Guðjón Jóhannesson

Vesturfarar

Guðjón Jóhannesson was seven years old when he came west across the sea with his parents in 1885. They settled in a thriving, young, Icelandic countryside not far from the village of Minneota, Minnesota. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 1904 (same year his father died) with a B.A.  He studied journalism. He was, in all likelihood, the most remarkable journalist and writer of all Western Icelanders. His full name was Guðjón Gunnlaugur Hólm, better known as John G. Holme. He was highly educated, and his career brought him fame and recognition with his countrymen in America. He began his career as a teacher of rhetoric speech and English at the University of Minnesota. Then he became a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal and a little later for the Chicago Tribune. He traveled to San Francisco for the Tribune in 1913 and wrote for the paper news of the great Fair taking place there at that time. He became a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner around that time. He went to New York around 1915 where he lived and worked for the rest of his life as a reporter for New York Evening Post. He wrote the biography of General Leonard Wood and worked hard at assisting him in an attempt to be nominated Republican candidate for the US Presidency in 1920 but he lost to Harding. His other achievements were great and many not mentioned here, his career brought him fame not longevity. (From Saga Íslendinga í Vesturheimi V. pp 350-351 and more).

 

 

English version by Thor group.