SNGF—Which Ancestor Lived the Shortest Life?

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!

Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is:

Which of your known ancestors lived the shortest life?  Consider only the last eight generations and those ancestors with a known birth and death date.  Do you know the cause of death?  Was there an obituary?  How many children did s/he have?  How did you figure this out?

Here is mine:

As I traveled aboard the Lake Shore Limited after leaving Boston, my first thought was to list all the infant deaths in the family but realized that none of them would have been my ancestors. DUH!

 Nell Hutson Johnston did not live long but did give birth to six children, five of whom lived to adulthood. She was just thirty-one years old at her death. Nell was born on 8 February 1888 perhaps in Comanche County, Texas. She married Thomas Newton Johnston on 6 June 1907 in Comanche County. She died on 15 July 1919.[1]

I do not know much about her. I never found a death certificate and I searched page by page in the Comanche County death records and the death certificates at the state level. If she had died somewhere else, they likely would have been a state copy.

The notice in the newspapers did not say much. She died on a Monday at the family residence in Comanche and was buried the next day at Union cemetery. There was no mention of cause.[2]

A cousin of my grandfather, Polly Wiggins, attended Baylor University in the late 1930s and took a genetics course. I have copies of one of her projects where she recorded names, birth/death dates, and genetic traits of different members of the Johnston-Hutson-Selman-Wiggins families. For Nell Johnston, Polly recorded that she died of typhoid fever and that the date of death was disputed. As we can see, 1919 is the correct year, not 1917. Polly also had her birth in 1889, not 1888, as written on the tombstone[3]. In 1900, Nell’s birth was listed as February 1889, so perhaps that is the correct date. One of her parents likely gave the enumerator the information.[4]

Tom and Nell’s children were:

• An infant born in 1909 who did not live
• Beryl Johnston (1909-1986)
• Mildred Johnston (1911-1986)
• Tom J Johnston (1912-1973)
• Hal Wayne Johnston (1915-1962)
• Luther Edwin Johnston (1918-1970)

My husband has an ancestor who was only twenty-eight when she died, but I’ll save her for another go-around of this theme.

---

[1] Find A Grave, database with images (http://www.findagrave.com), Memorial# 64910690, Union Cemetery, Nell L. Johnston, photo of tombstone by Ken Jones.

[2] “Mrs. Tom Johnston Dead,” Comanche Chief, 18 Jul 1919, clipping, p. unkn.

[3] Genetic sheet for Hutson Family, completed by Polly Wiggins, class assignment for Baylor University, 1938; copy in author’s collection.

[4] 1900 US. Census, Comanche Co, Texas, Justine Precinct no. 2, ED 29, sht 4a & b, household 65, Peter Hutson. 

Copyright © 2023 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.