Robert Groat Johnson (b. 1899, d. 1970)

As my middle name is Johnson, I wanted to figure out the Johnson branch in my family tree. I had long heard of William Melancthon Johnson, the pastor of the Silliman Memorial Church in Cohoes. Gramp’s name comes from him: William Melancthon Johnson Lewis. It was easy enough making the links back to WMJ. Gramp’s mother was Sarah Mariah Johnson (the “Ri” of family lore, after whom Mariah Maloy was named), whose father was WMJ. Back before that, things got tough. I eventually found an obituary for WMJ published in the Princeton Theological Magazine that listed his parents as Thias Johnson and Sarah McDougall. Thias, at any rate, is buried in the Old White Church Cemetery in Cambridge, NY. He was a deacon and elder of that church. Going farther back from Thias has proved to be the crux genealogical puzzle of this branch of my family tree.

Sometimes it helps to work forwards, because you uncover names that give clues to the past. Or you can find living cousins who know other bits of family lore. Working forwards, then, WMJ had three children, Sarah Mariah Johnson, Hellen J Johnson, and Henry Warner Johnson. Henry Warner Johnson was an MD who practiced in Hudson NY. He also had a farm that he kept in Cambridge, NY, as a sort of rich man’s hobby. Dr Johnson (as Gray always refers to him) had two sons. The eldest was William Johnson, who was also an MD and practiced in Plattsburgh NY. SVL II consulted with him in the 1950s after he broke his leg. The younger son of Henry Warner Johnson was Robert Groat Johnson. Johnsons are ridiculously hard to research because the name is so common. It turns out that a middle name like Groat makes things easier. 

I found a surprising amount of information online about Bob Johnson, as Gray refers to him. He went to Princeton. Not only that, but he was a student at Yale when he was drafted to serve in WWI. He graduated from Philips Academy in 1919, when he was 20 years old (makes you wonder about his enrollment at Yale). Then in 1925, he graduated from Princeton. Why did it take him six years to graduate from college? Well, he went on multiple trips to France and Bermuda in that time and spent a good portion of it living at the Princeton Club in New York City. I don’t think he was given to working hard in college.

In 1930, I found him living in Miami Beach in a glitterati neighborhood (6009 N Bay Rd near La Gorce Country Club) with his wife Jane and son John W Johnson. The census data shows he was a securities broker. Curiously, his wife Jane was about 14 years his senior. He must have had some good reason for marrying someone so much older, I thought (he was 31, she was 45). Money? So I kept hunting.

It turns out that Jane Johnson had been married previously to Carl Fisher, who invented Miami Beach. Fisher was a talented entrepreneur from Indianapolis who started the Prest-o-lite Company, and made a fortune manufacturing headlamps for automobiles in the 1900s. He also started Indianapolis Motor Speedway. And then he bought some property in the boondocks of what would become Miami Beach and decided to develop it. Of course, first he had to dredge millions of tons of sand from Biscayne Bay to create the land he was going to develop. Once over the technical hurdles, though, development took off and Fisher made more millions. Jane Watts Fisher, also from Indiana, divorced Carl Fisher in 1926 and married Bob Johnson. Jane writes about the whole story, Bob and all, in her 1947 book “Fabulous Hoosier.” 

Jane Watts Fisher, Bob Johnson's wife #1

Jane Watts Johnson, abt 1945

 Bob and Jane were divorced in 1932. Bob married Beulah Sladden Meagher Snowden in 1934. Beulah’s father was a wealthy NY banker. She had already been married twice to Carl Meagher, a real estate developer, and James Snowden, an oil man, both of whom were extremely wealthy. Beulah brought to the marriage her two daughters, Mildred and Jean.

Let’s go back a bit to look at what Bob Johnson actually devoted himself to, when it wasn’t wealthy women and trips abroad. He was a stock broker for the firm Rhoades & Co. in NY from 1924-33. John Harsen Rhoades Jr. (~1870-1943) founded Rhoades & Co., which merged with Carl M. Loeb & Co. Rhoades was also a trustee of the United States Trust Company of New York and a director of the Home Insurance Company of New York. Our man Bob Johnson left Rhoades and Co. in 1933, when his wife apparently bought him a seat on the NY Stock Exchange. He went into partnership with a guy named Durant, who I suspect was Will Durant, an early president of General Motors who was forced out and then partnered with Louis Chevrolet to found Chevrolet. He soon bought out Louis Chevrolet, in 1914 and proceeded to build the company until he lost his shorts in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. In the 1920s, Durant had became a major player on Wall Street and on Black Tuesday joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks, against the advice of friends, in order to demonstrate to the public their confidence in the stock market. Bob Johnson’s firm was called “Johnson & Durant.”  I couldn’t find anything more on this firm. I suspect it was a sort of shell company that allowed the two of them to piddle around in stocks a bit, as a kind of sideline to their social activities. The price of a seat on the NYSE in 1933 was about the equivalent of $5 million dollars today.

Just before WWII, Bob Johnson founded Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, NY, a harness racing track. I have a 1940 photo of him there in the stands with his second wife Beulah. 

Bob Johnson & Beulah Sladden Johnson, wife #2

Beulah didn’t last long, however. They were divorced in Florida in 1946 and Bob married for a third time. I haven’t nailed down the identity of the third wife, but I have a 1946 photo of the two of them—she is dripping with jewels—at the Starlight Roof in the Waldorf Hotel. 

Bob Johnson & wife #3

 

Bob became the first president of the Maywood Park Race Track, a new harness track in Illinois, in 1946. I find a few mentions of him after that, mostly quotes in Sports Illustrated about comments he made at this party and that in places like Palm Springs. Of course, Southern California had plenty of historic race tracks. Bob Johnson apparently died in 1970 in Phoenix. Phoenix Trotting Park, a harness track, opened in 1964 and ran for about two seasons before closing. I don’t know whether Bob Johnson had any involvement with the development of the park.

Gramp used to tell of his visit with his cousin Bob Johnson at the Princeton Club. He was so accustomed to staff doing everything for him, “He doesn’t even know how ice cubes are made!”