medgård was the name of the farm. There were seven children in the family, and Olga and her twin sister Caroline were the youngest. The family moved into Oslo when Olga was 2, and her mother died when she was 4.

She emigrated with her brother John in early April 1907; her oldest sisters, Thuri and Birgit, were already in America, and her father and remaining siblings emigrated in 1908. The ship went directly to Montreal, Canada, and she and John took the train to Tagus, North Dakota, where Birgit lived with her husband, Anders Simon. Olga's father was a shoemaker in the winter, and Olga stayed with Birgit while he did carpentry work in the summer. Olga went to school through the eighth grade and went to her sister Thuri's to help take care of the children after she was confirmed. She then did housework for a while until she met her husband, Carl Johnson; Carl was from Minnesota and had a farm near Stanley, North Dakota, where Thuri lived.

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