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Carl
Johann
The subject of this sketch was born in Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, March 2, 1849. The place of his birth is in the Jura Mountains, only a few miles from the boundary line between Switzerland and France, and here, among the beautiful scenes of the marvelously grand Swiss landscape, he spent the first fifteen years of his life. His parents, Albert and Mathilda Johann, who were only in moderate circumstances, required nothing of their children except that they should attend school faithfully and labor diligently to secure an education. This the children seemed to do cheerfully. Carl entered the public schools of his native city at the age of six, and when he was fifteen years old he graduated from the high school. Up to this time he had attended school eleven months each year without interruption, for, in that country, the only vacations students ever got were two weeks at Christmas and two weeks in August. In this city nearly all the people speak both French and German, consequently the children learn both languages simultaneously without knowing it. There it is no uncommon thing for children at play to ask a question in French and to receive an answer in German without having the least idea that two languages have been used.
| Having graduated from the high-school, his parents sent him at once to the famous college of
Lausanne, where he made an excellent record, selecting mathematics and language as his major studies. Having developed a marked fondness for mathematics and mathematical drawing, he here decided to prepare himself more specially to become a civil engineer. At the age of 18, having completed the course in
Lausanne, he became a student in the University of Aaran and afterwards in Zurich, all in Switzerland. At the age of twenty, with the consent of his parents, he went to Paris, France, where he studied for a time, and when he was not yet twenty-one years of age he decided to emigrate to the United States, where better opportunities are offered to young men of energy and education than anywhere else in the world.
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Though he had devoted much time to the study of ancient languages and to German, French, Italian and Spanish, he had never studied English, and he landed in New York, as many have done in the past and as many will do in the future, without knowing one word of the language spoken by the people among whom he had decided to live. He did not have a single friend or relative on this side of the Atlantic and was therefore thrown entirely upon his own resources.
Knowing that his slender pocket-book would not sustain him long in idleness, he left New York two days after landing, going--he did not know where--looking for something to do to make an honest living. In a few days he arrived in Collinsville, Connecticut, where he was hired as a farm hand by a refined, religious and highly cultured Yankee who had made a fortune through his genius as an inventor.
It is very probable that the new immigrant did not make a model farm-hand, for he had never done a day's work on a farm in his life, but he was willing to learn both how to farm among the stony hills of New England and how to speak the English language. The retired capitalist and farmer for whom Carl Johann began to work, soon discovered that his hand had had excellent educational advantages, in fact that he had as good an education as he had himself, and they soon became warm and intimate friends. To show how easy it is to learn a new language when one already knows several others, it is sufficient to state here that three months after landing in America, he had learned English sufficiently well to be engaged as private tutor, for his four children, by the very man for whom he had been working on the farm. His field of activity was transferred from the farm to the comfortable sitting-room, and here, with salary doubled, he began his career as a teacher. Of course, all the teaching had to be done in English, as the pupils knew no other language, and the teacher who three months before did not know one word of English was now, among many other branches, actually teaching English grammar.
He remained in this family thirteen months, and the work done during that time was eminently satisfactory to all parties concerned. Dr. Johann left that place in the summer of 1870 to go West and grow up with the country. Not until 1894 did he again meet with the gentleman whose children he taught in Connecticut. Then he came to Eureka to make his former farm hand a visit, and stated that the year of instruction given at that time to his children directed their thoughts into right paths and started them on the road to usefulness and success.
From Connecticut the young teacher went to Chicago by way of Niagara and the great lakes. After suffering many disappointments in that city, and after having been out of employment nearly three months, he secured employment as a surveyor with a railroad company intending to build a road from Houston to Austin, Texas. He left Chicago without further delay in company with twelve other surveyors and reached Houston, texas, by way of New Orleans and Galveston, in the fall of 1870. From Houston they traveled in ox-carts a distance of nearly one hundred miles to their destination, a point twenty-five miles east of Austin, from which point the road was to be surveyed to the capital.
The work was done in six months, to the satisfaction of the company, and this surveying party had the honor of preparing the way for the first railroad that entered the capital of Texas.
The sojourn of the surveying party was not altogether uneventful, for they were working in a practically uninhabited wilderness and were twice attacked by Indians, two of the surveyors being killed in one of the encounters, but Carl Johann came through unharmed.
Returning to Illinois, the subject of this sketch went to Menard county, near Tallula, where he worked on a farm for a few months, and then was offered a position as teacher in a country school at $35 a month.
His work was so successful that in less than two years he was receiving the highest salary paid to any teacher in the county, and had just been offered the principalship of the High School in Petersburg, the capital of Menard county, when, in the summer of 1876, he was offered the professorship of Modern Languages in Eureka College. As college work suited him better than public school work, he accepted the position and immediately moved to Eureka, where he began teaching in September of the same year.
For the last eighteen years he has been constantly identified with Eureka College as a teacher. In 1886 he was elected Acting President, and in 1887, when Dr. Allen resigned the Presidency, Carl Johann was elected President by the unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees, and he is still filling that office at this writing.
In October, 1889, Carl Johann was married to Miss Georgina Callender, daughter of George Callender, a former President of Eureka College, and they have been blessed with four children, Helen, Agnes, George and Albert, all of whom are living.
Dr. Johann's parents being Lutherans, he was sprinkled when seven days old (he still has a
certificate from the pastor of the church certifying to this) and was "confirmed" at the age of fourteen. While teaching in Tallula, Menard county, Illinois, in 1872, he had the privilege of attending a protracted meeting held by Brother D. R. Lucas, now of Indianapolis, Indiana, was convinced of "the better way," made the "good confession" and
was baptized in the manner commanded by the Scriptures. Tallula had a strong congregation at
that time and their pastor was one of the most eloquent, logical and convincing pulpit orators in the Brotherhood. He was none other than W. D. Owen, who has since been member of Congress from Indiana, having served three terms, and who was appointed Commissioner of Immigration by President Harrison. For more than one year the new convert listened weekly to the "pure Gospel" as it was presented by that eminent man of God, and was thoroughly taught in the doctrine of the Restoration.
President Johann has been quite an extensive traveler. During the last five years he has been in Europe twice, visiting England, Scotland and Ireland, besides all the important cities on the Continent, from Paris to Rome and Constantinople. He has also been in the West Indies three times, visiting Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, San Domingo, Porto-Rico and many of the smaller Antilles. In the United States he has been in nearly every State from Canada to the Gulf and from the Rocky mountains to Maine. Knowing how to travel, he has gathered up many valuable facts and incidents, which he gave to the students in a series of about
twenty interesting lectures.
His disposition is well adapted to the management of a large number of young people, and he has never had any serious difficulties with the students. Under his system of government, students are largely controlled by calling on their own appreciation of the right and on their own sense of honor.
Source:
A History of Eureka College, St. Louis: Christian Publishing
Company, 1894.
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