Elmer John Johnston was born 15 March 1898, in Rapid City, South Dakota, the 7^th child and 4^th son of George Perry Johnston and Elizabeth Mittelstedt. He came home to his parents, three sister’s Leota, Sarah, and Anna, and two brothers Grover and Fred, one brother, Oscar, having died at the age of 3.

Elmer’s family had been in Rapid City about 2 and a half years when he was born. His father hauled wood and farmed to support the family.

When Elmer was about 18 months old, his father died suddenly of what was called cholera morbus.

The Rapid City Daily Journal

This account has two errors; George Perry Johnston was 53 years old and was born in Ohio.

Little is known of Elmer’s early childhood. His oldest sister Leota married Ben Bowner soon after her father’s death (Ben and his brother’s finished harvesting the wheat for the Johnstons the year Elmer’s father died) and they lived in Deadwood, SD for the next two years. His mother did "day work" and apparently either ran her own restaurant or worked at the Garlick House Inn in Rapid City, owned by Charlie Jolly, whose sister Florence was married to Ben Bowmer’s nephew Roy. No doubt 14 year old sister Sarah, called Sadie, had a great deal of the care of Elmer as well as his 4 year old brother Fred and 10 year old brother Grover. However, Sadie, Anna and Grover all attended the Rapid City schools so neighbors and friends must have come to the aid of the widowed and working mother.

It is said that Elmer was clerking in a store at age 9.

When Elmer was 11 years old, in 1909, his mother and brothers Fred and Grover went by wagon to eastern Montana where his mother took out a homestead on Indian lands newly opened to settlers. His older sister Leota and her husband Ben had preceded the family there and had taken out their own homestead. Ben Bowmer’s brother Jim and his family accompanied the Johnston’s to Montana.

Elmer describes the trip in an interview with his grandniece, Emmalyn King Gerhauser, saying that they went by wagon following the old Wibeau Trail and "the wagons were covered with a tarp. It rained torrents and the clay gumbo stuck to the wagon wheels and the wheels got bigger and bigger. The only place we could find to get under shelter was an abandoned building that had a pot belied stove. It was an old saloon. Ella Thatcher who had married a Bowmer didn’t do anything but bawl all the way…"

It was tough going in Montana making a place to live and getting in a crop. Grover would have been 20 and Fred 14 when they made the move to Montana. Sadie had married and left for Seattle and Alaska that year, and Anna remained in Rapid City until she graduated high school in 1910. There is no doubt that the Bowmer and Johnston families combined efforts to survive those first few years.

Elmer, Fred and Grover were partners in the early days of attempting to grow crops on the homestead.

On the postcard below, Grover writes to Fred from Sioux Falls, IA where he has gone to purchase horses.

Anna came to Montana and joined her family there for awhile, but soon saw that another income was needed and got her teaching certificate (and taught school at the same time). In 1913, she was teaching near Miles City, MT and Fred was working at a restaurant in Baker, MT. Elmer worked at a livery stable in Ekalaka, MT, and at the age of 14 and a half, it is said he was made the manager.

Another tragedy for the family was the untimely death of Elmer’s older brother Fred. Fred had enlisted in the Army as we went to war in 1917/18 and had gone to Ft Lewis for training. There are many stories as to why he was sent home. One is that the recruits there were being hard hit with the great influenza epidemic and many were being sent home. Another is that Grover asked for his release as he was needed to help with the harvest at home in Montana. The facts seem to support the obituary from the Baker, MT newspaper which says that he was sent home because he had a heart problem and could not pass the physical. He did however, contract the flu, and it turned into pneumonia as was common in the fatal cases, and he died just after he returned to Baker, in Oct 1918.

Elmer, and possibly Grover, may have gone back to Rapid City, SD sometime in the early twenties. Elmer tells of the Wright Brothers visiting there, and of going to the World Fair in Saint Louis, Mo.

In 1928, Grover and Elmer established the Johnston Brothers Coal Company and began to mine and sell the lignite coal that lay in rich veins just under the soil in this part of Montana. Excerpts from Grover’s account books show the hours Elmer worked and his pay. The Johnston Bros Coal Mine is in business from that period through 1939.

Elmer had a house in Ekalaka and his mother lived with him.

Ben and Leota Bowmer come back from Plummer, ID and their daughter Freda and husband Matt King are with them. It is in Lizzie and Elmer’s house in Ekalaka, MT that Emmalyn King is born.

Elmer’s mother died in 1939 and the mine and land were lost that same year because they could not pay the royalties due theGovernment on the coal. Eastern Montana was still in the grip of the Great Depression. Elmer followed the Bowmers to Plummer, ID where he worked in the lumber industry with Bowmer relatives.

Over the years, Elmer spent time with his brother Grover’s family, and each of his sister’s families. In the summer of 1940 he came to Billings, MT where Grover and Vesta and their two children were living on Vesta’s mother’s place on the Billings Bench, truck gardening and selling milk from dairy cows. Also visiting was Amy Tope, his sister Anna’s first child. They began a friendship that lasted their lifetimes.

In 1943 with the war and the relaxed age standards, Elmer enlisted in the Army and served in the medical corps as a private. He was stationed in California and while there he often visited with his sister Sadie.

Although he never married, Elmer had a wonderful extended family. He kept in touch with and wrote to and visited Johnston relatives of his father’s brother Alexander, and his father’s sister Sarah Jane. He traveled to Iowa and visited with Henry Mittelstedt, a "half-cousin", the son of one of his mother Lizzie Mittelstedts half –brothers.

He always returned to Plummer and his sister Leota and her family. He opened a saw shop there, and worked at it in the summer season, traveling in the winters.

He visited in California with Goodner and Tope relatives, in Idaho, in Wyoming with his brother Grover, in Iowa with Topes and Mittelstedts, in Colorado and Nebraska with Johnston descendants, in Kansas and Montana with Grover’s children.

In 1968, Elmer traveled for the last time to Medicine Bow, WY to see his brother Grover who was in failing health.

He lived in a little house in Plummer up to the time he was found unconscious by nearby relatives who checked on him every evening. He was taken to the hospital in Spokane where he passed away that night of "acute myocardial infarction". He was 85.

He was buried on a cold winter’s day in the cemetery in Tekoa, WA. "Uncle Elmer" as he was called by almost everyone, was a much beloved figure to all the nieces and nephews, cousins and grandchildren and great grandchildren of his much loved brother and sisters. His grandniece Emmalyn wrote the following obituary for him.