George Bertrand Johnson, Jr.

George Bertrand Johnson, Jr., son of George Bertrand Johnson and Elizabeth Glenn Bennett, was born 19 May 1920 in Alameda County, CA, either in Oakland or in the adjacent town of Alameda.

George’s mother died when he was five weeks old. He was subsequently adopted by his mother’s sister, Grace Boyce, who raised him in Los Angeles County with the help of her mother (George’s grandmother) Frances Cornelia Strader Bennett. The 1930 census shows them sharing a household in Hermosa Beach.

The adoption and relocation meant that George grew up without the daily presence of his father or any of his father’s siblings or any of his first cousins on his father’s side, inasmuch as the latter all resided in either central or northern California. George, as far as can be determined, never lived anywhere but in Los Angeles County once he arrived there as a little boy. The only Branson clan relative who lived close by was his grandmother Mary Jane Branson Johnson, who died when he was twenty-nine. While George Jr. did regularly visit his father and did not entirely disappear from his paternal family’s sphere, enough of a disconnect persisted that relatively little about him was recorded by, or in, the sources used in the creation of this website. Given his extremely common surname, it has been difficult to find out more through public documents.

George was married for the first time on 2 March 1940. His bride’s last name was Crawford. The couple became parents of a daughter in the early part of the decade. (Name and precise birthdate withheld.) A picture of the girl exists in the archive. She appears to be about one year old in the image, and is being held by her eighty-year-old great-grandma, Mary Jane Branson Johnson, in front of what may have been Mary Jane’s front porch. This early marriage ended in divorce. George married at least one more time and had at least one more child, another daughter, whose existence was noted in a conversation that occurred 30 September 2006 with the elderly widow of George’s first cousin Voyle Johnson Fowle. This source did not recall the girl’s name, nor the name of her mother.

George enlisted in the military 5 December 1941. His enlistment application indicates his occupation at that time was automobile serviceman. This skill may have been a result of his father’s influence, inasmuch as George Sr. owned a gas station in the Bay Area.

According to the California Death Index, George died 15 August 1987 in Sunland, Los Angeles County, CA.

Descendants of George Bertrand Johnson

Details of Generation Five, the great-great-grandchildren of John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley, are kept off-line to guard the privacy of living individuals. However, as mentioned above, the archive lists one daughter.

To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Branson/Ousley Family main page, click here.