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Birth: 1889 6 Nov
Riverdale, Buffalo, Nebraska
Residence. 1900 Age: 11
Divide, Buffalo, Nebraska
Residence. 1910. Age: 21
San Francisco Assembly District 36, San Francisco, California
teamster, drayman
Residence: 1917. Age: 28
Buffalo county, Nebraska
Residence. 1920. Age: 31
Divide, Buffalo, Nebraska
Residence. 1930. Age: 41
Grant, Buffalo, Nebraska
Death. 1951 16 Jan. Age: 61
Buried: Riverdale, Buffalo, Nebraska, Riverdale Cemetery
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Alexander's parents were both born in Germany but came to the United States at different times. Both were connected to families living...
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Birth: 1889 6 Nov
Riverdale, Buffalo, Nebraska
Residence. 1900 Age: 11
Divide, Buffalo, Nebraska
Residence. 1910. Age: 21
San Francisco Assembly District 36, San Francisco, California
teamster, drayman
Residence: 1917. Age: 28
Buffalo county, Nebraska
Residence. 1920. Age: 31
Divide, Buffalo, Nebraska
Residence. 1930. Age: 41
Grant, Buffalo, Nebraska
Death. 1951 16 Jan. Age: 61
Buried: Riverdale, Buffalo, Nebraska, Riverdale Cemetery
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Alexander's parents were both born in Germany but came to the United States at different times. Both were connected to families living in Burlington, Iowa.
St. Paul's congregation organized in 1896 at the rural school District 55, known as the Scheihing school. St. Paul's Peake Church was built in 1904 and a parsonage completed two years later.
Alexander born in 1889, Karl Wilhelm (Charles William) born in 1891, and Helena Sophie born in 1893 were all three baptized on June 30, 1895.
On the morning of April 18, 1906, a massive earthquake shook San Francisco, California. Though the quake lasted less than a minute, its immediate impact was disastrous. The earthquake also ignited several fires around the city that burned for three days and destroyed nearly 500 city blocks.
Despite a quick response from San Francisco's large military population, the city was devastated. The earthquake and fires killed an estimated 3,000 people and left half of the city's 400,000 residents homeless. Aid poured in from around the country and the world, but those who survived faced weeks of difficulty and hardship.
About 1907 Alexander and his brothers headed for San Francisco from the family farm in Buffalo County, Nebraska, seeking opportunities. Charles and John returned to Nebraska. Alexander found a liking for his life in San Francisco. He worked as a Teamster .
1906
A breakaway group forms the United Teamsters of America.
1907
Dan Tobin is elected General President, membership at about 20,000, three International office staff.
1909
Name changed to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen and Helpers to reflect the union's expanding jurisdiction.
1910
Beginning of shift from horse team cartage to motor transport.
1910-1914
IBT seeks to organize bakery and confectionary wagon drivers.
1912
IBT convention delegates decide to hold the convention every three years; also, convention entertainment had to be union members; first transcontinental delivery of merchandise by motor truck.
Also, here is a chronological listing of 10 selected architectural works in the San Francisco Bay Area (1909-1910):
Sheraton Palace Hotel
3233 Pacific Ave. house
Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral
Chinese Telephone Exchange
Roos house
Heineman Building
Citicorp Center
1526 Masonic Ave. house
Commercial building
Wells Fargo Bank
Alexander met his future wife, Evalena in San Francisco. She had graduated from the German School of Nursing and then was employed at the French Hospital which is confirmed per the US Census of 1910.
He married Evalena Henderson, former registered nurse in San Francisco from Yuba City, California in a civil ceremony on May 28, 1914 in Kearney, Buffalo County, Nebraska.
The family story is that Alexander and Evalena met at the First Baptist Church in San Francisco. First Baptist Church is an imposing stone edifice on the corner of Octavia and Waller streets, just north of Market and still there in 2013. Its golden dome is visible from many locations. The dedication on September 4, 1910 of the rebuilding after the earthquake of 1906 of First Baptist Church was a major social event. The 1,500 seating capacity was overflowing. Alexander lived at a boarding house at the time at 2042 Mission Street which was .82 miles from the Church. Evalena could easily have used public transportation to be there from the French Hospital, 4141 Geary Street, three miles west from the Church. Her oldest daughter Dorothy said that Evalena had worked in the Teamster office and met Alexander there.
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Deed Information provided by Susan Day Underhill on June 24, 2006
regarding home at 42 Walnut, Riverdale, Nebraska.
President Grant to Union Pacific Railroad (Land) March 26, 1875
Union Pacific Railroad to Fred Fredrick (Land) April 24, 1886
Fred Fredrick to John Bohlin (Land) May 31, 1918 $275.00
John Bohlin & wife to Ferdinand Juhl
July 22, 1919 $2,000.00
Alexander Juhl to Ferdinand Juhl
January 30, 1920 $4,000.00
Alexander Juhl to John & Jenevive Juhl
July 29, 1926 $2,000.00
John & Jenevive Juhl to Marie Jacobsen January 10, 1930 $1,000.00
Marie Jacobsen to John Juhl January, 1933 $1,000.00
John & Jenevive Juhl to Marie Jacobsen (mother) January 1933 $1,080.00
John Juhl to Jenevive Juhl June 28, 1944 $1.00
Jenevivie Juhl to Robert/Emil Daake 1946 $4,500.00
Robert Daake, Executor to Glen & Susan Underhill February 28, 1963 $6,076.00
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Summary of Ownership:
Fred Fredrick 1886-1918 land for 32 years
Bohlin May 1918 to July 1919 for 1 year
Juhl July 1919 to January 1946 26.5 years
Daake January 1946 to February 1963 17 years
Underhill 1963 to present 43 years as of 2006
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PROHIBITION
1919 - On January 29th, the 18th amendment is ratified by 36 states and goes into effect on the federal level.
1929 - Elliot Ness begins in earnest to tackle violators of prohibition and Al Capone's gang in Chicago.
1932 - On August 11th, Herbert Hoover gave an acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination for president in which he discussed the ills of prohibition and the need for its end.
1933 - On March 23rd, Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Cullen-Harrison Act which legalizes the manufacture and sale of certain alcohol.
1933 - On December 5th, prohibition is repealed with the 21st amendment.
IMPACT OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
October 1929 The stock market crash
An immediate reality for those who did not own their farms, was that land values dropped to less than half of what they had been so people who had come into farming before the crash could owe more money than what the land was worth.
Alexander had equity in the "homeplace" on which he had lived with Evalena and their six children since 1926, two years after his father Ferdinand had died at home in Riverdale.
The stock market crash affected farmers and the rural residents in that people and companies that used to buy food and other agricultural products no longer had the money to buy much of anything.
The crash, along with other factors, produced an economic slowdown that lasted over 10 years and became known as "the Great Depression."
The stock market downturn continued for at least three years after 1929. By the time it was over, companies were worth barely more than 10 percent of their former value. Jobs were hard to find.
DROUGHT AND DUST STORMS of the 1930's
The unusually wet period, which encouraged increased settlement and cultivation in the Great Plains, ended in 1930. This was the year in which an extended and severe drought began which caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The fine soil of the Great Plains was easily eroded and carried east by strong continental winds.
On May 9, 1934, a strong, two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst such storms of the Dust Bowl.
On April 14, 1935, known as "Black Sunday", 20 of the worst "black blizzards" occurred across the entire sweep of the Great Plains, from Canada south to Texas.
There were severe long-term economic consequences of the Dust Bowl as was harder for farmers to gain access to the credit they needed to buy capital to shift crop production.
Alexander managed to keep the farm and the land. But the memories of the Great Depression impacted his children's generation in such a fashion that they were savers of everything.
The oldest daughter Dorothy graduated from Amherst High School in 1933 and had one year of college at the Kearney Normal School thanks to the encouragement of her mother. Dorothy taught school in the Sand Hills before marrying Rudolph (Rudy) Carmann on May 28, 1936, at Peake St. Paul's Church. She had studied the catechism and was confirmed in the Lutheran faith prior to her marriage. Evalena, a Methodist, thought Lutherans were too narrow minded but gave her approval to Dorothy's choice.
While a teacher, Dorothy stayed with a family in the Sand Hills. It was a lonely time for her. She wrote letters to her grandparents, Tom and Ma Henderson, who lived in Yuba City, CA. When their grandson George Washington Herr stopped by to see them on his way home from school, they would read the letters to George. They also wrote letters to their granddaughter Dorothy. In the summer of 1936 George visited his Aunt Evalena. She and daughter Virginia met him at the bus stop in Kearney. It was a very happy occasion for Evalena recalled Virginia years later.
George Herr met his cousin, the now married Dorothy, who was living on the homestead with Rudy Carmann. George gifted his married cousin with a summer stove. George took photographs of the Juhl family. George also went on a cattle selling trip to Kansas City with Alexander before returning to Yuba City via Cheyenne, WY. He remembered the Juhl family as a "happy go lucky" bunch.
After the death of her mother on May 2, 1938, the youngest daughter, Romona, age nearly 15, went to live with her newly married sister, Virginia Nelson, for a year and some months. Romona completed the 10th grade at Kearney High School in 1939. (Her first child would graduate from Kearney High School in 1959.)
Romona then went to Casper, Wyoming to join her sister Dolores and brother Harold, the oldest sibling. The sisters worked for $5 a week as housekeepers while Harold was a ranch hand. Dolores married Ivan Sweley who was from Litchfield, NE on May 1, 1940 with Romona as a witness. After Ivan went into the USS Navy in December of 1943, Dolores later moved with her infant daughter Evalena to Yuba City, CA to be near her dear Aunt Ruthe Henderson Samson, who was much beloved. Her baby daughter was born on Mother's Day in Kearney, NE and therefore named Evalena. Ivan was discharged from the Navy in December 1945. He went to Yuba City/Marysville. He and Dolores divorced and each remarried and continue living in the area.
Romona returned to the farm with her infant daughter Shirley in late September 1941 and lived with her sister Dorothy and her family before marrying Melvin Hadwiger at Peake St. Paul's Church on April 1, 1942. She had two more children, a son and a daughter.
Huge literary impact made by Pulitzer Prize winning THE GRAPES of WRATH by John Steinbeck in 1939 and then in 1940 became a drama film directed by John Ford.
The film tells the story of the Joads, an Oklahoma family, who, after losing their farm during the Great Depression in the 1930s, become migrant workers and end up in California. It touches on social justice issues as well.
Oklahoma and Nebraska were states impacted by the Great Depression so the idea of "keeping the land" was significant despite family hardships and disagreements.
Evalena's grandparents on both sides left North Carolina to seek a better life in California yet she ended up going to Nebraska for her future with the son of a homesteader who migrated from Germany to escape serving in the Prussian Army.
Son Howard Henderson Juhl joined the US Navy in September of 1938 and survived the air attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 while he was on the USS California.
Howard later lived in Los Angeles, operated his plumbing business and bought real estate. He married Joyce Higbee on April 13, 1949 in San Pedro, CA and they had three children before divorcing in 1959. Later Howard graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in History. He became a charter member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.
Harold joined the Army April 8, 1942 after WW2 started. Upon discharge, December 20, 1945, he returned to assist his sister Dorothy and her husband Rudy Carmann on the homestead farm. Harold married Vivian Simshauser on June 20, 1948 in Buffalo County. They had four children. They eventually settled south of Amherst and that property remains in the their family.
Alexander retired from active farming while in his 50's and moved to Kearney to live at his home, 813 West 28th Street, with Pearl Jensen Carey, formerly wife of John Tappen. Pearl and John Tappen are listed on the 1940 federal census as working for and living with Alex Juhl on the homeplace.
During his years on the homeplace, an impressive wind break was planted for 1/2 mile north of the house. The Prairie States Forestry Project was initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. From 1935 through 1942, the U.S. Forest Service, working with the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps planted windbreaks throughout the Great Plains. In the blizzard of 1948-1949, the snow drifts were as high as the lilacs bordering the driveway, another type of windbreak. The lilac bushes had a wonderful scent when in bloom.
Also, he and his sons Howard and Harold saw two dams or farm ponds constructed east of the homeplace. These dams provided water for the cattle in summer and ice skating fun in the winter time. One dam was stocked with fish so fishing was another activity besides the hunting for pheasants and rabbits. Wild fowl would use the dams as a stopover on their flight north.
Alexander kept the farm going when others lost their farms during the depression. A real accomplishment. So much depended on the willing labor of the family.
His cause of death January 16, 1951 near Kearney, NE was an auto accident well publicized in the Kearney Hub. Private details of his life soon became very public because of law suits and claims. Pearl Tappin Carey, the driver of Alexander's car, was charged. She had been driving his 1948 Chrysler sedan when the accident happened. On March 2, 1951, Mrs. Pearl Carey was found guilty by the all male jury of motor vehicle homicide and sentenced to not less than one year and not more than 1.5 years in the Nebraska Reformatory for Women, York, NE. It was a packed courtroom according to Virginia Juhl Nelson who attended the trial.
The estate of Alexander Juhl was settled January 24, 1953 with all claims paid. The six heirs received $13,000 each out of an estate valued at $93,000. One heir, Dolores Juhl Scott, had sold her share to a sibling, Howard Henderson Juhl, for the lesser amount of $8,000 because of a pressing financial situation.
The inheritance enabled Romona and Melvin Hadwiger to acquire the homeplace and Dorothy and Rudy Carmann to have the homestead. Both daughters had been paying crop rents to their father for these farms prior to his death. These two farms remain with heirs.
Alexander had nineteen grandchildren at the time of his death.
Family stories requiring more information: Alex and his three married daughters made a road trip to see Dolores in Yuba City, California about 1946.
Their Aunt Ruthe was still alive so they would have visited her as well.
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Alexander's siblings:
George Quincy June 6, 1886-January 3, 1937
Married Nina Hubbard on March 3, 1911
Nina: January 24,1891-February 19, 1983
John Henry March 25, 1888-March 18, 1969
Married Jenevive Margaret Jacobson April 13, 1918
Jenny: July 26,1896-March 13, 1966
Alexander November 16, 1889-January 16, 1951
Married Evalena Henderson on May 28, 1914
Evalena: November 25, 1890-May 2, 1938
Charles William March 17, 1891- December 9, 1974
Married Helene (Lena) Wilke on February 3, 1910 Hastings, NE
Lena: August 13,1887-June 17,1985
Helena Sophia October 30, 1893-September 19, 1988
Married Edward Earl Berkheimer February 26, 1919
Ed: April 4,1888-March 17,1968
Anna Maria January 11, 1899-February 11, 1992
Married Duane (Mike) Dennis on June 22, 1918
Mike: October 8,1898-June 16,1984
Note: 1894 Buffalo County offered a bounty of $0.03 on ground squirrels known as 13-liners. In June and July of that year more than 13;000 were killed at a cost to the County of $400.00. George Juhl collected $.75 for 25 squirrels.
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1889
The Eiffel Tower, The Eiffel Tower, or the Tour Eiffel, was opened on March 31st, 1889, and was the work of a Gustave Eiffel, who was a bridge engineer. It was made for the centenary of the French Revolution and was chosen instead of over one hundred other plans that were given. Eiffel's engineering skills would preface later architectural designs. The Tower stands at twice the height of both the St. Peter's Basilica and the Great Pyramid of Giza. Its metallic construction was completed within months.
Oklahoma Land Rush, The Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 begins at high noon on on April 22nd , 1889, with an estimated 50,000 people lined up for their piece of the available two million acres, settlers could claim lots up to 160 acres in size. Provided a settler lived on the land and improved it, the settler could then receive the title to the land under the Homestead Act of 1862 . This land had previously been occupied by Indians but the Indian Appropriations Bill approved the transfer of two million acres for settlement.
Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, begins publication of the "Wall Street Journal", on July 8th specializing in news relevant to Investors and members of the Financial community. The Journal featured the Jones 'Average', the first of several indexes of stock and bond prices on the New York Stock Exchange.
Johnstown Flood, Following several days of extremely heavy rainfall on on May 31st the South Fork Dam situated upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA, fails causing a tidal wave, over twenty feet in height to sweep over Johnstown, PA eight miles below. The wave swept everything before the avalanche of water including houses, factories, and bridges. The death toll is estimated to be in the thousands as there was very little warning for residents.
Several states are added to the Union, North Dakota became the 39th state, South Dakota became the 40th state, Montana became the 41st state, and Washington became the 42nd state. |
