Wilson Island Stories of the early 1900s

The Nis & Catherine Johnson Home at

601 E. Pine Avenue

The Danish Connection

It remains a mystery! How did two Danish immigrants select a Mission Revival architectural style in 1921 for their home in Fresno?

Nis and Catherine Johnson’s home is one of only four known residential examples of Mission Revival style architecture in Fresno. Perhaps they were influenced by Fresno’s Santa Fe Railroad Station. Built in 1899, it was renovated numerous times beginning in 1908.

Nis and Catherine were both born in 1863 in Schleswig, now part of Germany close to the Danish border. Danish was their native language. Nis immigrated first in 1881 at the age of 18, followed by Catherine four years later. He lived in San Francisco for 8 years, marrying Catherine in about 1888. They were both naturalized in 1889. That is also the year they moved to Fresno where all their children were born, and where they became active participants in Fresno’s thriving Danish community.

They settled in downtown Fresno along with other new arrivals, first at 510 F Street and finally at 206 Forthcamp (now Fulton Avenue) near the hub of commercial activity in that era. Forthcamp would be their home for about the next 25 years until they built the house on East Pine Avenue in 1921 at a cost of $10,000 (equivalent to about $145,000 today). From the house on Forthcamp Nis had an easy walk to his job at H. Graff & Company at the corner of H and Inyo Streets. By 1904, the store had moved a short distance to the northeast corner of J and Tulare Streets. H. Graff was president and Nis Johnson was his Vice President. Advertisements at the time said the store specialized in groceries, hardware, and crockery. But an article in the Fresno Weekly Republican on May 1, 1895 gives a more thorough description of a business that reached across California’s Central Valley. The headline was “General Merchants – 638 and 660 H Street, Opposite Freight Depot.”

It had opened in 1887, two years before Nis and Catherine arrived in Fresno. Almost a decade later, the reporter wrote: “Few merchants of Fresno command so extensive and general a trade…and the name of the house is a guarantee of fair and honorable dealing wherever it is known.” Their customers included those living in town as well as “…ranchers living at a distance from Fresno. The store is favorably located to accommodate its country patrons and has for years been headquarters for farmers and ranchers visiting Fresno.”

They specialized in stocking the freshest produce and were known for paying the highest market prices. The reporter continued, the store carried “a complete line of the best quality of preserved, canned, and dried California fruits, and the best brands of butter known in this market.”

The main sales room was 50x60 feet, with a full basement and a storehouse in the rear. Most tantalizing was the smoked meats room in the basement. H. Graff & Co. was the largest dealer in smoked meat in Central California.

The store had a second specialty – the sale of Magnet coal oil. The article went on to explain: “The firm has a patent faucet can which is furnished free to patrons, and a wagon is run for the exclusive purpose of supplying oil to the firm’s city patrons…The stock of imported fancy groceries, teas, coffees, spices, condiments, and new delicacies is one of the largest in the city.” The reporter concluded that H. Graff & Co. was considered one of the most complete modern retail stores in Central California. As for H. Graff and Nis Johnson, they “are no less highly esteemed as influential and valued citizens than as prominent and successful merchants.”

There had to be a nexus between Nis’ role at the store and his venture into farming in neighboring Reedley. However, it is unclear which came first. Voter registration records in the 1890s describe him as a merchant, 5’4” tall with sandy hair and blue eyes, with a split right thumb nail, and crooked first and second right fingers. By 1904 and through the early 1930s he is listed in Fresno city directories as a farmer (sometimes a fruit farm owner), or rancher living first on Forthcamp and then at the home on East Pine Avenue. By the 1940 census, 77 years old and widowed, the only person living with him in the house on East Pine Avenue was his unmarried daughter Mamie.

Nonetheless, his obituary states he was a retired Reedley farmer who died in his home there where he lived for 61 years. That would mean he had lived there since 1887 near the time he first arrived in Fresno. Not exactly according to other public records! There is clearly a conflict between the obituary, city directories, census records, and Nis’ own declaration on his daughter Mamie’s passport application. However, he did appear to own a farm.

Nis and Catherine had five children. It was their daughter Mamie who lived with her parents in Fresno almost her entire life. She was a salesperson at Roder’s Department Store whose health may not have been robust. In June 1919, at the age of 28 she took a 3-month trip to China, Japan, and Hong Kong for health reasons according to her passport application. Twenty years later, in 1939, she became the registered owner of the home on East Pine. She eventually sold it in 1947, a year before her father died.

There is one more twist in the Nis Johnson story. It starts with the connection between, him and H. Graff – two prominent merchants - and a Danish blacksmith by the name of Christian Jacobsen. At the time of his death, Christian was co-owner of Jacobsen & Ahrensberg General Blacksmiths, located on L Street between Tulare and Kern, not far from H. Graff & Co. He died in 1893 at a young age leaving behind his wife Katrina and their three small boys ages 5, 3, and 1. According to the probate record of Christian’s will, H. Graff was the executive administrator of his estate. He and Nis Johnson served as security for a $2000 bond required by the state to ensure the will was appropriately administered.

The probate record includes a meticulously detailed, five-page inventory of Jacobsen & Ahrensberg’s blacksmith business. The list is a snapshot of blacksmithing at the turn of the twentieth century. The most expensive items were the horse, buggy and harness valued at $80 (or about $2300 today), followed by the bellows and anvil, valued at $30 each (roughly $850 each today). The rest of the list conjures up the image of a noisy work room filled with the smell of hot metal, and stocked with the tools and supplies needed to repair buggies and farm equipment. These included hundreds of bolts, a saddle, plow handles, buggy springs, bodies, and seat springs; wheels, planers, hammers, chisels, and horse shoeing tools. They also had in stock wooden planks of oak, ash, poplar, and hickory; scrap metal, wheel rims, and half a sack of coal.

Jacobsen & Ahrenberg’s business was not unique. There was an abundance of blacksmiths in Fresno in the early 1900s – no fewer than 22 in downtown Fresno alone. Among them were several shops owned by Danes who moved about in partnership with each other. In addition to Jacobsen and Ahrensberg, Danish blacksmiths included Larsen, Peterson, and Krog (pronounced kroh). They advertised similar services… blacksmithing, horse shoeing, wagon making, “rubber tiring,” and repair of all kinds of carriages and wagons. There had to be many connections among them, and between this group of skilled workers and the surrounding farmers and ranchers. Unraveling those relationships is a challenge based on available records.

One final twist. Through an interesting sequence of events descendants of Kristina Jacobsen are living today in the Wilson Island - the Rayburns at 730 E. Home Avenue. The story passed down in the Rayburn family is that in the 1880s or 1890s five Danish men from Fresno went to San Francisco to get Danish brides. When the Danish community in Minnesota heard about the dearth of eligible Danish women in Fresno, they sent five young women to California to fill the void. Christian Jacobsen was one of those men. He picked Katrina who was from Schleswig.

When Christian died, his brother James did what men often did in that era – he married Christian’s widow Katrina so she and his nephews would be taken care of. James was also a blacksmith in partnership with Krog. However, he lost his share to a horse race gambling debt and thereafter was an employee in the business renamed Larsen & Krog.

James and Katrina Jacobsen went on to have three children of their own: James, Valentine, and Ellen. Their daughter Ellen married Fred V. Rayburn whose grandson Ron now lives at the house on East Home Avenue a block away from Nis Johnson’s home on East Pine Avenue. Rayburn family members still travel to Schleswig to connect with distant relatives. Little did Nis Johnson (also from Schleswig) know back in 1893 that his support for a fellow countryman’s widow would result in a Wilson Island neighbor over 100 years later!

Fresno had a close- knit Danish community from the time the town was incorporated if not before. Nis, Christian and his brother James, H. Graff were all part of a business network whose reach extended to farmers and ranchers throughout the Central Valley. As merchants and skilled craftsmen they occupied a niche market valuable to a growing town dependent on horses, buggies, and hand hewn farm equipment to keep agricultural production moving.

Sources include public building and genealogy records, and newspaper articles of the period. Thanks to Ron Rayburn for sharing the story of the Danish brides in a casual conversation with Bill Raymond at the 2018 Wilson Island Block Party! Prepared by Jeannine Raymond, Ph.D. November 2019