Ethelbert D. Johnson

As printed in 1901

ETHELBERT D. JOHNSON.

The subject of this sketch is not only a well-known business man of Webb City, Jasper county, Missouri, but is a native of the great commonwealth in which he is achieving an enviable material success. Mr. Johnson was born in Warrington, Warren county, Missouri. July 6, 1852, a son of Thomas W. and Eliza Jane ( Archer) Johnson. The family is of Scotch descent. His grandfather, Townson Johnson, was an agriculturist, who early located in North Carolina, and removed thence to Franklin county, Missouri, where he and his wife, who was Miss Rebecca Dyson, both lived out their days. Thomas W. Johnson was born in Franklin county, Missouri, in 1829, and died in Union, that county, April 16, 1876. During all his active years he was a wagon-maker. Eliza Jane Archer, who became his wife, was born in North Carolina, and in early life removed to Warren county, Missouri. She is still living in Franklin county, and was sixty-eight years of age on the 20th of September, 1901. Her father, Thomas D. Archer, a native of Virginia, married Nancy Cahall, who was of Scotch-Irish extraction.

The subject of this sketch attended the public schools at Union, Franklin county, Missouri, until he was about nineteen years old. then, after devoting himself for three months to special instruction in teaching, gave up the idea of being a pedagogue and accepted a position as manager of a livery business on a mail route. Later for a time he was inspector of railway cars at Kansas City, Missouri, for one of the great lines centering there. On the 2d of August, 1890, he went to Joplin, Jasper county, to accept a position as office man and warehouse man, and in 1894 he was promoted to the local agency of the Waters, Pierce Oil Company, at Webb City, a position which he has since held with much success.

On the 6th of March, 1877, Mr. Johnson married Mrs. Minnie E. (Gish) Ross, a daughter of William Gish, of Tipton. Moniteau county, Missouri, and they have one son, George F. Johnson, who is attending school and assisting his father as opportunity offers. Mr. Johnson is a member of the Woodmen of the World and of the Knights and Ladies of Security. He is a man of much-enterprise and public spirit, is not without political influence, and gives his aid eagerly to all movements promising the advancement of local interests.

As printed in The biographical record of Jasper County, Missouri (1901). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.