George M. Johnson
George M. Johnson was born on 27 November 1889 in Virginia, the eldest son of Cas Johnson and Causby Kelley. His parents farmed in the Clintwood country of Dickenson County, in the far southwest of the state, and they raised eleven children there. George grew up to mine coal.
His first wife was Belva Lockwood Mullins, born at Clintwood on 10 January 1890, a daughter of Preston Mullins and Martha Ann Phipps. They had four children: Elsie, born about 1909, Earl about 1913, Ezra about 1916 and Edna about 1918. In October 1918 the influenza epidemic reached Dickenson County. Belva died of it at Clintwood on 20 October 1918, aged twenty-eight, and was buried in the Mullins family graveyard at Isom. George was left with four children, the youngest a baby.
Six months later, on 2 April 1919, he married again at Isom. His bride was Rosy Stanley, twenty-two, a daughter of James A. Stanley and Amie Mullins of Clintwood. The clerk gave George's age as twenty-nine and his parents as Cas and Causby Johnson. In January 1920 the census found the family at Clintwood: George, 30, Rosy, 21, Elsie, 10, Earl, 6, Ezera, 3, and Edna, 1. Their own first child, Ruby Helen, was born at Clintwood on 11 March 1920.
The family went over Pine Mountain to the coal town of Jenkins in Letcher County, Kentucky, where Nona Marie was born on 21 September 1921 and Virnel Miles on 25 March 1923. They were back in Clintwood district when Rosy fell ill in October 1924. She died of blood poisoning on 26 October, after three days, aged twenty-seven, and was buried two days later. George was a widower for the second time at thirty-four, now with seven children between two dead wives.
He kept them together. In 1930 he was living at West Whitesburg in Letcher County, a widower of 41, with Elsie, now married and called Winemiller, and her baby son Lawrence, Earl, 17, Ezra, 14, Edna, 12, Hellen, 10, Nona, 8, and Virnel, 7. His father Cas died at Jenkins in January 1933 after a fall from a truck.
On 30 January 1937, at forty-seven, George married Nannie Martin Jones at Wise County, Virginia. She was forty-nine, a daughter of John Jones and Malinda Scott. On 13 March 1948 he married Nannie Jones again, this time at Whitesburg, Kentucky. In 1954 his son Virnel's obituary gave his home as Holland, Michigan.
He came back to Jenkins to die. On 24 May 1962 he went into the Sharon Heights Hospital there with a cerebral hemorrhage, and he died on 2 June, aged seventy-two. His death certificate calls him a miner and a widower, and his son gave the particulars. He was buried on 4 June in the Whitaker family cemetery at Payne Gap, where his son Virnel and his daughter Nona also lie.
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Cite: Heirology, "George M. Johnson (1889-1962)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/george-m-johnson-1889-1962-4aed40.