Douglas H C Johnston
Douglas Hancock Cooper Johnston, son of Col. John Johnston was very prominent in Oklahoma history. Johnston County in southeastern Oklahoma is named for him.
This article appeared in " The Spur of Phoenix, the Newsletter of Clan Johnston/e in America, Vol. IV, June 1980, #2.
GOVERNOR DOUGLAS HANCOCK COOPER JOHNSTON OF THE OKLAHOMA INDIAN TERRITOR Y
as told by Mrs. Duncan Robert Stuart
In the 18th century a family of Johnstons from Scotland arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, moved to the Cheraw District in South Carolina, then to Washington County, Alabama, where a Colonel John Johnston, lawyer and judge, settled, married and raised a family. Colonel John Johnston became a United States Agent in charge of helping Douglas Hancock Cooper (later a Confederate General) move the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians from Mississippi and Tennessee into the Indian Territory during the "Trail of Tears."
After the United States made the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon in 1803, a part of these lands in 1834 became home of the Five Civilized tribes of Indians --- Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles --- and was known as The Indian Territory. It existed under its own government. Part of it was later included in the Territory of Oklahoma (a Choctaw word meaning "Red Man", and in 1907 the two areas merged to form the State of Oklahoma.
Colonel John Johnston's second wife was a Chickasaw Indian girl, Mary Ann Cheadle, widow of Lewis Walker, brother of the famous Choctaw Chief Tandy Walker. Her white father was Thomas Fleming Cheadle of South Carolina. She and Colonel John had four boys; their third son, Douglas Hancock Cooper Johnston, was to become Governor of the Chickasaw Indian Nation for forty years (1898-1939). Being very young when his father died, he was raised by his Choctaw half-brother Tandy C. Walker.
Like his father, Douglas Hancock Johnston married a Chickasaw-white girl named Nellie Bynum, by whom he had a son Llewellen. After his wife's death, Douglas H. Johnston became President & Superintendent of Bloomfield Academy/Seminary, a Chickasaw school for girls on the Red River, across from Denison, Texas. Here he met and married Bettie Harper, a direct descendant of the famous Chickasaw Chief Tishomingo, for whom the Chickasaw Capital ,Tishomingo, is named. She taught at Chickasaw schools and later at Bloomfield Academy, of which she became First Lady. They had two children: Juanita Elihu Johnston and Douglas H. Johnston. Juanita attended Hollins College in Roanoak, Virginia. Meanwhile their father was elected Governor of the Chickasaw Indian Nation, resigned at Bloomfield Academy, and built a fabulous home in Emet, Oklahoma.
Governor Johnston's family raised as their own three orphaned grandchildren of the Indian scout Jesse Chisholm of Chisholm Trail fame, as well as three orphaned daughters of Governor Johnston's half-sister Martha Walker.
Compiled and written by Betty Huddleston Vaughn
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