John H. Johnson.
John H. Johnson. One mile west of Dewey, in Washington County, is located the handsome and well cultivated farm belonging to John H. Johnson, a progressive and enterprising farmer, who, with the exception of several years spent in Texas, has been a resident of this property for thirty-three years. He has watched and participated in the great growth and development of this region, and has seen the virgin prairies blossom forth into productive fields of grain, dotted here and there with oil wells, the product of which is making the fortunate owners of land here wealthy.
Mr. Johnson is a native of Kentucky, born in Laurel County, December 8, 1865, and is a son of Wesley N. and Martha Ann (Sparks) Johnson, natives of the same state and county. The parents were born, reared and educated in Kentucky, where they were married, and about the year 1875 set out for the West and settled in Northern Texas, on the plains. There the father carried on stock raising until the fall of the year of President Garfield’s assassination, 1881, when the family removed to the Cherokee Nation, the parents continuing to reside here until their death. They passed away during the same year, 1894, the father in March, when fifty-eight years of age, and the mother in September, aged sixty-one years. Mr. Johnson was a farmer and stock-raiser, was successful in the accumulation of a competence, and had the respect and esteem of his fellow-citizens in whatever community he resided. He and his wife were the parents of eight children, namely: James, who died at the age of sixteen years; H. G., a resident of Oklahoma; William, who resides in Texas; John H., of this notice; Lucy, whose home is in Arkansas; Julia, residing at Bartlesville, Oklahoma; Cyrus, who lives in Osage County, this state; and Eliza, whose death occurred when she was an infant.
As before stated, John H. Johnson has been a resident of his present property for thirty-three years, and here has devoted himself to farming and stock raising. He was given a public school education in his youth and grew up as an agriculturist, and at the present time has an eighty-acre tract, located one mile west of Dewey, in Washington County. Here he has made numerous improvements, including a substantial set of modern improvements, and aside from general farming operations is selling the oil from his eight wells. He was married in 1891 to Miss Jennie Carr, who was born in the Cherokee Nation, on the Caney River, December 31, 1869, daughter of N. F. Carr, a sketch of whose career will be found on another page of this work. Mrs. Johnson and her children have their allotment of land, so that the family in all owns 530 acres, this being all in one body with the exception of eighty acres and sixty acres, both tracts adjoining Dewey. Mr. Johnson’s oldest son is cultivating eighty acres of this land, while Mr. Johnson is in charge of the operations on the rest of the property. There are seven children in the family: Frank, who married Myrtle Keener, and his one child, Anna Charlotte; Edith, the wife of P. G. McWhorter, carrying on operations with Mr. Johnson, has one child, Windell; and Roy, Flora, Annie, Paul and Lelia, all living with their parents. Eva Beatrice died when three months old.
Mrs. Johnson, a woman of many attainments, was brought up under Christian influences, and like her mother is a church and fraternal worker. She belongs to the Baptist Church, and is a member of Dewey Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, the Rebekahs at Dewey, and the Woodmen’s Circle. She is well educated, having attended the public schools, as ’ well as having been a student at the Cherokee Female Seminary at Tahlequah for two years. Mr. Johnson is also interested in fraternal work, and belongs to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, lodge and encampment, the Knights of Pythias, the A. H. T. A., and the Woodmen of the World. He is a republican in his political views, and while he has not sought public preferment, has always been a staunch supporter of movements making for civic reform and betterment.