John Clarence Diah Johnson (Clarence Johnson)

John Clarence Diah Johnson, eldest of the three children of Mary Jane Branson and Alonzo Diah Johnson, was born 11 May 1883, probably at the Washington Mine Complex at Quartzburg, Mariposa County, CA, though his mother may have chosen to give birth at her parents’ home, Grasshopper Ranch, on acreage that adjoined the Washington Mine parcel. Martha Ousley Branson was well-versed in serving as a midwife, and it is logical Mary Jane would have wanted her mother to guide her through the birthing process. However, there is no documentation that cites the birthplace with precison -- for example, it is just “California” in census entries. It is therefore possible he was born after Mary Jane and Alonzo had established a home in Merced, Merced County, CA.

Known by family and friends as Clarence Johnson, he only used John in formal circumstances, and even some public records show him simply as Clarence. The second middle name, middle name, Diah, was a family name flowing down from the Johnson side and he seems to have rarely if ever used it as an adult.

Clarence’s father was barely part of his life. Alonzo worked as a miner at various locales and only sporadically stayed in the family home in Merced. By the late 1880s, after the births of Clarence’s younger siblings George and Bretelle, he stopped coming home altogether. He was so estranged from his wife and kids the news of his death in British Columbia in September of 1898 did not even reach Merced until 4½ months later. Mary Jane chose to rear her offspring as a single mother. She worked full time at a dry-goods store in Merced, and at night did the laundry for the boarding house that she and her sister Nancy owned and operated. While George and Bretelle lived in the boarding house with along with Mary Jane and with Nancy and Nancy’s many children, Clarence became part of the household of his otherwise childless aunt Theresa Branson Moore. Theresa and husband William Osborne Moore finished raising Clarence and may have formally adopted him, though if they did adopt him, he kept his Johnson surname. Theresa and Will’s home was only three doors down from the boarding house, so Clarence was never far from his mother and siblings.

Whether it was because he was forced to “be the man of the family” from an early age, or because he had the benefit of Theresa and Will’s foster parentage, Clarence developed into an admirable and upstanding young man. This contrasted with his brother George, who ultimately became a wonderful man but who, in his youth, could apparently could have benefitted from extra paternal guidance and discipline, and became known as quite a rascal.

The early years of the 20th Century brought big changes to the Branson clan of Merced. More and more of the Harrington and Johnson children came of age and began their independent lives. This brought an end to one of the prime reasons for the existence of the boarding house -- to provide a setting where the sisters could raise their children while simultaneously earning income -- so Nancy and Mary Jane closed up shop. Nancy and all her children left Merced at various junctures between 1898 and 1904. Clarence was among those who left as well. He headed for Oakland, Alameda County, CA, arriving no later than the beginning of 1906. George made a similar move at about the same time. It is even possible the brothers left in tandem and once getting to Oakland, may have shared living quarters until they became established in their new milieu. Their sister Bretelle’s boyfriend Gifford M. Fowle also moved to the East Bay in this time frame, with Bretelle following some time after she graduated from Merced High School in June, 1906. (Bretelle attended high school at a later age than the typical student, perhaps due to health reasons, perhaps due to having had to work as a teenager.)

Once in the East Bay, Clarence found a job as a store clerk. This highly public occupation may have been what brought him into an acquaintance with Oakland girl Lillian Elvira Brown. Lillian was a daughter of Oscar Elisha Brown and Annette Potter. Oscar and Annette, both natives of New York, had started their family while residing in Nebraska, but by the mid-1870s had established themselves in the town of Fonda, Pocahontas County, IA. They had remained in Fonda until moving to Oakland in the late 1880s or the early 1890s, arriving some time before, and perhaps years before, the 1893 birth of final child Alice. In Oakland, Oscar was a carpenter and sometimes a contractor, just as he had been back in Honda. Lillian, fifth of the six known children (a tally that does not count one who died in infancy), had been born 25 August 1886 while the household was still in Iowa, but became a Californian at such a young age she probably considered the Golden State her “real” home.

Clarence and Lillian were married 12 May 1906. The event took place in Merced, but the pair began their married lives in Oakland. In April, 1907, while still in Alameda County, they became parents of their first child, Ruth Martha Johnson.

While the East Bay would go on to serve as a long-term place of residence for quite a few members of the extended clan, including Clarence’s brother George and, after an interruption, his sister Bretelle, Clarence and Lillian left for good by no later than the beginning of 1910. A precipitating event may have been the death of Lillian’s sister Susan Brown Rourke in October, 1909. Grief may have dimmed Oakland’s appeal.

Though the move away put Clarence at a distance from his siblings and his mother, it brought him firmly back within the daily lives of many of the other relatives he had known in childhood in Merced. The first reconnection was with his first cousin Mary Josephine Harrington, who with her husband Charles McDonald and sons were living in Stockton, San Joaquin County, CA, having arrived there in 1905 or 1906. The McDonalds had earlier taken in cousin Inez Branson for a year while she had attended teaching school in Stockton. Now they opened up their home again to Clarence, Lillian, and little Ruth. The Johnsons happened to be there in April, 1910 when the census was taken, and were enumerated at the McDonald residence at 16 N. Union Street.

Though Clarence had found work as a grocery clerk while in Stockton, he and Lillian preferred to make their long-term home farther south in San Joaquin County in Manteca. They made this move some time during the calendar year 1910, and probably before the birth of son Lloyd Russell Johnson in June. At first, the Johnson home in Manteca was in the town itself. Clarence once again found work as a merchant and/or clerk. The appeal of the community had very much to do with family connections. Manteca and the farmland around it was where Nancy Anna Branson and the majority of her children had settled after moving from Merced. Several of Clarence’s first cousins were also there by then, including most of the Harrington girls. Soon many more relatives would descend upon the vicinity. These included his uncle Thomas Branson and many of his offspring -- Thomas’s son Hugh McErlane Branson and daughter Alice Branson Williams were Manteca-based for decades. Most important, the arrivals would soon include Clarence’s foster parents, Theresa and Will Moore. Lillian Johnson must have appreciated having her husband’s kinfolk in such abundance. The death of her sister Susan had left her with only one surviving sibling, and then her father would perish in 1915. Lillian did not have the option of surrounding herself with her own blood relations.

Through the 1910s, steady employment was a challenge. The economy of America was not great during the mid-1910s, and on at least one occasion -- in 1917 -- Clarence left home in order to earn money. He went to work for Western Pacific Railroad, which was by then deep into construction of its claim-to-fame route through the Feather River canyon in the northern Sierra Nevada range. Charles McDonald, who had been with Western Pacific for many years, was the chief civil engineer on the project. He was in a position to give jobs to relatives. The image of Clarence shown at upper left was captured at Indian Falls at a Western Pacific work camp. It was included in a photo album assembled by Robert Seafield McDonald, son of Charles and Josephine, who worked on the Feather River construction project as a teenager. The album is filled with pictures of the camps, the railway construction, and some of the co-workers Robert labored next to. Another example is the photo below:

Western Pacific did not keep its hold on Clarence long. He had become too rooted in Manteca. The railroad gig did however tide the household over long enough for Clarence to obtain one of his better employment situations. This was with San Joaquin Irrigation Company of Manteca. He may have been their employee even before leaving to work in Feather River Canyon, but his role was limited to clerking. He came back armed with experience in civil engineering, i.e. he had a knowledge of surveying and excavation of value to an irrigation company. By the end of 1919 he had worked his way up to foreman. He kept his position with the firm thereafter, though he shifted from engineer and foreman back to the office side as an accountant. The steady, good pay finally allowed Clarence to achieve the long-sought goal of obtaining a parcel of farmland near his relatives outside of Manteca. This was in the Summer Home district just east of town, known in voter registers as Cowell Precinct. Any income derived from the acreage did not measure up to the day job, which Clarence made sure to hold on to, but having the land represented newfound security. It is no coincidence that it was at this point Clarence and Lillian decided they could successfully expand their family. They were both in the latter half of their thirties and they could not have waited much longer to do so. The third of their three children, Lois Annette Johnson, was born in late 1922.

Lois was just a toddler by the time that her older sister Ruth began to spread her wings. Part of Ruth’s initial reach toward freedom included a phase of semi-independence boarding with Bretelle and Gifford Fowle in Berkeley, CA. Esta Jane Fowle, Bretelle’s daughter, recalls Ruth as somewhat “flighty.” This is as good a description as any to explain why Ruth’s first marriage did not last. By 1930, Ruth was back home on the farm with her parents and with a 2½-year-old daughter, Phyllis Marie Wampler, and her former husband Guy W. Wampler was gone for good. Ruth and Phyllis would remain for several more years, until Ruth married Howard F. Akins in the mid-1930s.

Will Moore died in 1931. Clarence was no doubt a comfort to his foster mother in her period of grief, but as it happened, he only had about nine months to serve in that role. Clarence himself passed away 18 April 1932. Records show he perished in Stockton, which probably means San Joaquin General Hospital. He was laid to rest in Park View Cemetery, San Joaquin County, near the grave of Will Moore -- Theresa would eventually be buried on site as well. It is not known why Clarence perished so young.

Lillian was surely stunned by the deaths, which included not only those of Will and Clarence, but of her own mother Annette, who died in early October, 1931, in the midst of the awful stretch. Annette had only recently come to Manteca from San Jose, where she had lived for many years. One would think Lillian might have resorted to marrying again to help her get through the decades to come, but she never did so. Through much of her widowhood, she continued to live in Manteca. For five years or so, she may have, with Lloyd’s help, tried to keep the farm. Voter registers continue to show her at the same P.O. Box that she and Clarence had used prior to his death. However, a 1937 Manteca city directory shows her at 604 W. Yosemite, not on a farm but in town -- this was her mother-in-law Theresa Branson Moore’s home, suggesting Lillian and her youngsters took refuge with the elderly widow. (This would have been a mutually beneficial arrangement, as Theresa is known to have been frail by the 1930s.) Whichever spot was home, Lillian had the company of her offspring. Lois, of course, was there because she was still a child, but Lloyd lived with her, too. Ruth (with Phyllis) was there off and on. Finally in the late 1930s, a new place had to be found; it was at this point that Theresa gave up the Yosemite Avenue place and moved to the nearby community of Lathrop. Ruth, who had been gone for a brief interval in the mid-1930s while married to Howard Akins, found a living situation next door to the old Johnson farm for herself and Phyllis. Lillian, Lloyd, and Lois moved a little farther off, though remaining within the same election precinct. By the early 1940s, Lois established her independent life. Lloyd does not seem to have done so, remaining with Lillian in Manteca well into the 1950s. Finally, in 1957, Lillian moved to Stockton. She passed away at a hospital in Stockton 22 May 1967. Her remains were placed with those of Clarence at Park View.

Children of John Clarence Diah Johnson and Lillian Elvira Brown

Ruth Martha Johnson

Lloyd Russell Johnson

Lois Annette Johnson

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