Susan Johnson: Melancholy Orphan

1820-1904
great-great-grandmother

3 sisters: Rhoda Johnson Green, Susan Johnson Carroll and Parthena Johnson Dike. Photo courtesy of Carol Hoefler of Alaska, wife of 4th cousin. 

       Susan Johnson was born October 12, 1820, in Hawkesbury, Canada, the daughter of William L. Johnson and Parthena Burch. (At the time of her birth, Hawkesbury was in Upper Canada, later Canada West and later southern Province of Ontario!) Susan was the fourth of 7 children, with siblings: Elizabeth (1810), Eden (1813), Nathaniel Reeder (about 1815), Rhoda S. (1825), William S. (about 1827) and Parthena (1830). Both parents were born in Vermont, but likely married in Canada. A magazine entitled “Earnest Christianity”, published in 1875, gave a description of her father William and compared him to his younger brother Abbott. “Abbott was larger than the average man, but William was almost gigantic. Abbott was constitutionally calm and moderate; William was vehement, ardent and demonstrative. William’s gifts and zeal were such as to qualify him for the class-leader’s, exhorter’s and local preacher’s offices early in his religious life… The elder brother grew the faster, but the younger, perhaps in the end, was the more matured Christian and preacher.” (Let’s all admit it… we know this man.) Our earliest known Johnson ancestor is Eden Johnson, Susan’s grandfather. 

      Susan’s father William died in January 1832 of consumption and her mother Parthena died in February 1835. So at the age of 14, Susan was an orphan. At the time, her 2 eldest siblings, Elizabeth and Eden, were married, so the younger children may have lived with them or with an aunt or uncle. Eden died in 1839 and Elizabeth died in 1840. Nathaniel married and remained in Canada. The four youngest children, Susan being the eldest, all moved to Washington and Chittenden counties in Vermont between 1837 and 1850, probably living with a Burch or Johnson aunt and uncle. Parthena, the youngest, came in 1847 and went to live with her married sister Susan.

      Susan Johnson married George B. Carroll in February 1846 in Williston, Vermont. In the Personal Notes section of a July 1879 Montpelier paper, comments are made about her fuchsia that stands 8 feet high, with 4-foot branches and numerous blossoms.

      After her husband George died in April, 1886, Susan continued to live with her brother-in-law, Pliny Carroll, and his family. In the spring of 1896, Susan and her sisters, Rhoda and Parthena, held a reunion in Waitsfield (or Warren), reflected in the photo above! The photo inspired additional research and I discovered that sister Rhoda had married Jacob Green, an undertaker, whose father had died in an insane asylum. When Jacob drowned himself in Lake Champlain, Rhoda won a $10,000 settlement from the insurance company, which increased her options! She worked as a nurse in Oakland, California, for almost 20 years, taking care of the 5 orphaned children of her son Warren, the only 1 of her 4 children to reach age 27. Sister Parthena married Alonzo Dike and lived most of her life in Stockholm, New York, not far from the St. Lawrence River. Local newspapers reported frequent visits to Susan from her sister, Rhoda, of Burlington, VT, and the daughter of her sister Parthena. When Parthena’s husband died in 1907, Rhoda appears to have moved in with her. Rhoda had no surviving children and Parthena’s one surviving son had moved west.

      Susan died on January 14, 1904, age 83, in Warren, Vermont, of capillary bronchitis and heart failure, and was buried in Irasville Cemetery, next to her husband. A short mention of her in a Montpelier paper said “she was much respected by a large circle of friends.”

      Susan Carroll seemed melancholy in both pictures that I had of her, so I explored what happened to her mysterious son Bert. Evidently, he went to the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory, in about 1879, to look for gold. In September 1880, Bert’s brother George brought him back to Iowa. Herbert was “almost without clothing when found at Rapid City, and considered by the people there insane.”  In Danbury, Iowa, Herbert thought he was a millionaire and thought he was in charge of his brother’s store. Herbert lived in 2 different mental hospitals, for a total of 53 years. When he was admitted to the second hospital, Clarinda Hospital, in 1888, the diagnosis was ‘melancholia – chronic delusional’. He appeared to have very good physical health, spent most of his time working as a gardener or at the dairy and appeared to be higher-functioning with more privileges than most residents. In June 2015, I visited Clarinda to put a rose on his grave and let him know he was understood and not forgotten.