1404 Bemidji Avenue

This house was built about 1938 for the Clarence Oseid family. The Oseid family moved here from Thief River Falls. He was a wholesale salesman for groceries. They had at least one child, Betty. Mrs. Maude Oseid was active in the local League of Women Voters. They moved to 1201 Beltrami ave.

Walter R. Johnson and his wife Myrtle owned the house from 1956 to at least 1970. He was an engineer for the Northern Pacific Railway. His wife-to-be Myrtle attended beautician school in Minneapolis. On March 19, 1921, they were married. They made their home in Bemidji, where she ran her own beauty shop until her retirement sometime after 1964. It was named Myrtle’s Hi Style Salon Beauty Shop. She was also a cook and homemaker, and a member of First Lutheran Church in Bemidji. After her husband’s death, she married a widower Arthur “William” Gernand in December 1973. His wife Stella had died in 1971.

Art and Myrtle Gernand lived here until their divorce in 1991. He married Leona Frances Smith and they moved to Dewey Avenue. Myrtle continued to live at this address through 2002. She died in Grand Forks in 2003 at the age of 102!

On June 6, 2012, this house was sold. It is currently a rental.