Johnson, Mike, merchant — Portland — born in Virestad parish, Kronoberg County, on May 30, 1869. In the spring of 1888 he traveled to America and first he stayed in Minneapolis. He worked at a dairy for some time, but then went traveling and for many years worked on railroad construction in the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. He also spent a couple of years in California.
In the fall of 1898 he settled in Portland, Oregon. Initially he worked in a saloon. In 1899 he became ill with pneumonia and following that pleurisy and empyema, an illness for which he in vain has sought treatment with climate changes, operations etc. From Christmas 1904 until the end of July 1905 he thus stayed in southern California and Arizona. He has spent two years in a Portland hospital and nine months in a San Francisco hospital repeatedly suffered difficult operations. His unusually strong constitution has so far defied both the illness and the surgeon’s knife. Johnson is since July 1905 the owner of a tobacco, book and magazine store at the corner of Burnside and First St. He is a member of Linnea.
