Middle name also sometimes spelled "Hardin."

John Harden Johnson was the seventh of nine children born to Rev. John Arthur "Amos" Johnson (a farmer and circuit-riding Methodist Episcopal South preacher) and his first wife, Susan Nash, and he grew up on the Johnson family homestead farm (Patent 7221) in Pettis Township near the little town of Waldon in Platte County, Missouri. This farm was very near the Missouri River and a few miles north of what is now the city limit of Kansas City. His mother died of measles when he was just six, and he remembered watching from the front porch of their home as she was buried under an apple tree in the family graveyard located on a nearby hilltop. This family tragedy took place in March 1862 on a snowy day during the Civil War and left an indelible memory.

The following year his father married again and would have five more children with his second wife, the newly-widowed Sarah Ann Haskell Bowman, who brought her own two small daughters to the family. John Harden would recall that his stepmother was strict and abusive with all her stepchildren, while his father was probably away from home a great deal of the time riding the Methodist circuit. The Reverend "Amos" Johnson died in June 1876 at the age of 58 after an illness of several months. He died without a will and his widow petitioned for the homestead and dower on behalf of herself and her minor children and was granted it. At that time the Johnson farm was assessed as consisting of 79 acres more or less, including 28 acres of wheat and 15 acres of corn in the field. Son John Harden was still living there and bought his father's revolver at the estate sale held at the residence on August 12, 1876. A year later he had left home and was living in Johnson County, Kansas, age 21, where he was married to Lois Iantha Smith, age 22, by Rev. T. F. Doublase on October 31, 1877. Their first of 12 children, daughter Ora Ethel Johnson, was born in March 1878 and died three months later. They buried her at the Monticello/Union Cemetery near Holliday (today, a neighborhood of Shawnee), close to where they were living—on the farm of Lois's parents, William Landon Smith (1822-1882) and Marilla Ann Hoard Smith (1820-1896).

J.H. Johnson and his growing family lived and worked on the Smith family farm for many years and their babies born there came regularly. J.H. never owned any property, but always rented. In addition to farm labor John Harden Johnson did carpentry work and knew how to put up barns, sheds, and houses. He was called a "master carpenter" and a "master craftsman" by his descendants. He was also said by some of his children to have had a temper and to have been verbally and physically abusive to his wife and children. In August 1896 his widowed mother-in-law died and the Johnson family had to move off the Smith farm to another farmhouse in the area.

Lois Johnson, 42, died at that drafty rented farmhouse of pneumonia on February 17, 1897, leaving her husband, John Harden Johnson, 41, with ten surviving children ages 18 years to 16 months. Baby Ray was sent to live with his mother's sister and her husband, Anna and David Frame. Orla, 3, had been sent to live with the Charles Smith family (another relative of his mother?) when his mother had become ill.

By early summer John Harden and the rest of the family had moved to a "better" rented farm than the poor one where Lois had died, in exchange for fixing the place up for the landlord, but when the repairs were completed, they all had to move again. During this period the oldest son, Ezra, 18, quarreled with his father and left home to live on his own. The rest of the family ended up living in Edgerton, Johnson County, Kansas for awhile, chosen because the location was only three miles from a school. "Otis [about 15] was the only boy who went to school that winter as it was 30 degrees below zero." –June Bork, The Johnsons and Their Connections, p. 66]

Around November-December of 1898 J.H. was looking for another farm to move to, and the family situation became extremely bleak.

On January 28, 1899 Johnson County Probate Judge James Hammond at court in Olathe, Kansas certified that John H. Johnson's three boys, Willis, 9, Myron, 7, and Orley/Orla, 6, were eligible for admission to the Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Atchison, Kansas. They passed a doctor's examination and were found to be sound in mind and body and without contagious diseases, and the boys' father certified that he was unable to support, raise, or train them properly due to "a series of misfortunes and bad luck through no fault of his," he having "no home of his own," "no occupation," and their mother having died. Two days later the three little boys were accepted into the orphanage. Somewhere around this time sister Anna, about 10, was sent to board with the James Murdock family in Morris, Wyandotte County, Kansas, and sister Bertha, about 12, was sent to board and do housekeeping at the McConnell family home (about four miles east of Olathe) for about two years.

John Harden Johnson appeared before Judge Hammond in June, requesting that his boys be returned to him as he could now take care of them. This request was granted. Myron and Willis Johnson were listed among the students in primary grade of the local school at Bonner Springs, Kansas that December, and sister Bertha was listed as being in 5th grade. It seems the family had reunited there. But J.H. was back applying to return the boys to the orphanage by the end of that month and they were accepted there again on January 2, 1900. This time J.H. Johnson signed an agreement stating he allowed the Board of Trustees of the Charitable Institutions of the State of Kansas to apprentice, bind out, or adopt the three boys out to other people from the Soldiers' Orphans Home, as the Board may deem suitable, until the boys reached the age of majority. His reason for all three little boys to be returned to the orphanage was that he was "in very limited financial circumstances" and was "away from home a good deal of the time," was a widower with other children, and could not raise the three boys properly himself. "Two little daughters of this father are too young to take care of these boys" his petition asserted. [State Orphans' Home Records, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, KS]

In June of that year, 1900, the federal census-taker listed J.H. Johnson as a farmer living on a rented farm in Oxford Township, Johnson County, Kansas, growing fruit, with his two older sons, Harley, 18, and Otis, 17, his youngest child Ray, 4, and the two daughters, Bertha, 13, and Annie, 11, now old enough to take care of Ray and keep house.

On September 25, 1901, John Harden Johnson married Christina Curran. He was 45, she was 43. They had no children together, but she had a daughter, Mabel Curran, about age 15; she and John's daughter Annie socialized together. In the first week of that December, in Stilwell, Johnson County, Kansas "John Johnson fell from his wagon…and the wagon passing over one of his hands crushed several bones." [The Olathe News-Herald, Thursday, December 12, 1901, page 6]. A week later, on December 14, 1901, also in Stilwell, "John Johnson's house and nearly the entire contents were destroyed by fire on last Saturday morning; insured for six hundred dollars." [The Olathe Mirror, Thursday, December 19, 1901, page 7] It seems that after the fire the Johnsons then moved to a rented farm in Morse, Johnson County, Kansas until around June 1904. John's second marriage proved to be an unhappy one and John and Christina were divorced after about four years. J.H. moved to Olathe following the separation.

After his children were mostly grown and gone, he married a third wife, Martha P. "Mattie" Spates, in 1913; he was 57 and she was about 55 years old. The home and farm where they were living in Pleasant Valley near Morse was destroyed by a cyclone on June 1, 1917; she barely survived it. He had to sell off all his remaining farm equipment at a public auction and quit farming in 1918 as a result of losing everything again, this time from the tornado. This third marriage for John also did not succeed and John and Mattie were divorced a few years later.

J.H. Johnson tried living off odd jobs and tenant farming and moving around for awhile, and lived with youngest son Ray and his wife Marie and family in Kansas City, Kansas around the early 1930's. One of Ray's sons recalled seeing J.H. and another old man dancing a jig on the porch of his house: "Grandfather John H. Johnson lived with our family (Ray and Marie) until I was about 4 or 5 yrs old. He had a half-brother [Walter Raleigh Johnson] from Atchison, Ks. who came to visit him. They were on the front porch and from what my mother had to say later, they had a bottle of wine that they drank and one or the other challenged each other to do a jig and off they went having a great time demonstrating their agility. I thought it was great fun to see them but it apparently didn't go over with my Mom and as I found out later talked to Dad about, the result being that my grandfather moved from our house out to Uncle Willis's in Olathe Ks."

John Harden Johnson did not stay long with his son Willis and his wife, Ethel. He died at the infirmary of the Johnson County Poor Farm on December 21, 1933 of uremic poisoning (kidney disease). June Bork, granddaughter of Bertha Johnson Baker, wrote:

"John's last employment was in 1923 and he then lived with his son, Ray for a short time and various other places. At sometime during these years, John lived with his daughter, Anna Dougan and her family. He drank heavily and had a mean temper and was a miserable old man. Because of his attitude and his drinking, he was not welcome to live with any of his children and went to the poor farm where he died the night of 23 [sic; 21] December 1933 with uremia poisoning and urinary disease caused by enlarged prostrate [sic] glands over a long period of time. He was 78 years, 11 months and 20 days old. Son Harley came from Fruitland, Idaho and attended to John's burial in Monticello Cemetery. Harley was also the informant for the Death Certificate. My father, Franklin S. Baldwin wrote the Obituary … Bertha Johnson Baker paid her share of $20.55 to the Ruppleuis Funeral Home on 28 December for her father's funeral expenses. In later years, Ray and Bertha regretted sending him to the poor house (from old letters)." [The Johnsons and Their Connections, p. 68]

Obituary:

Mr. John Harden Johnson

Mr. John Harden Johnson was born at Waldron, Missouri, January 21, 1856. Later he moved to Monticello, Kansas, and made his home there. He was a carpenter by trade and built several houses around Monticello. He also was a farmer.

Mr. Johnson died Dec. 21, 1933 at Olathe, Kansas and is survived by ten children. Ezra O. Johnson, Portland, Oregon, Omar [Omer] M. Johnson, Kansas City, Kansas, Mrs. Walter F. Baker [Bertha May], Overland Park, Kansas, Mrs. Robert Dougan [Anna Mabel], Stanley, Kansas, Orla Johnson, Kansas City, Kansas, Ray M. Johnson, Kansas City, Missouri, Harley E. Johnson, Emmett, Idaho, Willis B. Johnson, Olathe, Kansas, Otis D. [W.] Johnson, Bucyrus, Kansas, Myron E. Johnson, Columbus, Ohio.

Funeral services were held at the Ruppelius Chapel at 1 o'clock Saturday, Dec. 24, 1933. Burial Monticello Cemetery. Mr. Elmer Breckenridge of Stanley, Kansas read the funeral services.

A note on burials:

A story was told by a family member that at one point in time "in the history of Monticello Methodist Church, there was a cemetery next to the church. The church is still [1999] located on the North side of Highway 10 in Johnson County, Ks. at about 97th Street, approximately half way between Olathe, Ks. and Bonner Springs, Ks. The graveyard was filling up next to the church and the church contracted with Grandpa Johnson [John Harden Johnson] to build coffins so that they could move the graveyard across the road to the South side where they established a new Monticello Cemetery. The church didn't have money to pay Grandpa Johnson for his carpentry work so an agreement was made to give him burial plots in exchange for his labor. This is the cemetery where he is buried along with his wife [Lois Smith Johnson] and one or two of their infant children [Ora and Edith Cordelia]. Uncle Willis [Johnson Sr.] is buried there as well as Aunt Ethel. To the East of their graves are [Lois] Iantha Smith's parents [as] well as other family members of the Smith clan. The Smiths lived on North of the cemetery and the church near a small town of Hol[l]iday, Ks....This cemetery also contains the remains of our great-grandfather John Johnson and his wife and a great Uncle Amos who died as a result of wounds he suffered in the [Civil] War."

A word of thanks: All the Johnsons of this family owe a great debt to June Baldwin Bork, author of The Johnsons and Their Connections (Apple Valley, California, 1993) for the loving collection and preservation of the facts and anecdotes and family stories that make such a narrative as this possible.