Tom & Georgia, Heads of the Table: Tracing the Johnsons

I had published a page to this blog regarding the family that our Head of the Table married into—the Johnsons. I’ve been thinking about revamping it, and this is a good moment to share what the records and family memory show about this branch of the tree.

We start with my great-grandmother Georgia Johnson Jenkins, the point where my line diverges.

Georgia was born to John Wesley Johnson and the former Margaret Henderson on August 28, 1891. Her obituary lists the birthplace as Mendal, Louisiana. That town does not appear on maps or in standard gazetteers. The most plausible candidates are Minden (Webster Parish) or Mandeville (St. Tammany Parish). Neither sits directly on the path the family later took, so the place name may simply be a phonetic rendering of a rural settlement or plantation community that has since disappeared.

The official family history records that John and Margaret married in Alabama (John’s home state; his death certificate gives Selma). After the marriage they moved to Milican (or Milliken’s Bend), Madison Parish, Louisiana, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Milliken’s Bend was a cotton-plantation district that later became famous for the June 1863 Civil War battle in which United States Colored Troops fought. By the late 1880s it was still a river-landing agricultural community.

John and Margaret had twelve children. Ten were born in Louisiana; the last two arrived after the family settled in Shelby, Bolivar County, Mississippi. Family tradition notes that three children (especially two daughters) died in infancy—their names unrecorded—and that a son Oliver died at age twelve. Another son, Jefferson, died while working on a railroad gang. The known surviving children were Walter, Lucy, Georgia, Margaret, Safronia, Charlie, Geraldine, and Samuel. The last of them, Geraldine, died in November 1995.

I’ve specifically found John Johnson living with his family in a 1870 U.S. Census enumeration out of Dallas County (the record shows the location as Athens Beat) where Selma, AL is located. He’s shown living with three brothers and a sister with probable father Lewis.

The household reads:

Lewis Johnson, 60, Black, Male, Farm Laborer, born Maryland
John, 17, Black, Male, Farm Laborer, born Alabama
Rachel, 15, Female, At home, Alabama
Charlie, 12, Male, At home, Alabama
Lewis, 10, Male, At home, Alabama
Henry, 7, Male, Alabama

John’s age of 17 in 1870 aligns cleanly with the November 1852 birth year given in the 1900 census.

A detail preserved in the family history is that John and Margaret named their daughters after John’s sisters. The 1870 Athens Beat enumeration shows a sister named Rachel along with brothers Charlie, Lewis, and Henry. Whether the later daughters (Lucy, Georgia, Margaret/Margarette, Safronia, Geraldine and others) were deliberately named for specific aunts remains an open question—the correspondence is only partial, and other sisters may have lived outside this household. What the records show more clearly is a general pattern of family-name reuse. Notably, the same 1870 census lists a brother named Charlie; John and Margaret themselves later named a son Charlie (born April 1898). The repetition of the name Charlie across the two generations is straightforward and does not require a strict “named after the sisters” explanation.

The 1900 enumeration of the household in Bolivar County, Mississippi, is decisive for the composition of the family at that moment. It shows:

John Johnson, Head, Black, Male, born November 1852, age 48, married 26 years. Born Alabama; both parents born Virginia.
Margaret, Wife, Black, Female, born May 1855, age 45, married 26 years, mother of 7 children, all 7 living. Born Louisiana; father South Carolina, mother Louisiana.
Jefferson, son, May 1882, age 18
Walter, son, April 1886, age 14
Lucy, daughter, January 1889, age 11
Georgia, daughter, May 1891, age 9
Margarette, daughter, January 1894, age 6
Fannie, daughter, May 1896, age 4
Charlie, son, April 1898, age 2
Bettie Monroe, Mother, Black, Female, born May 1840, age 60, Widowed. Born Virginia; both parents Virginia.

The census gives John’s birth as November 1852 and Margaret’s as May 1855, and records that they had been married about 26 years (placing the marriage roughly in 1874). These dates sit alongside the birth dates preserved in the family history and on the death certificates—John’s as 30 December 1855 (or 1862 on the death certificate itself) and Margaret’s as 2 February 1876. The two sets of dates are not identical; the most noticeable difference is the roughly twenty-year gap in Margaret’s recorded year of birth. The 1900 schedule also lists seven children born and seven still living at that time, which aligns with the children shown in the household and leaves room for the additional children and the infant deaths noted in the family history to have occurred after 1900 or to include the two born later in Mississippi.

Bettie Monroe is listed as “Mother,” confirming the earlier observation that she was John’s mother. Margaret’s own death certificate lists her parents as Sam Monroe and Betty Hennison. The shared Monroe surname is worth noting, but the records do not by themselves settle how Bettie Monroe and Margaret’s listed parents relate to one another.

Georgia married Tom Jenkins in 1908; the marriage is recorded in Bolivar County. A wise relative later pointed out the most likely place they met. Tom had left Pike County, Mississippi, and settled first in Shelby, where his brother Will also put down roots. The Johnson family was already established in Shelby by the time Tom, Will, and Monroe arrived in the Mississippi Delta. My grandfather Levi listed Shelby as his birthplace on a draft card. The town sits just up the road from Mound Bayou, the historic all-Black town where Tom later bought land.

Tom died in March 1934. Georgia was left to raise the younger children, manage the businesses, and keep the farmland going. That work largely fell to her, her younger children, and the children of her oldest son, Levi Jenkins Sr. A small family coincidence: Georgia and Levi Sr. shared the same birthday, August 28 (he was born in 1909).

Georgia herself died in June 1980. Services were held in Chicago and then in Mound Bayou; she was interred at the Spring Hill Church cemetery, where she had long served as an usher. Her daughters—Doris Jenkins Grisby and Bertha Jenkins McGee—made the arrangements.

The Age Question That Still Needs an Answer

The contemporary census enumerations and the later family history / death-certificate dates do not line up perfectly. The documents give us the following picture:

1870 (Athens Beat, Dallas County, Alabama): John is listed as age 17 (implying a birth year around 1853) in the household of Lewis Johnson.
1900 (Bolivar County, Mississippi): John is recorded as born November 1852, age 48; Margaret as born May 1855, age 45. They are shown as married for 26 years (suggesting a marriage around 1874).
1910 (Bolivar County, Mississippi): John is listed as age 56 (implying a birth year around 1854); Margaret as age 46 (implying a birth year around 1864). They are shown as married for 29 years (suggesting a marriage around 1881). Margaret is recorded as the mother of 15 children, 9 of whom were still living.
Family history and death certificates: John is given as 30 December 1855 (or 1862 on the death certificate itself); Margaret as 2 February 1876.

The three census schedules are reasonably consistent with one another for John (roughly 1852–1854). Margaret’s recorded age moves more noticeably—from about 1855 in 1900, to about 1864 in 1910, to 1876 in the later sources. The reported length of the marriage also shifts slightly between 1900 and 1910. These differences are typical of the period; ages and years of marriage were often estimated or supplied by different informants. The records simply do not agree on a single set of dates, and the gap is largest for Margaret.

The 1910 schedule also shows that additional children had been born (and some lost) since 1900. By 1910 the couple reported 15 children born and 9 still living. Among those still at home were a younger Margaret (16), a daughter whose name appears to be Safronia or similar (13), Charlie (11), a daughter whose name appears to be Geraldine or similar (8), Samuel (5), and Ardella (2). Walter, now 22 and married to Mary, is enumerated as head of the neighboring household.

Taken together, the censuses give us a coherent view of the household’s growth and of Bettie Monroe’s presence as John’s mother in 1900, while leaving the precise birth years—especially Margaret’s—open to the inconsistencies the documents themselves display.

Webster Groves and Father Dickson Cemetery

Family memory, confirmed by both my mother and my uncle — one of Levi Sr.’s sons — places part of the story in Webster Groves, Missouri (St. Louis metropolitan area). John and Margaret moved there in 1923 to be near their son Walter. Both were buried at Father Dickson Cemetery—John in 1936, Margaret in 1937. Father Dickson is a historic African American cemetery established in 1903; it served the Black communities of Webster Groves, Kirkwood, and surrounding towns and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Levi Sr. spent some time in the area but, according to both accounts, preferred Mississippi.