Mary Olive Johnson

My grandma, known as "Curtie", was the daughter of Samuel Lucas, a Union Soldier, who was born in1846 in Pennsylvania, and Sarah "Sadie" May Harris, born in 1848 in Pennsylvania. The 1880 Census shows them in Illiopolis, Sangamon, Illinois, with their eldest child, Harry, and 4 daughters, the youngest, Emma, age 1. They had more daughters, including Curtie, who was born after they moved to Marysville, Missouri. She was said to be the town beauty, and was married to our grandfather, David Halleck (Hal) Johnson in Marysville on January 20, 1903. I never met her, but my mother reports that she was a lovely woman. She and Judge Hal raised their family in Oklahoma. After her husband died, she moved to Corpus Christie, Texas, to be cared for by their daughter, Margaret Johnson Roberts, until her death a few years later. She is interred at the Rose Hill Burial Park in Oklahoma, along with Judge Hal.

Curtie's children suspected that she was older than our grandfather, but she was not a member of her parents' household in the 1880 Census. However, the 1940 Census in Oklahoma, does not show her birth year as 1881, rather "about" 1872, making her 68, 10 years older than her husband David Halleck Johnson. Given that the 1880 Census suggests that she was born after 1880, it is unlikely that the 1940 Census is correct about her birth year. Other members of the household in 1940 included her husband, their youngest son, Donald, age 15, and their son, Clifford W., age 27, and his wife, Betty Johnson, age 24.

Need to amend this! I think her nickname was really Gurtie not Curtie.On FamilySearch it spelled with a G. I think her nickname came from her sister Gertrude that died at age 5 or 6 just the year before she was born.