Cora Idella Sjostrand

GEDCOM Note

GEDCOM Note

Cora grew up in a wandering Midwestern farmimg family, with great responsibilities even as a child. She was the oldest child of thirteen, and seemed to harbor very hard feelings about her early years. She expressed great respect, and perhaps sorrow, for her mother. Her ethnic background included strong Scottish and Irish elements, but she had no awareness of it. She had sparse and fragmentary recollection of her grandparents.

Cora lived 94 years. Of all her known pedigree, she was matched in longevity only by her Loyalist great-great-great-grandfather John Archibald, who lived 101 years. She suffered much more than John in her last years, but she was remarkably tough.

John and Cora raised a family of six children and twenty-four grandchildren.

Both John and Cora were affected by Sanility in each of their last few years. To call what either of them experienced Alzheimer's would be to do injustice to their many sharp years, which exceeded the entire lifespan of most people.
Within 2.5 years after Cora was born in Luverne, MN, her parents moved to South Dakota. Cora said they moved around several times, and mentioned Blunt, SD was a place they lived. The BLM land patent records have a DeLace Johston buying land near Hayes (Stanley County) in 1909. We have not been able to find DeLace's family anywhere near Hayes in 1910, or anywhere in Hughes County for that matter. ... It appears that the Johnstons moved to Minnesota by April 1915. They lived in Northcote, Lancaster, Kennedy, then Hallock (not sure about the order).