William Franklin Johnston, 1867-1939
Headstone GPS Coordinates: location unknown
Birth: 12 August 1867, Taney County, Missouri
Death: 25 April 1939, Crosby, Kitsap County, Washington
Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Helena Lena Whitney Johnston Branham, Norma Lovell Johnston,Infant boy Johnston, Wayne Johnston
American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Unknown
William Franklin Johnston was born in Taney County, Missouri on August 12, 1867 to Henry Johnston and his wife Mary (unknown maiden name). His parents’ birth locations vary from record to record. His father was either born in Missouri or possibly Ohio, while his mother was either from Tennessee or Kentucky. William’s family owned and worked on their farm in Spring Creek, Arno County, Missouri.
In 1907, William married Helena “Lena” Whitney in Missouri. She was the daughter of Jim Whitney of Ohio and Emma Thomas of Arkansas. Lena was born on June 16, 1888 in Illinois. When they married, William was forty years old and Lena was nineteen.
The Johnston couple first had a son they named William Norman who was born in Carter County in 1907, then the next year in 1908, another son, James Loyal, was born in Hunter, Grandon County, Missouri, and then back in Carter County, Missouri, a daughter Hazel Helena was born in 1910. The family at the time was renting a farm in Kelly, Carter County, Missouri where William worked as a farm manager. By 1913, the family moved to Kiefer, Creek County, Oklahoma where the last child, Ruth Elizabeth, was born.
In 1920, William was working as a laborer in the oil industry in Mounds, Creek County, Oklahoma with his family. During the time of Prohibition in the United States when it was illegal to manufacture or sell alcohol, William operated his own illegal gin distillery. The local sheriff would warn William when the revenues were in town, so he could hide his operation. William’s children said when they were growing up, Papa William always called the car’s glove compartment the “gin box.”
Sometime between 1920 and 1925, William and Lena divorced. On August 27, 1925, Lena married Ray Branham in Sanders, Benewah County, Idaho. She married him as Helen Parker, so Lena may have been married to another man some time between William and Ray. No records of a marriage between her and a man with a surname of Parker have been located yet.
Lena appears on the record again in the 1930 census living in Yankton, Columbia County, Oregon in her ex-husband William’s household as a boarder. She was listed as “divorced,” and working as a cook in the restaurant industry. Her and William’s children, William Norman and Ruth, were also living in the household. William and his son Norman worked as buckers in a logging camp. A twenty-one year old married woman from Washington named Amber Kelso Hanby was living in the Johnston household as a lodger. She would become William Norman’s wife the next year.
William Norman and his new wife Amber were living in Seabeck in 1931. They were married in King County, Washington in February 1931 just two months before their daughter Norma Lovell Johnston was born on April 18, 1931. Lena signed as a witness to the marriage.
On December 6, 1932, Norma died when she was almost two years old from tubercular meningitis. She was buried in Seabeck Cemetery. On June 29, 1935, Norman and Amber were living in Camp Union when they had a son named Wayne Johnston. But sadly, the boy died less than three months later on September 24, 1935 from excessive bone growth. He was also buried in Seabeck Cemetery.
William and Lena’s son, James, and his wife at the time, Gertrude Sage, also lost a child in Seabeck. They had a boy born on April 2, 1931, but he died on April 9, 1931 from a seizure disorder. The baby boy was buried in Seabeck Cemetery.
According to the Johnston descendants, Lena had moved to Camp Union, probably with her son William Norman and Amber, and worked as a cook. Her daughter Hazel and her husband Kenneth Whittaker were also living in Seabeck at the time.
On April 29, 1932, Lena passed away at the age of forty-three from carcinoma uterus with mitosis (endometrial cancer) and terminal pneumonia. She was buried in Seabeck Cemetery. Hazel was the informant on her death certificate. She wrote that her mother was still married to Ray Branham. No records about Ray apart from his marriage record to Lena have been found yet.
William came to live at Miami Beach in 1934. Several years later, he died in Crosby on April 25, 1939 from a cerebral hemorrhage when he was seventy-one years old. His son James was the informant listed on his death certificate.
His obituary was published in the Bremerton Sun Newspaper on April 26, 1939:
William F. Johnston, 71, died yesterday at the home of a son, Norman, of Seabeck, following a long illness. Born in Missouri on Aug. 12, 1867, Johnston had resided at Seabeck for the past five years.
“Besides the son at Seabeck, he is survived by two daughters and another son, Mrs. Ruth Timmons, SeabeckMrs. Hazel H. Whitaker and James L. Johnston, both of Hoodsport.
“Graveside services will be held Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock at Seabeck cemetery.”
There was some information in the late historian Fred Just’s notes from one of William’s grandchildren that said he was a Spanish-American War veteran. However, in the 1930 census, William said he was not a veteran. No military records have been found to prove he was a veteran.
William’s parents are difficult to trace in the genealogical record. They were born in the United States, but it’s unknown if they descend from any American Revolutionary War Patriots.
William, Lena, and their grandchildren do not have markers nor is it known where they are buried in Seabeck Cemetery. There is another William Johnson (1858-1938) buried in Seabeck with a marker, but he belongs to a different family.