Ch 3, Farming In Oklahoma

William Freeland was born on a farm in Hitchita Oklahoma. He was the eighth of 10 children born to William Henry Johnson and Gertrude Bell Amos.

 The Johnson kids, about 1927

Back row, L to R: Leonard Nicholas, Edna, Lee Maskel, Iva Mae, Robert Owen.

Front row, L to R: Francis Eugene, Charles Sosby and William Freeland

When only six months of age, his family moved to Checotah Oklahoma but Freeland was too young to remember much about that location. When William was about 2 years old, the family moved again, to Webbers Falls Bottom (Dirty Creek), just across the Arkansas River from the Johnson family’s first settlement in Gore, OK back at the turn of the century. It was good land for growing cotton, but it always flooded during the rainy season. Freeland was very young, but recalls the first steel bridge being built after one of those floods had washed out the original wooden bridge.

As a child, Freeland remembers crawling under his mom’s sewing machine and grabbing hold of the vertical rod that was connected to the treadle and stopping his mom’s sewing progress. The family lived about five miles out of Webbers Falls and Freeland remembers wanting to ride the “Red Ball” bus into Muscogee, but never got the chance. The “Red Ball” was a privately owned limousine that was “Big and Black.” The owner was a local entrepreneur who provided bus service between Muscogee and Webbers Falls, and often picked up residents of the outlying farms on his route.

Freeland was too young to work in the fields, but he would often be sent out to the fields with a gallon bucket of water for his brothers, and remembers that on most occasions it sloshed so much that the bucket was only half full by the time he got to them. Turner Harwell, the boyfriend of Freeland's sister Edna, worked for the county road department as a grader. often, William got to ride on the horse-drawn road grader with his future brother-in-law and sister Edna who was 16 years older than Freeland. The Harwell family had an adjacent farm and grew pecans in their orchard.

Freeland also remembers tagging along with his older brother Leonard and his girlfriend, Miss Shin when they would go swimming at “Dirty Creek” and swing out over the water on a rope. Leonard was eleven years older than his younger brother. Freeland was the baby of the family at this time, and “ruled the roost” as he says.

 

The Johnson Boys, about 1921

Back row: L to R: Leonard Nicholas, Francis Eugene, Robert Owen

Front: William Freeland Johnson

Freeland remembers his dad as being quick to “back hand” the kids if they got out of line. As a consequence, Freeland was averse to saying much on their frequent drives to the town of Webbers Falls for fear of being “backhanded.” He would wait until they got to the “King and Hays” store in town before he would pester his father for candy. He figured out that his father would not “backhand” him in front of other people, so Freeland would wait until he was in conversation with friends and then pinch his dad on the back of his leg to get his attention, without fear of the dreaded “backhand.” “Gertie, I’m not taking this kid with me anymore” is what Freeland's father would say when they got home. “He pinched my leg until it was black and blue!”

Ch 2, West to Kentucky and Indian Territory

When the Revolutionary War ended, William Charles Johnson came into possession of the farm he had settled in Georgia. The old property laws that existed under British rule no longer applied and William Charles was now a Landowner. He married Anne Carter in 1785, and a few years later they started their family with the arrival of Samuel Johnson (b. 1790), Thomas C. Johnson (b. 1797), Alexander Johnson (b. 1798), Nancy Johnson (b. 1802), and William Johnson who was born in 1804.

With the influx of settlers after the Revolution, William Charles found it profitable to sell his farm. He yearned to return to the open land of Kentucky near where his father had been buried and in 1808, that is what he did. The family move a little farther north than the previous location at Boone’s Station, and settled on wooded farmland in what would later become Owenton, Kentucky. Here, the Johnson clan finally found the peaceful lifestyle that had eluded them for so long. The kids grew up and all homesteaded parcels of their own, and William Charles and his wife Anne Carter lived to the ripe old ages of 87 and 70, respectively.

In the meantime, William and Liddie (Raisor) Miller and their 3 year old daughter Mary Elizabeth had just arrived from Georgia in 1815, and settled on an adjacent farm near the Johnsons. Mary was only 16 when she married William Johnson Jr., and he was 24. They lived with his parents, William Charles and Ann Carter and inherited the farm when they both passed away. Together, William and Mary Elizabeth had eight children of their own. They were William (b. 1829), Obediah (b. 1833), Martha (b. 1838), Jonathan (b. 1840), Elisha (b. 1844), Olive (b 1847), Mary Elizabeth (b.1852), and Robert Owen Johnson who was born on May 18th, 1843.

 Robert Owen Johnson (1843-1931) and Nancy Jane Mefford (1849-1935)

All the children grew to adulthood on the family farm and were there when the differences between the North and the South threatened to erupt into war. Few of the family remained in Owenton, Kentucky during the Civil War era, as the state was sharply divided between the North and the South which created a situation that can only be described as neighbor against neighbor. When Robert Owen was 20, he traveled west to the town of Mayfield, Kentucky, where he met Cassandra Long. He married Cassandra and when she became pregnant, he took her back to the farm in Owenton Kentucky where Cassandra gave birth to Mary Elizabeth Johnson on the 23rd of December, 1864, just as the war was winding down. Sadly, Cassandra died during childbirth.

After the loss of Cassandra, Robert Owen married a second time on the 10th of March 1867, to Nancy Jane (Jennie) Mefford who was born on October 26th, 1849. The ceremony took place in the home of the bride’s father, John Quincy Mefford, and because Nancy Jane was only 17, her father had to sign a document giving his permission for the marriage.

Robert and Jennie had ten more children over the next twenty one years and they included John Nicholas (b. Oct. 15, 1867), Albert Sydney (b. March 13, 1870), Frank Joseph (b. April 24, 1872), Martha Ann (b. July 13, 1874), Thomas Jefferson (b. Aug. 13, 1877), Robert E. Lee (b. Nov. 13, 1880), Laura (b. Jul. 22, 1882), Edgar (b. Mar. 5, 1884), Ollie (b. Jun 13, 1888) and William Henry Johnson, born September 3rd, 1876.

 Robert and Jennies son, William Henry Johnson

(William Freeland's Father)

After several years, Robert Owen and Jennie left Kentucky, crossing the Mississippi River at Hannibal Missouri. They arrived by wagon and team in 1898 at a small town just south of Fort Smith Arkansas where their 22 year old son, William Henry met his future wife, Gertrude Bell Amos.

Gertrude Bell Amos, just prior to her death in 1933

Gertie Bell’s father, Michael Amos died when she was just a baby, and her mother, Susan (Mileham) Amos had remarried and started a whole new family. Gertie Bell was 18 when the Johnsons came through town, and she went with them when they crossed the Arkansas River and settled in Indian Territory (IT) near the town of Cowlington, where William and Gertie were officially married. Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory were combined in 1907, and became the State of Oklahoma.

William, Gertie, and the rest of the Johnson clan continued their Westerly trek until they reached the town of Gore, Oklahoma where they started sharecropping. Always looking for a better opportunity, William and Gertie sharecropped at may locations in and around Muscogee, Oklahoma over the ensuing 20 years. During that time they had 10 children, beginning with Johnny who died at birth, then Edna (Sept. 24, 1901), Iva Mae (Oct. 11, 1903), Leonard (March 18, 1907), Lee M. (Oct. 8, 1908), Robert Owen (Dec. 15, 1911), Francis Eugene (Jan 11, 1914), one girl who was stillborn and was never named (July 16, 1920), Charles Sosbee (Sept. 4, 1922), and, the subject of our story, William Freeland (Aug. 16, 1918).

Ch 1, The Johnson Colonists

This is the story of William Freeland Johnson, his ancestry and decendents from his great, great, great grandfather Samuel Johnson, to his great granddaughter Kylee Alexis Chelbana and his great grandson Caden Robert Adams. It is a story that spans nine generations.

William Freeland Johnson today

As far back as Freeland knows, the Johnson clan began with his great, great, great grandfather, Samuel Johnson. Little is known about Samuel, but he and his wife settled Georgia as part of Lord Percival and General James Oglethorpe’s plan to clean up London by giving the unemployed and destitute an opportunity for a fresh start in the new colonies.

 General James Oglethorpe

Samuel and his wife (name unknown) arrived in the New World around 1750. By the time they arrived, the promise of the new colony’s hemp and silk production had faded, and the only hope for the new immigrants was subsistence farming. This might have been acceptable to Samuel, but the rules in the colony still required all male adults to join the militia, and to plant at least one “white mulberry” tree (a holdover from the silk experiment) per acre to validate grants of land. Furthermore, the land could not be sold or traded and could only be passed down to a male heir if that heir chose to farm it. Effectively, it was not possible to own land in Georgia. This fact, and the constant militia training and alert calls to thwart the threat of invasion by the Spanish to the south and the Indians to the west was enough motivation to cause many immigrants to relocate to other, more liberal colonies to the north.

In 1754, Samuel’s only son William Charles was born, it was the same year the French and Indians launched their campaign against the colonies. The family stayed on in the relative safety of the farm until the French and Indian War had been won. Thinking the end of the war would open up the land west of the Appalachians for immigrants, Samuel was prepared to pack up his family, give up his grant in Georgia, and move west, but much to his surprise, after the war, in 1763, the British ceded the land west of the Appalachians back to the Indians and, once again, Samuel found himself stuck on the land he could not own.

William Charles grew up on the farm in Georgia and the family was prospering when their world erupted in Revolution in 1776. Since the bulk of the revolutionary activities were taking place in the north, the Johnsons were effectively shielded from the war by distance. All was well until, in December of 1778, the British captured the nearby city of Savannah and brought the war very much closer to home for the Johnsons. With that event, Samuel packed up his family and belongings and joined a party led by Daniel Boone headed to Kentucky.

 The only known portrait of Daniel Boone, completed near the end of his life.  He was so feeble he had to be propped up for the sittings.

With the signing of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix wherein the Iroquois ceded their claim to Kentucky back to the British, settlers once again felt safe to venture west of the Appalachian Mountains. The party traversed the “Wilderness Trail” through the Cumberland Gap which had only been explored and opened up four years previously when Daniel Boone established Boonesborough.

This monument is at Boone's Station, Kentucky

Settling at Boone’s Station, the family finally felt “at home,” but Samuel could not escape the Revolution and the settlement was under constant threat from the Shawnee Indians who had not been a party to the Stanwix Treaty and had now sided with the British. Samuel joined the local militia, as did all male adults, and was killed in one of the Shawnee raids on the settlement in 1780.

William Charles buried his father at Boone’s Station, and for the sake of his mother, he moved back to the relative safety of Georgia. At about the same time, to escape the fighting to the north, Thomas Carter, his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Anne arrived from North Carolina. Anne was 16 years old at the time, and William Charles was immediately enamored by this sprightly young lass. Anne’s parents, Thomas and Elizabeth were born in the town of Ottery, in Devonshire, England, just 45 miles northeast of Plymouth where the Pilgrims had sailed from in 1609. The young couple emigrated from Ottery to the colony of North Carolina in 1762.

Words

One of my pet peeves is word pronunciation. Not that I am a linguist by any stretch of the imagination, but at least we can work on the ones we know about. In a previous post I mentioned one of my favorites, NUCLEAR. The correct pronunciation is like “new-clear” and not “new-Q-lar.”

Another one that I have even heard mis-pronounced in movies is CAVALRY. The word is pronounced like “cav-all-ree” and not like “cal-va-ree.” Cavalry is a group of mounted soldiers, and Calvary is a hill near Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified.

Here is my favorite, and one that is almost universally mispronounced by everyone, as did I for many years, REALTOR. It is pronounced like “real-tor” and not like “real-a-tor,” as most of us do. Even folks who deal in realty (real-tee, not real-a-tee) screw this one up.

There are others, like the difference between ASK and AXE, but that is another story.