Sunday, July 1, 2012

From Johnson City to the Johnstons of the Carolinas

As you may recall, I started digging into genealogy research back in 2008 simply by chance as I was staying with my cousin, Philly, in California. I just so happened to arise prior to the rest of the inhabitants of his domicile on Langdon Avenue and fired up the computer to find a bookmark for ancestry.com. From the initial hook of the 14-day free trail, I was addicted to this all-encompassing cyber-heroin of family history. It led to thousands of hours of research and travel miles logged, uncovered alleged and actual criminal actions, countless pages of nearly hundred-year-old letters, and newly located long lost relatives strewn about the country.

One such person is my 87 year-old first cousin, once removed, Bill Johnston (take note of the "t" in his surname). That's ancestry.com's official definition of how we're connected anyway. In other words, his father (Henry Elmer Johnson) and my grandfather (Walter Johnson) were brothers. Strange coincidence...Henry Elmer and I share the same birthday, although I was born 82 years later.


I guess I should explain the "t" in Cousin Bill's surname. Sometime in the late 1920s, HEJ and his wife separated, due to a variety of factors, namely HEJ's fondness of beverages of an alcoholic nature and how said beverages affected his behavior. At the urging of her family, HEJ's wife moved elsewhere in NC and changed her name by adding the "t." I can't begin tell you how difficult the addition of that one measly little letter really thwarted otherwise typically simple genealogy research. Damn alphabet and its letters...like they are really all that necessary.

You may remember that I found Bill in a very roundabout way. My Aunt Mary (my mom's sister) is in possession of nearly 85 letters written to her father (Walter) by various family members between 1911 and 1926. 75% of those letters were penned by Walter's younger brother, Henry Elmer (HEJ). In a letter dated May 1924, HEJ writes that he has a new daughter, Mildred, who was born "last September." Well, the name Mildred Johnson in 1920s North Carolina may have well been John Smith, thus creating difficulty in uncovering any information on her. Did she ever marry? Was she still alive? So many questions.

In September of 2009, I decided to visit Fayetteville and Hope Mills, North Carolina, from where my Johnson folk descend. During a visit to the Fayetteville library and the nearly 50 year-old newspapers on microfilm, I found HEJ's obituary from 1962 where it listed his surviving daughter, Mildred. Her married name provided the final tidbit I needed to assist in locating her. I consulted The Google, found someone by that name on whitepages.com, which had a phone number listed and dialed her up. On my first attempt, she thought I was a telemarketer and quickly hung up the phone. On my second try, I asked if her father was HEJ, and got her attention. We spoke for nearly an hour during which she said I needed to talk to her younger brother, Bill, because he'd remember a lot more about their family than she. She gave me Bill's digits and I called him the next day. His first question..."So...I see you have a sweating problem?" The 85 year-old man had also consulted The Google and had discovered my anti-sweating wonder drug. Who knew that interview on Fox2 News would come back to haunt me? DAMN YOU THE GOOGLE!

So I went to visit the Johnstons in December of 2009 and the rest is history... Get it? Genealogy... History? Man am I clever. Write that down. You can review that trip by doing the time warp to the blog postings of 12/09 by clicking HERE.

Fast forward to Road Trip 2012 and here we are doing a 2,500-mile North Carolina sojourn. This area has so many minor league teams we've never seen and I've never been to the Smoky Mountains, so it made for the perfect trip. Little did I realize that someone would turn the thermostat to Hades for this journey, but again, you take the good with the bad.

The drive from Johnson City, Tennessee to Fort Mill, South Carolina, where Bill's daughter, Cindi lives, and the Charlotte Knights AAA affiliate for the Chicago White Sox play, was nice and hilly, but otherwise uneventful until signs for Bojangles began to spring up alongside the interstate. If you've never partaken of the foodstuffs of this establishment, you don't know what you're missing. Let's just say that "manna from heaven" doesn't even begin to cover it. Add to that that we searched in vain for a Bojangles in Johnson City last night for nearly 45 minutes only to settle for McDonald's, and today's find was like stumbling into the promised land.

We arrived in Fort Mill for a mini-reunion of sorts with various members of the Johnston/Johnson clan. It was entertaining to listen to the most familiar of words be modified into newfangled expressions by the mere presence of the North Carolinian drawl, but I guess they think we probably talk funny too. Only when we add the South City accent... Long story short...it made for a nice day of food, family, fun and oppressive heat.

Tomorrow's destination: Holden Beach, North Carolina to see my friend, The Mayor

See the limited number of photos from today HERE.

1 comment:

Suzanne said...

Enjoying the blog David. Keep up the good work!

Suzanne