The following is an introduction written by John Yngve to the journal that his mother kept as a girl living on the North Side of St. Louis Park:
Esther Johnson wrote this journal during the school year, 1911-1912, when she was a senior in the St. Louis Park High School, then called the Lincoln School that was located at the SE corner of Alabama and 37th Street. Esther had started school in St. Louis Park when her family lived on a farm and home where the Aldersgate Methodist Church is now located.
The John A. Johnson farmhouse at Wooddale and Oxford.
When Esther was in the eighth grade the family moved to a farm on the north side of St. Louis Park, located roughly between Zarthan Ave. and Dakota Ave, a block south of what is now Highway 394. When this journal was written, she lived there with her parents, John A. and Hannah Johnson, two older brothers, George and Carl, and four younger sisters, Clara, Verna, Alice and Irene.
After graduation from high school she helped her parents on the farm and in the milk business that was conducted from the farm until she went to the University of Minnesota from which she graduated in 1918 with a degree in Home Economics. She then left for northern Minnesota to teach school where in Thief River Falls she met and married Anton Yngve. The family with two sons, John and Albert, moved back to St. Louis Park in 1930 to live in a home that had been built by Esther’s father on the farm property.
Esther following her husband into the study of law graduated from the Minneapolis College of Law and started a law practice in the St. Louis Park Theatre Building in 1941 being the first lawyer to have an office in St. Louis Park. She continued to live in St. Louis Park until her death in 1968.
The journal describes the busy life of a senior at “Lincoln High.” She was one of 8 seniors that year, four each, girls and boys. Esther had a busy social life with parties, dances, etc. The girls also slept over at each other’s houses quite a bit, which was preferred to going home in the cold and dark in an open sleigh. The girls apparently didn’t have much regard for the boys, as evidenced by this entry on February 22, 1912:
Oh those awful boys! I guess we gave them a snubbing last night and I think we will keep on doing it if they act as mean all the time. All of us girls were angry.
The other graduates were Reta Lucinda Shepard, Albert Preston “Bert” Baston, Etta Irene Hembre, Alma Edna Newberg, Paul Leonard Haskell, Charles Gibson, and Floyd Hamilton Fuller. Esther was valedictorian of her class.
