Volume 10 , Issue 31

Roy M. Johnson - Oklahoma Pioneer

Roy M. Johnson was an aggressive and strenuous young business man of Ardmore, Carter County and had the foresight and good judgment to profit largely through his associations with industrial and financial enterprises in Oklahoma. Roy Johnson was best known for a number of years as head of the principal; republican newspaper in Southern Oklahoma, but the chief objects of public service.

Roy M. Johnson was born at Cashton, Monroe County, Wisconsin, July 11, 1881. His parental grandfather was born and reared in Norway, and came to the United States in 1850, settling in Illinois. Later he became a pioneer settler in Wisconsin. He finally established his home near Cambridge, Dane County where, as a prosperous farmer, he spent the remainder of his life.

Roy Johnson's maternal grandfather was Dr. John B. Skinner, whose ancestors had come to America in early colonial times. He was an early country physician in Wisconsin, and went from that state as a soldier to of the Union during the Civil war, and was member of a regiment of Wisconsin cavalry until incapacitated by sunstroke, from the effects of which he never fully recovered. He was a resident of Cashton at the time of his death in 1880.

His father, Prof. O. Andrew Johnson, was born in Illinois in 1851 and was a chiibiveral education in schools and colleges, and was a man of high scholarship who had been an influential figure in educational affairs and also in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. His home was in Wisconsin until 1882, when he removed with his family to Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, where he continued his evangelic labors for a decade.

In 1892 Prof. Johanson became a member of the faculty of Union college at Lincoln, Nebraska, but in 1894 returned to Wisconsin and served three years as president of the Adventist Conference of that state. In 1897 he resumed his professorship in Union College, where he remained until 1900, and then went to Norway, the land of his ancestors, and became president of the Norwegian Adventist Conference. In 1908 he resigned from that position and had since held the chair of Bible History in Walla Walla college, the Adventist institution in Walla Walla, Washington. He was one of the most distinguished representatives of the religious organization of the SEventh Day Adventists, and his wife was also a devout and zealous member of the same body.

Professor Johnson married in Wisconsin to Sarah M. Skinner, who was born in Illinois in 1851. She died at Walla Walla, Washington, in may, 1915. Roy M. Johnson was the older of their two sons, while Harry Lynn, who was becoming distinguished in the field of mechanical inventions, was president of the Johnson Automatic Machinery Company of Battle Creek, Michigan.

Roy M. Johnson was in the public schools of Nebraska and acquired his early training, followed by a course in Union College, where he was graduated A.B. in 1899. In the meantime he had also been a student for three years in Milton College at Milton, Wisconsin. Roy learned the printer's trade at Battle Creek, Michigan, where he lived from 1900 to 1903, except the summer of 1902 spent with his parents in Norway. For four years, 1903-07, he followed his trade at Beaumont, Texas, employed alternately in the offices of the two daily papers of that city.

In 1907, the year Oklahoma became a state, Roy Johnson established his home at Ardmore and founded the Ardmore STatesman. In a short time he had made this one of the model weekly papers of the state and was ite editor and publisher until the spring of 1915, when he sold the plant and business to Edward L. Gregory of Lawton. The Statesman had been an effective exponent of the republican party, and under Roy Johnson's control it became the official republican organ for a large part of the Southern Oklahoma, and in fact was the only important republican paper in the South Central section of the state.

From the time Roy Johnson established his home at Ardmore, he was convinced that the city was the center of what would ultimately prove a great petroleum oil district. His confidence was one of action, and he mortgage his newspaper plant for $2,000 and with some progressive associates leased a tract of land in the Healdton District. Their activities brought in the celebrated field, which, though only one third developed, gave a yield of 100,000 barrels a day. Johnson's individual holdings in this field were valued at approximately over a half a million dollars.

Roy Johnson was president of the Crystal Oil company, heavy stockholder in the Bess Tucker Oil Company, the Vernon Collins Oil company, and the Scivally Petroleum Company, as well as a stockholder in several developing companies. His judicious investments have also extended to farm land, and he was the owner of a large amount of that class of property in Carter County. His largest income was from his royalties in his oil properties in the Healdton fields. He was a director of the Guaranty State bank of Ardmore and a stockholder in several other banking institutions in Southern Oklahoma.

Roy Johnson was a considered a sincere and straightforward republican that became successful in making the Ardmore Statesman a leading organ of his party in the new state of Oklahoma. He was a man of prominence and influence among Oklahoma republicans. He was a member of the Republican State Central Committee from Carter County and in 1914 served as president of the Republican Press Association of Oklahoma.

Roy Johnson was one of the directors of the ARdmore Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Dornick Hills County club, the Chickasaw Lake Club, the ARdmore Rod and Gun Club, and he and his wife were members of the Presbyterian Church of Ardmore, of which he was a Deacon.

On April 22, 1913, at Dallas, Texas, he married Odessa Otey, of Huntsville, Texas. Her parents died while she was a young girl, and before her marriage she was a popular teacher in the Ardmore schools. They had one son, Otey, born July 14, 1914.

They had one son, Otey, born July 14, 1914.
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