George Bertrand
Johnson
George Bertrand Johnson, the second child of Mary Jane Branson
and Alonzo Diah Johnson, was born 19
October 1885. The birth probably occurred in Merced, CA, but Mariposa County is a candidate, as is
New Mexico or Arizona, where his father is rumored to have gone in search of a mining job, and where
further rumor says Mary Jane went to be with him. The exact whereabouts and nature of Alonzo and Mary Jane’s
lives during the mid-1880s is hazy now.
What is clear is that Alonzo Johnson ceased to be part of his wife and children’s lives by the late 1880s, either because he died or because he abandoned his family. As a result, George grew up in somewhat unstable circumstances. 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 Osborn 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 after 1895, Nancy’s second husband John Napier -- George endured key years without a father figure. This may have had an influential effect on his personality. George became notorious for antics such as stranding carriages atop buildings. (Perhaps these were carriages being worked on by his uncle, William McDonald, who was a Merced-based wheelwright.) This was a sharp contrast to the behavior of his brother Clarence, who became somewhat staid and mature beyond his years.
George 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, probably coming at first in order to take advantage of the many job opportunities resulting from the need to rebuild the infrastructure of the area after the huge earthquake of April, 1906. Southern Pacific was bringing large numbers of employees from Merced -- a big SP company town -- to the area for their part of that restoration effort, and this might well have been George's employer at this point. The same impetus brought Clarence Johnson and Gifford M. Fowle, the new husband of Bretelle Johnson, to the area as well.
The rebuilding went swiftly. The jobs evaporated. Clarence and his wife Lillian moved to Stockton and Bretelle and Gifford moved to Redlands, but George had apparently fallen in love with the the East Bay. He never left.
From 1906 until the early 1920s, Oakland seems to have been his town of residence. He appears there in the 1910 census 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. Few genealogical facts are known about her other than what can be gleaned from George’s 1918 World War I draft registration card, which was filed 12 September 1918, and from the Federal Census of 1 January 1920. The former confirms that Elizabeth was his wife and the latter provides her birth year -- 1893 -- and her birthplace -- Nebraska. Both documents show that the couple lived in Oakland. The census shows George (listed under the name G.B. Johnson) and Elizabeth living as renters right next door to Gifford Fowle, who had just come back to the area to work for Southern Pacific again. The census was recorded just before Bretelle and the kids finished packing up the family home in Santa Barbara County (where they had been for about five years) to rejoin Gifford.
George became the father of a son, George Bertrand Johnson, Jr., on 19 May 1920. When the baby was barely more than five weeks old -- on 24 June 1920 -- Elizabeth died. The cause of her death is not known, but the timing hints it was a consequence of the birth. Inasmuch as the early 20th Century was not an era when men took care of infants on their own, George agreed to let Elizabeth’s sister Grace Boyce adopt George Jr. The boy was raised in Los Angeles by his aunt and by his maternal grandmother, Frances Bennett. Father and son stayed in touch, but it does not appear George ever resumed formal custody.
George married Bessie Marie Reisinger in 1923 -- a Bess to take the place of his Elizabeth. Bessie had been born 27 March 1887 in Pennsylvania. She had been married to William H. 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 became the site of many a family gathering. 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. He 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 roguish qualities, 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 -- 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 Bessie was the mother of a son from the earlier marriage -- Herbert J.W. Porterfield, born 26 June 1908, who lived with George and Bessie 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. What is true is that he held a variety of jobs. His draft card has him as a foreman and timekeeper at Bethlehem Shipbuilders in Alameda. In the 1920 census, his occupation is described as laborer in a shipyard. His niece Esta Jane Fowle recalls that one of his longterm means of income was as a gasoline station operator, which is confirmed by the 1930 census.
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
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