Easy Street is dead! When Howard Laverne Johnson, 68, died on July 15, 1981, Easy Street died with him. He was the last descendant of the Norwegian pioneers who settled on their small farms along that dirt country road in the 1870s and who still lived there. All the others were already dead or had moved away.
Ironically, when Howard’s older brother and one of his sisters came to visit the property two days later they discovered Howard’s “wild” cat dead in the road in front of the house, obviously having been struck by a car.
An aura of death surrounded the place. Howard, his cat and Easy Street literally all died at the same time; just as had his mother twenty years earlier, in the same room and under the same sudden conditions. With a greatly reduced population of new inhabitants living on this country road, the name and tradition of Easy Street has faded into the past, just as surely as the Norwegian settlers, their children, and some of their grandchildren are all buried in the Little Indian Creek Cemetery, a mile to the north of the place where Howard lived and died.
The Little Indian Creek Cemetery is peaceful and small, approximately five acres, with all the graves being located in the south end, with the remaining sixty percent still vacant to the north facing the road. On the tombstones are found the names of all the original inhabitants of Easy Street, plus a large percentage of Adams Township, many from Leland, including most of the prominent families, neighbors and friends in life; they are the same in death.
Where is, or more appropriately, where was Easy Street? In a general way, it can be described as that east-west road between the north-south Somonauk Road and the road running directly south of Leland, but this definition is probably too broad. It was two miles south of Leland. More accurately, the boundaries can be described as the one-mile stretch of road running east over the bridge over the Little Indian Creek, past the road leading north to the sixty-acre Gunderson farm. In a general way, this creek encircled Easy Street, at a distance of about one-half mile on all but the east side. The area consisted of a series of forty-acre farms on the north side of the road, west to east, belonging to Iver and Mangla Johnson, Saul (or Samuel) Tellefson, Anna and Guniver Gunderson (great-aunts of Howard), Ole and Bertha Tellefson, and then the sixty-acre farm of Ole and Sophia Gunderson (Howard’s maternal grandparents—the Johnsons were his father’s parents).
On the south side of the road was the small farm (about twenty acres) of Eric and Brete Vermland (Wormland), the larger farm of Lewis Tellefson (son of Ole and Bertha), and later on Edward Wormland build a house across from the Gunderson farm after having cleared the land. East of him was Seville’s woods and then the Gullickson farm (later purchased by Howard’s cousin Irvin Johnson). Across the road to the north is a farm owned by the Sevilles, an inheritance through the Rumney family. To the east of this there formerly stood farm buildings too.
This is as an accurate definition and description of Easy Street as is
possible to make. Certainly the name was in common usage in the past, back into the 1880s and 1890s, and persisted well into this century, but now has little or no significance, and is largely, if not completely, forgotten. The origin of the name of Easy Street is lost in the past as there apparently was
never any written record of it. Howard was the last surviving member of the families who settled and lived on that street in days past. His cousin Irvin Johnson had died a few years earlier.
A haphazard guess may be made as to the meaning of Easy Street. The area is unique in one respect— the farms were small when compared to those in the surrounding areas. Possibly some local wit unknown today used it as a facetious term to indicate that the inhabitants took it “easy” on their
small farm.
Conjecture: Why were the original inhabitants of Easy Street content to live on small farms when their neighbors obtained larger farms? While money, or the lack of it, may have been a reason, it seems more likely that by comparison to the areas from which they came in Norway, their farms were large enough to provide them with a very good living. They had their own horses, cows, pigs, chickens, gardens and some cash income from the sale of corn and oats. Remember also, when they came to Illinois they found luxuries (to them) such as white flour, white sugar, coffee and tea—cheap and readily available, and they raised enough pigs so they could have all the pork they wanted. This was truly a land of plenty! Also, their
small farms probably reminded them, to some extent, of their homes in Norway. Their cows provided milk, butter and cheese. Excess skimmed milk was fed to the pigs. Excess butter and eggs were taken to town and exchanged for groceries in the local store.
Historically, the first member of the Gunderson family to come to the area was Torger Johnson (he did not use the family name of Gunderson), who arrived prior to the Civil War and eventually owned what is now the original Seville farm. Later on, two of his brothers—Jens and Ole Gunderson—came; later on, two of their sisters, Anna and Guniver. Quite likely, the brothers sent them tickets so they could come over and keep house for them.
The two Tellefson brothers and their wives apparently came from the same area as the Gundersons, possibly from a neighboring farm, in the area northeast of Kristiansand. Saul (or Samuel) Tellefson lived with and possibly worked for Ole Gunderson, as two of their children, Arthur and Clara, were both born in the “old” Gunderson house. Later on, Clara married Gunder John Gunderson and lived on the Gunderson farm the remainder of her life.
By the token, there was some connection, or relationship, between the Iver Johnson and Eric Vermland (Wormland) families. Family tradition has it that Eric’s two oldest sons lived with Iver and wife when they first came to
this country, and later on Eric and Brete settled across the road from the Johnsons. It seems possible that Mangla Johnson and Brete Wormland were second cousins. Also, Jens Gunderson’s family took the name Jenson and
lived on a small farm directly south of the Gullickson farm. They were related to both the Gunderson and Tellefson families. Most of the Jenson family later moved to Iowa.
So, with these incomplete facts in hand, it seems appropriate to
record what is known as a tribute to Howard Johnson, the last surviving son of Easy Street. Just as surely as he is buried in the Little
Indian Creek Cemetery, along with his parents, grandparents, relatives and other friends and neighbors, Easy Street is also buried among the tombstones of this peaceful cemetery.
The life and heritage of Easy Street has passed; it is now just one more sleepy and little traveled country road, which once teamed with the vitality and life of these hardy Norwegian settlers—the Vikings of Easy Street!
