Building a Life in Sweden’s Second City—Oscar Johanson’s Immigration Story

Oscar Hjalmar Johanson thought he’d left economic hardship behind when he boarded the RMS Lucania for America at age 18. In Chicago, the young Swedish immigrant reinvented himself, earning a pharmacy degree from Northwestern University, building a career as a neighborhood druggist, getting married and raising a family. Then came the Great Depression. The home he’d worked so hard to build was gone, forcing him to begin again.

Oscar was born on February 2, 1890, in Moheda, Sweden, during the height of Sweden’s industrial revolution. In the decades after the 1850s, railroads, engineering works and iron foundries reshaped the country’s economy. Torshälla, where Oscar grew up, prospered as a center of metalworking and manufacturing, but the rapid changes also brought fierce competition for jobs among young laborers, low wages and uncertain employment.

Across the Atlantic, however, America was booming. Cities like Chicago promised steady work, higher wages and the chance to build an independent life. For a young machinist like Oscar, America offered something Sweden often could not: the opportunity to improve his station in life through education, hard work and determination. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nearly one million Swedes—roughly one in every five people in the country—left for North America in search of greater opportunity. Oscar became part of that migration.

On September 5, 1908, Oscar arrived in the United States after sailing through Liverpool and entering through Ellis Island.

Like many Swedish immigrants, Oscar eventually made his way to Chicago, which had become known as “Sweden’s Second City.”

More than 100,000 Swedish-born immigrants lived there, and hundreds of thousands of their American-born children called the city home. Only Stockholm had a larger Swedish population. Walking through parts of Chicago, Oscar could have spent an entire day speaking Swedish.

Here, Oscar studied pharmacy at Northwestern University, graduating from the Medical School’s Department of Pharmacy in 1911. Pharmacists of Oscar’s generation belonged to one of the last eras of hand compounding. Long before most medicines arrived in sealed bottles from pharmaceutical manufacturers, they learned to identify medicinal plants, weigh ingredients with precision and prepare prescriptions by hand. Every prescription demanded patience, scientific knowledge and meticulous attention to detail.

On August 8, 1914, Oscar married Maude Webber, the Chicago-born daughter of Swedish immigrants. Together they built a family and what must have seemed a secure future.

By 1917, Oscar was a naturalized American citizen working as a druggist at John A. Butts’ neighborhood drugstore on Chicago’s bustling North Clark Street.

Throughout the day, physicians’ handwritten prescriptions arrived to be weighed, measured and compounded into medicines prepared specifically for each patient. Oscar likely spent his days grinding powders with a mortar and pestle, filling capsules, bottling cough syrups and preparing ointments while serving as one of the neighborhood’s most trusted healthcare professionals.

Over the next two decades, however, both the profession—and the nation—would change dramatically. Beginning in the 1920s, and accelerating through the 1930s and 1940s, pharmaceutical manufacturers increasingly produced standardized tablets, capsules, injectable medicines and packaged ointments that replaced much of the compounding once performed behind the pharmacy counter. At nearly the same time, the Great Depression devastated families and businesses across America.

Family members recall that Oscar and Maude lost their home during the economic collapse and temporarily moved to Indiana to live with relatives on a farm.

Thousands of independent pharmacies struggled. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies needed knowledgeable professionals who could explain these new products to physicians, hospitals and pharmacists. Experienced pharmacists like Oscar were ideal candidates because they understood both the science behind the medicines and the practical needs of healthcare providers. He eventually returned to Chicago with his family and became a sales representative serving hospitals, applying his pharmaceutical knowledge in a changing profession.

Oscar died on September 28, 1966, survived by his two daughters and six grandchildren. His journey reminds us that immigration is rarely a single act of courage. For Oscar, it meant leaving one country, embracing another, adapting to a changing profession, surviving economic hardship and rebuilding more than once.

The ocean crossing began his American story, but resilience defined it. His willingness to start over created opportunities not only for himself, but for the generations of his family who follow.