Remembering Her History:
Salter Johnson might never have lived in Freeport were it not for relatives of her grandfather, Milton Hayden. “At the urging of his brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Broomsy and Nellie Salter Norman, my grandfather left his farm in Good Hope, Mississippi, and came to Freeport after years of farming in Mississippi,” said the author. “Milton’s first employment was at Stover Manufacturing Company, and later he worked for the Illinois Central Railroad cleaning the engines at the roundhouse. By 1920, he had moved most of his family ‘up north’ to Freeport.”
Salter Johnson continues: “As a young girl during the 1920s, my mother, Edna Hayden, spent most of her summers ... with her parents and siblings in Freeport. Though the family spent a lot of time here in Freeport in those days, Milton refused to wholly abandon his farm. Whenever possible, he returned to Good Hope. In 1929 on one such trip, Milton died while working in his fields. My mother, Edna, and her brother, Daniel, returned with their mother, Anna Salter Hayden, to Mississippi. In 1934 my mother married Archie Johnson in Mississippi, and in the fall of 1951, our family moved up to Freeport.”
