George Bertrand Johnson

George Bertrand Johnson, the second child of Mary Jane Branson and Alonzo Diah Johnson, was born 19 October 1885 in Merced, Merced County, CA, where his parents had set up their home after having resided during the early 1880s in Mariposa County.

Alonzo Johnson ceased to be part of his wife and children’s lives by the late 1880s. As a result, George grew up in an unusual household arrangement -- stable and loving, but unusual nonetheless. Much of his childhood was spent residing in a boarding house owned by his mother and by his aunt, Nancy Anne Branson Harrington, whose husband Peter Harrington had died in early 1890. Aunt Nan was on site round the clock as cook and housekeeper, while mother Mary Jane worked full-time in a drygoods store and did the boarding house laundry in the evenings (and sometimes well into the night). George’s little sister Alice Bretelle Johnson lived on premises as well. Older brother Clarence was taken as the ward of another aunt, Theresa Branson Moore and her husband William Osborne Moore. Theresa and Will lived three doors down on the same street. While never lacking for companionship -- the boarding house was home to Nancy and her six children, Mary Jane and her younger two, a large slate of lodgers, and beginning in 1896, Nancy’s second husband John Napier -- George did not have a father or stepfather looking over his shoulder, and this may have had an influential effect on his personality. George became notorious for antics, including one infamous incident when he and some buddies stranded a carriage atop a building. (This would probably have been a carriage being worked on by his uncle, William McDonald, who was a Merced-based wheelwright.) This roguishness stood in contrast to the behavior of his brother Clarence, who became somewhat staid and mature beyond his years.

Blue-eyed George grew up to be a hair short of 5’8” tall. He left the Merced area upon reaching adulthood, no doubt eager for more a more exciting milieu. He ended up in the San Francisco Bay Area. The timing of his move is no longer clear, but 1905 or early 1906 fits the circumstantial indications. His brother Clarence moved at either the same time -- the brothers perhaps heading off as a duo for the first year or two -- or perhaps George followed in Clarence’s wake.

The Bay Area became a good place to find jobs after the great earthquake of 18 April 1906 because so much infrastructure needed to be rebuilt. George may or may not have taken advantage. He tended toward retail salemanship and office jobs rather than hands-on labor. This penchant may help explain why he remained in the East Bay for the rest of his life, whereas Clarence moved back to the San Joaquin Valley by 1908 or so.

In the 1910 census, George appears as a single man living as one of two boarders in the home of Charles M. Welch. George is described in that census as a salesman in a grocery store. (This was also Clarence’s occupation in that census, though Clarence was in Stockton.)

About 1915, George married Elizabeth Glenn Bennett. One of the three children of Roger W. Bennett and Frances Cornelia Strader, Elizabeth had been born in January, 1893. Though she had come into the world in Nebraska, by 1900 her family had come to Oakland, where she had been raised from then on. And Oakland is where she and George remained during their five-year marriage. Throughout much of -- or even all of -- this period George was a foreman/timekeeper at Bethlehem Shipyards in Alameda, a timekeeper being a labor supervisor who would hand out the work assignments to the hourly-wage workers, as in the construction crew members, and keep track of how much time they put in per shift. In the late 1910s, huge numbers of Bay Area men worked in the various shipyards, a number which grew even more robust as America entered World War I. This is another way of saying George probably enjoyed a fair amount of financial security and was able to maintain a comfortable, spacious residence. Perhaps by inclination, he chose to remain a renter rather than an owner, a practice he may have continued to follow over his whole life, but his accommodations were ample. The Johnsons had enough room that fellow timekeeper George Fox and his wife Elizabeth moved in for a while. Another lodger for a brief time right at the end of 1919 and into early 1920 was George’s brother-in-law Gifford M. Fowle, who had come up from Santa Barbara County to begin a new job with Southern Pacific Railroad. Once Bretelle and the kids moved up as well, the Fowles settled into a home in Berkeley.

As the events just mentioned were occurring, Elizabeth Bennett Johnson was in the midst of the pregnancy that would result in George’s only biological child. The couple had not earlier had children, though there had certainly been enough time to do so and enough financial stability to justify it. Elizabeth may have suffered from some health issues. And it might be that by becoming pregnant the one time, she took on more than her body could deal with. George Bertrand Johnson, Jr. was born 19 May 1920, and Elizabeth died 24 June 1920. The short interval between the birth and her demise suggests a death caused by health issues related to the pregnancy. However, it must be mentioned that in fact, the cause of death does not appear in any documents consulted so far. She could have perished of some other cause. For example, May and June, 1920 saw a burst in the number of deaths in Oakland due to the Spanish Flu, it being one of the rare types of influenza that was not limited to the cold months of the year, and Elizabeth might have been among the victims.

Inasmuch as the early 20th Century was not an era when men took care of infants on their own, George agreed to let Bessie’s sister Grace adopt George Jr. The boy was raised in Los Angeles by his aunt and by his maternal grandmother, Frances. (No doubt with the occasional assistance of his other grandmother, Mary Jane Branson Johnson, who lived in the area.) Father and son stayed in touch, but it does not appear George ever resumed formal custody -- Grace was otherwise childless -- except that such a custody arrangement may have become necessary in February, 1938, when Frances Strader Bennett passed away. By that point, Grace and her husband Park Boyce were also deceased, and George, Sr. was the only parental figure left to look after George, Jr. until he turned eighteen.

George married Bessie Marie Reisinger in 1923. George’s first wife Elizabeth had been nicknamed Bessie, and even appears under that name in the 1910 census. That both of George’s wives were known as Bessie eventually led to some confusion in a genealogy or two. Bessie Reisinger was not, however, an Elizabeth nicknamed Bessie, but simply Bessie, period. A daughter of Herbert C. Reisinger and his wife Ella J., she had been born 27 March 1887 in Pennsylvania. Her family had moved to Alameda County in the late 1800s. She had been married to William Harvey Porterfield, a farmer and lifelong resident of Cloverdale, Sonoma County, CA, from late 1907 to the early 1920s. It was probably in 1923, as part of making a fresh start, that George’s residence shifted from Oakland a mile or two west to the island town of Alameda. This home, located at 1509 Morton Street, became the site of many a family gathering in the years to come. George and Bessie regularly welcomed Bretelle and Gifford and their kids -- now that the latter family had come back to the East Bay for good -- and first cousin Nancy McDonald Price and her husband Roy, who had settled in Oakland even earlier than George had. The three sets of homeowners served as hosts of holiday feasts in rotation. George was often the “life of the party,” carrying on with lively stories and jokes. Another first cousin, Josephine Harrington Baysinger, with whom he had grown up in the boarding house, lived only a few blocks away. Her son Robert Seafield McDonald and his family lived even closer at Josephine’s former home at 1442 Morton Street. George was called “Uncle George” by Robert’s kids, despite technically being a cousin, and is remembered as being an almost daily part of their lives when they were growing up.

For all his reputation as a rascal, George seems to have relished the role of family man, and it is a tragedy of his life that his one biological child -- he had none with Bessie Reisinger -- lived apart from him the majority of the time. His boisterousness at the gatherings may have resulted in part from the presence of George Jr., up from southern California for the special occasions. He did have some experience being a parent day-to-day, though, as his stepson Herbert J.W. Porterfield, born 26 June 1908, lived with George and Bessie from his mid-teens into his early twenties.

Family members joked that George must have been a bootlegger because he was able to produce bottles of wine at parties during Prohibition. But his ability to do so is easily explained. For decades he operated a service station at the corner of Everett Street and Santa Clara Avenue in Alameda. He dealt with the public day in and day out and it was inevitable that he “knew the right people” to make life better; he may even have accepted such things as wine from customers who couldn’t otherwise pay for their automobile maintenance or their gasoline.

Bessie died 24 March 1957. Herbert Porterfield died 24 July 1969. George survived them both, passing away 27 May 1977 at age ninety-one. All three deaths occurred in Alameda County. George was one of the last of the grandchildren of John and Martha Branson to pass away. (Ivan Branson incorrectly states in Bones of the Bransons that George was still alive in 1978.)

Child of George Bertrand Johnson with Elizabeth Glenn Bennett

George Bertrand Johnson, Jr.

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