Wayne Johnston

Headstone GPS Coordinates: Unknown location

Birth: 29 June 1935, in Seabeck, Kitsap County, Washington

Death: 24 September 1935, Seabeck, Kitsap County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: William Franklin Johnston, Helena Lena Whitney Johnston Branham, Infant boy Johnston, Normal Lovell Johnston, Leslie Charles Hanby

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Patriot David Payne/Paine of Virginia.

Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards.

Wayne Johnston was born on June 29, 1935, in Camp Union, Washington, to William Norman Johnston and Amber Kelso Hanby. He arrived into a family already shaped by loss—his parents’ first child, Norma Lovell Johnston, had died in 1932 at not yet two years old. Wayne’s birth would have carried both hope and caution for his parents, who had already endured the fragility of young life in the early twentieth century.

Wayne was part of a closely connected Johnston family network centered in the Seabeck and Camp Union area. His paternal grandmother, Helena “Lena” Whitney Johnston, had lived and worked nearby until her death in 1932, and several of Wayne’s aunts, uncles, and cousins were also in the area. The Johnston family, long accustomed to transient work in logging camps and rural labor, had settled temporarily in this region during a difficult economic period.

Tragically, Wayne’s life was even shorter than his sister’s. On September 24, 1935, he died at less than three months of age from excessive bone growth, a rare and poorly understood condition at the time. Medical knowledge and treatment options for such disorders were extremely limited, and infant mortality remained high, even in families with access to care.

Wayne Johnston was buried in Seabeck Cemetery, alongside his sister Norma