Ernest Johnston
Our great-grandfather Ernest Will Johnston was born 27 February 1879 in Arlington, Tennessee as the fourth son to 2nd-great-grandparents Joseph E. and Mary Joice (Mercer) Johnston. Ernest’s father, Joe, was listed in census records as a preacher and farmer, who was born in North Carolina.
Joseph and Mary Johnston
Our 2nd-great-grandfather Joseph was born 26 October 1848 in probably Orange, North Carolina to John R. and Eliza Johnston, judging from census data and unverified information on findagrave.com. Joseph’s father was a farmer. Joseph married our 2nd-great-grandmother Mary Joice Mercer (16 September 1853 – 5 February 1914) on 31 August 1871 in Fayette, Tennessee, according to Tennessee marriage records.
Joseph is listed as a pastor at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Ozark, Arkansas as of circa 1890, however census data indicates Joseph was living in Golden City, Missouri with his wife and six of their younger children.
Joesph died on 22 April 1909 and was buried in Ozark at Highland Cemetery. Mary died on 5 February 1914 and was buried next to her husband.
Hattie Fleeman
Our great-grandmother Hattie Fleeman was born 3 June 1883 in Arkansas. Her father Marion Fleeman died when Hattie was approximately 16 years old, leaving her to help support her surviving mother, Mary Ursula Fleeman, along with her four younger siblings, judging from census data.
Marriage and children
Ernest popped up in Arkansas with records of his marriage to Hattie Fleeman on 11 February 1903. It remains unclear when he left Tennessee, but just before his marriage, he was living in Haileyville, Indian Territory, Oklahoma (only 130 miles away from Ozark, Arkansas). According to census data, Ernest and Hattie stayed in the general area until the early 1920s.
Hattie gave birth to their first daughter, our grandmother Harriet, in probably the Haileyville area in 1905, although a birth record is unavailable. Hattie had one more daughter, Sula, born in approximately 1915. Before the birth of their second daughter, Ernest in 1912 enlisted in the U.S. Army in Mobile, Alabama into the “22 Rec. Company” (possibly a recruiting company). According to army records, this was his second enlistment, with his first enlistment ending 22 December 1911. Hattie meanwhile worked as a music teacher in Chelsea, Oklahoma, according to census data.
Hattie seemed to be quite the historian and genealogist herself! She researched and submitted several documents of her father Marion’s Civil War service to the Daughters of the Confederacy and her mother’s Carter lineage to the Daughters of the American Revolution for ancestors John Champ Carter and Col. Fielding Lewis. These fascinating links to Revolutionary War service and amazingly to President George Washington can be found on Marion and Ursula Fleeman’s page.
Divorce
At some point between 1920 and 1930, Hattie and Ernest divorced, and Sula continued to live with her mother. To make a living after the divorce, Hattie worked as Head Matron at a girls dorm in Clarksville, Johnson County, Arkansas. To probably make ends meet, she had five boarders living in her house, to include her assistant matron, the assistant’s two kids, and two additional unidentified boarders, all women.
As of 1930, Ernest was married to a woman named Murral, who was 38 years old at the time. She also appeared to have had a previous marriage. The two lived in Dallas, Texas where Ernest worked as a “commercial traveler” in the ladies ready-to-wear industry. Within the next ten years, Ernest and Murral moved to Blytheville, Arkansas where Ernest worked as a salesman with a listed income of $1200, probably per year, according to census data.
Ernest died in 1954 and was buried in Beach, North Dakota. Hattie died in Little Rock, Arkansas in October 1970.
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