A Mother Helped Start 1st Valley School
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For Neils and Ann Willden Johnson, “home sweet home” in 1867 was a two-room tent in Soledad Canyon, one half reserved for the family quarters, the other for a grocery store they operated. Having moved from Utah a few years before, the young couple drifted throughout Southern California before settling in the San Fernando Valley.
In 1870, the Johnson family homesteaded 160 acres in the dense Chatsworth chaparral, making them one of the first settlers and English-speaking families in the area.
History was also made when Ann Willden Johnson gave birth to her eighth child, Emma, who is believed to have been the first white child born in the Valley.
The Johnsons continued to leave their mark on the Valley, helping to found a Christian congregation in the West Valley that met under the oak trees at their house until Pioneer Church was built in 1903. The structure is now located in Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth.
Ann Willden Johnson tutored her 10 children at home and helped start Chatsworth’s first school in 1880, serving as clerk of the school board.
Neils Johnson died in 1914 at the age of 82. His wife died in 1920 at the age of 74.
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