Edwin J. Johnson was born in 1849 near Milo, Maine.  In the late 1870s he came to Traill County, Dakota Territory where he homesteaded in Hillsboro Township.  After living in Fargo for a short time, Mr. Johnson and his wife, Clara, made their permanent home at Hillsboro.

The papers consist of forty-six letters written by Mr. and Mrs. Johnson to Edward R. Sibley of Weston, Massachusetts between 1880 and 1898.  The letters  document very nicely the lives of a pioneer family in Dakota in the 1880s.  Topics discussed are farming, family, weather, Hillsboro, the Congregational Church at Kelso, and the death of Mr. Johnson.
 

Frontier and Pioneer Life