Ripon to Kenyon
Mabel Johnson was born September 7, 1871, in West Salem, Wisconsin, and studied languages, literature and music at Ripon College, completing its piano and theory course under Rossetter Gleason Cole in 1894. In 1897 she married Dr. Ragnvald Leland, a Kenyon physician, and moved to the village, where they raised five children: Harold, Valborg, Hildur, Maria and Margaret.
Translator
She lectured on Scandinavian literature across the Upper Midwest and translated from New Norse, the rural literary language: the poets Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Per Sivle and Anders Hovden, and Arne Garborg's novel The Lost Father (Boston: Stratford Company, 1920). She was Minnesota state chair for the Norse-American Centennial of 1925, the celebration of a century of Norwegian immigration that drew President Coolidge to the State Fairgrounds.
Kenyon's clubwoman
In 1898 she founded the Round Table Club of Kenyon, the town's women's study club. She was secretary of the Kenyon Public Library Association for twenty years, secretary-treasurer of the Third District of the Minnesota Federated Women's Clubs, and a leader in the local League of Women Voters, the Council of National Defense during the First World War, the Republican Woman's Club and the American Legion Auxiliary. She died March 23, 1947, and is buried in Kenyon.