August Johnson

AUGUST JOHNSON. - Numbered among the active and substantial business men of Kansas City, Kansas, is August Johnson, who is held in high repute as a man and a citizen, and as one of the leading manufacturers of monuments, mausoleums and other memorials, has established an extensive and lucrative patronage throughout this section of Wyandotte county, beautiful specimens of his handiwork being found in nearly every "city of the dead" in this vicinity. He was born March 15, 1857, in Sweden, a son of Jonas and Brita Stina (Gummesdaughter) Ingermarson.

Brought up in his native land, August Johnson immigrated to America in 1881, and for three years followed, at Saint Paul, Minnesota, his trade of a stone mason, which, in connection with stone ceiling, he had previously learned in Sweden. Embarking then in the wood and coal business, he carried it on three years, when he sold out and turned his attention to the industry with which he has since been prominently identified. Coming to Kansas City, Kansas, Mr. Johnson located at 1118 Minnesota avenue, in 1906 buying his present property, which consists of a house, shop and two lots. Artistic in his tastes and designs, Mr. Johnson has become widely known as a manufacturer of handsome and durable monuments, mausoleums and other memorials, either in marble or granite, and in the comparatively short time that he has been in this city has won a substantial patronage, his business profits amounting to about five thousand dollars each year.

Mr. Johnson has been three times married, He married first, in November, 1882, Julia Solomonson, a daughter of Solomon Swanson. She died in 1892, at the age of thirty-two years, leaving one child, Lydia Johanna, wife of Charles Peterson, of Garfield, Kansas. On June 18, 1892, in Kansas City, Kansas, Mr. Johnson married Sophia Carlson, a daughter of Carl Johannesson. She passed to the life beyond March 13, 1909. Mr. Johnson married on July 24, 1910, Bettie Anderson, daughter of Andres Gemmeson.

Mr. Johnson is a fine representative of the self-made men of our day. Left an orphan when a mere child, he has made his own way in the world since nine years of age, his courage, ambition and enterprise carrying him safely over all obstacles, leading him onward and upward along the pathway of success. He was for a time a member of the Kansas City Lodge of Woodmen of the World, but is not now connected with any fraternal organization or affiliated with any church.