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. 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.

According to “official” family history, Alonzo Johnson died in a mining accident in the late 1880s or early 1890s -- perhaps as early as 1887, when Mary Jane was pregnant with third child Alice Bretelle Johnson. At least one of Mary Jane’s nieces gives a different account in genealogy notes written many decades later, claiming that Alonzo abandoned his family. Whatever may have actually happened, Clarence finished growing up without the presence of his biological father.

Mary Jane was both beautiful and popular, but she did not marry again. Whether it is true that Alonzo spurned her or not, the marriage had apparently been unsatisfactory enough that she was determined to get by on her own. 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 Mary Jane and her two younger children lived with Nancy and Nancy’s many children in the boarding house, 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. 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 -- had evaporated, so Nancy and Mary Jane closed up shop. By 1906, the last two of Nancy’s children, Irene and Nina, as well as Mary Jane’s youngest, Bretelle, had become married women. They left Merced. By then, nearly all other members of the family had left the town behind as well, the main exceptions being those connected with Phoebe Branson McDonald, another of Clarence’s many aunts.

Clarence was part of the exodus. Like many young men of Merced, he may have become employed as a railroad worker not long after the turn of the century. This would surely have meant Southern Pacific Railroad, one of the Merced’s main employers, but soon another job opportunity might have developed. Clarence's first cousin Josephine Harrington, the eldest of the girls who had been raised at the boarding house, had married Charles Sweden McDonald, a civil engineer and supervisor for Southern Pacific. Charles became one of part of the fledgling Western Pacific Railroad when that company was founded in 1903. He would have been in a position to give Clarence a job. One way or another, Clarence became based in Oakland, Alameda County, CA, where both S.P. and W.P. were active. His brother George and sister Bretelle, the latter with her new husband Gifford M. Fowle, likewise made this Merced-to-East Bay transition, though they might not have arrived until just after the great earthquake of 18 April 1906, when suddenly lots of workers were needed to repair infrastructure. Gifford is known to have worked in the Bay Area for Southern Pacific at that juncture, part of a long career with that company. Clarence, though, may not in fact have come due to a railroad job. He is listed as a clerk in the 1906 voter register. Unless this means depot clerk, he was working in a store.

Clarence’s presence in the East Bay allowed him to become acquainted with Lillian Elvira Brown, 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. By the time the Browns had become Californians, Lillian was already part of the household, having been born 25 August 1886. Only the youngest of the seven children, Alice, had been born after the migration. In Oakland -- as he had been in Fonda -- Oscar was a carpenter, and sometimes a contractor.

A precise wedding date for Clarence and Lillian has not surfaced, but the early summer of 1906 would fit the circumstantial indications perfectly. The couple spent the first small fragment of their married lives in Oakland. In April, 1907, while still in Alameda County, they became parents of their first child, Ruth Martha Johnson. The East Bay would go on to serve as a long-term place of residence for quite a few members of the extended clan who had come of age in Merced, including Clarence’s brother George and, after an interruption, his sister Bretelle, but Clarence apparently missed the San Joaquin Valley. He and Lillian moved back while Ruth was still a toddler. At first the family took shelter with Josephine and Charles McDonald at their home in Stockton. The McDonalds had come to Stockton in 1905 or 1906, so that Charles could be based near the surveying and construction of the Western Pacific lines through the Sacramento area. The 1910 census places Clarence, Lillian, and little Ruth as boarders at the home at 16 N. Union Street. This means that as of April, 1910, Clarence and Lillian had not yet come to the place they would spend the bulk of their adult lives, which was Manteca, farther south in San Joaquin County. However, they may have stayed in Stockton only a few more weeks. Lillian’s 1967 obituary states that it was in 1910 that she and Clarence moved to Manteca. Chances are they did so just before the birth of second child Lloyd Russell Johnson in June, but it is possible they lingered into late summer or into the autumn so that Josephine could help Lillian with the challenge of the new baby. While in Stockton, Clarence worked as a grocery store salesman.

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 Anne 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. Her sister Susan Brown Rourke had passed away in 1909, leaving her with only one surviving sibling, and 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, 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 was the chief civil engineer on the project, and 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 also 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. The engineering experience -- engineering as surveying and excavation -- was undoubtedly what allowed him to get a position with a local 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 to 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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