Johnston – HistorTree

Wiley Johnston: Finding Records Is Easy, Interpreting Them Can Be Challenging

This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This two-week period covers prompts of Challenging and Easy. (To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.

With the Johnston Family Reunion in my thoughts recently, I’ve spent the past two weeks researching my most distant ancestor in this family line — Wiley Johnston of Leake County, Mississippi, who is possibly my 4x-great-grandfather.

“Possibly” is a key word, as no direct evidence yet identifies Wiley as our Johnston family patriarch. Family historian Agnes McWeeny Johnston hypothesized Wiley was the father of five sons — Nathaniel, Silas, John, Harrison, and Rufus — who lived in Leake County, Mississippi, and the surrounding counties between 1825 and 1860.¹ Agnes based her hypothesis on census records and tax rolls. She believed these men were father and sons because they seemed to move together among counties in central Mississippi.

Is Agnes’s theory still valid almost 30 years later? With so many more records available today, I decided to revisit her research and look for more clues. It was easy to find records about Wiley; what’s challenging is determining if the records reference the correct Wiley Johnston and working out any clues within the data that can lead me to his origins.

Harriett Johnston: One Link to the Johnston Family Reunion

This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is Reunion. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.

I grew up attending the Johnston Family Reunion most summers. It was always held at the Ogden High School cafeteria in Liddieville, Louisiana, on the fourth Saturday of July. About 100 descendants of William Silas Johnston and Amarentha “Alma” Smart usually attended back in the 1990s. It was at the 1992 reunion that I met Agnes McWeeny Johnston, wife of Roy Johnston, who researched our Johnston family origins.

Before Agnes’s research, I’m not sure if our Horne family understood how we connected with the Johnstons. We seemed to attend because Martille McKaskle Johnston, wife of Andrew Johnston who was the son of William Silas and Alma, was my grandmother Ethel’s maternal aunt. My grandmother lived with “Uncle Ander” and “Aunt Till” for a short time after her mother died, and in the absence of grandparents, they became important family members for my dad and his sisters. But Agnes’s research showed us that the Horne and Johnston families were intertwined since the 1860s. One of these connections was Harriett Johnston, my 2x-great-grandmother.

John Johnston: Military Prisoner of War

This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is Military. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.

Memorial Day honors our veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives for our country. This week I want to focus an ancestor who came close to dying during his military service — my 3x-great-grandfather John Johnston who spent a year as a Civil War prisoner of war.

Malinda McCauley Johnston: Nurturing Wife, Sister, Grandmother, and Aunt

This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is Nuture. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.

It’s difficult to know the character of our ancestors when all that remains of their lives are a few impersonal records. But sometimes these records can reveal clues about an ancestor’s nature. The simple choice of who lived in her home, the circumstances of a husband returning from a Civil War prisoner of war camp, and the situation of a widowed sister suggests my 3x-great-grandmother Malinda McCauley Johnston was a nurturing wife, sister, grandmother, and aunt.

William Silas & Amarentha Smart Johnston: Courthouse Research Uncovers Death Dates

This entry is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series. This week’s prompt is AT THE COURTHOUSE. To see other posts in this series, view my 52 Ancestors in 2019 index.

Although genealogy interested me at a young age, I didn’t pick up this hobby — okay, obsession — until the internet made record access easy. I spent my early years researching from home in my pajamas, thinking all the documents I’d ever need were online. Oh, how wrong I was! As my skills improved and I moved onto more challenging research, I learned the records needed to solve difficult problems are rarely online. The most helpful evidence is often squirreled away in libraries or located at county and parish courthouses.

**Franklin Parish Courthouse**, Winnsboro, Louisiana *(photo from Louisiana Fifth Judicial Court)*

I visit courthouses around northeastern Louisiana almost every time I travel home. Because the past four generations of my family have lived in Liddieville, I spend a good deal of time at the Franklin Parish Courthouse in Winnsboro, Louisiana. The parish has not experienced any record loss since it was organized in 1843, so over 175 years of documents are available at the Clerk of Court’s office. Marriage, land, probate, civil court, and criminal court records — it’s all there. And none of it is digitized. Researching in rural courthouses like these means skimming through huge, musty-smelling books, asking staff to retrieve boxes from storage, and then personally digging through those boxes of original court documents. I love it!

One of my first big finds at the Franklin Parish Courthouse was a succession that provided death dates for two key individuals in my family tree: William Silas Johnston and his wife Amarentha “Alma” Smart.