East Side Oral History Project: Interview with Harold Johnson

Titles: East Side Oral History Project: Interview with Harold Johnson (Supplied title)

Description: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Harold Johnson was born in St. Paul in 1912. He is the son of a Swedish immigrant who arrived in St. Paul in 1896 and started a grocery store on Payne Avenue. Johnson worked in the store with his family until it closed in 1956. SUBJECTS DISCUSSED: The 1898 bank panic. Starting the East Side Grocery in 1904. Details on running a store during the WWI era. Accounting and bookkeeping practices. Issues with multiple phone companies. Swedish enclaves in the Twin Cities metro area. Grocery wholesalers during and before the Great Depression, including Fairway, Seabury, Hubbard, Quinlan and Griggs. Jacobsen Toast. Business ethics of the time. The importance of churches in the community. Wilder Foundation and the Great Depression. Other kinds of work Swedish immigrants did including comments on working in the Hill House. Lutefisk stories. Living conditions on Payne Avenue. COMMENTS ON INTERVIEW: Only the latter half of the interview is available on tape. The transcript contains the complete interview.

Dates

• 03/03/1991 (Creation)

Creation

• interviewee: Johnson, Harold
• interviewer: Galt, Margot Fortunato

Identifiers

• Library Call Number: OH 99
• Accession Number: AV2003.92.1

Holding Type: Oral History - Interview

Project

• Oral History - Project, MHS Collection, project: 'East Side Oral History Project' <OH 99>

Quantity: 1.5 hours sound cassette 31 pages transcript

Format

• Content Category: sound recordings
• Content Category: text

Measurements

• 00:33:06 running time

Subjects

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