Although Johnson is one of the most common surnames in the English-speaking world, our search for ancestors is made a little easier by the use of an unusual first name, Oxley. According to family tradition as told by Blossom Lowe Lane, the name comes from the marriage of an Elizabeth Oxley to a Johnson boy sometime in the distant past.1
Although I have found evidence of a marriage in the mid 1700s between an Isaiah Johnson and a Mary Oxley in Bertie County, North Carolina, I have not been able to connect them to the later Oxley Johnsons.2 This Isaiah Johnson had been in Bertie by 1747, when he appeared as a witness to a deed.3 He and his sons Isaiah and Elijah were named by their grandfather John Oxley in his will dated 24 Feb 1767. By that time Isaiah had moved to Dobbs County on the Neuse River, selling his land in Bertie to his son John in 1767.4 John then sold the parcel three years later to Thomas Clarke.5 Isaiah and Elijah were taxed in Dobbs around 1790, along with some other people from Bertie, including George Oxley, Mary Oxley Johnson's brother.6
There the trail goes cold. It is tempting to think that Oxley Johnson might have been a grandson or great grandson of Isaiah and Mary, but so far there is no evidence. It is also possible that some cousin of the Bertie/Dobbs Johnsons married an Oxley girl. Maybe the Elizabeth Oxley cited by my grandmother was the daughter of George Oxley. (For more on this family, see my notes on Isaiah and Mary.)
The first record of Oxley Johnson is his marriage to Catherine "Catey" Rogers on 16 October 1818 in Roane County, Tennessee.7 Later census data give his birth about 1798 or 1799 in South or North Carolina and Catey's about 1802 in Virginia.8 The Johnsons remained in Roane County, which lies on the Tennessee River downstream from Oak Ridge and Knoxville, until the mid or late 1820s. Although Oxley's name does not appear in census records of the time, which list only the name of the head of household, it does appear in court records. In 1825 he was a bondsman for the marriage of John Cravet and Penelope Tilly.9 I have not been able to find any links to other Johnson or Rogers families in Roane County.10
Oxley and Catey moved to south central Kentucky, where they first appear in Barren County tax lists in 1829. They are not listed in the 1830 census. Either they were overlooked or were included in another household. Some of Catey's relatives may have joined them in Kentucky; the 1830 census lists 11 Rogers families in Barren.11 And in 1839 Oxley swore that Polly A. Rogers (who may have been a niece) was over 21 when she married George W. Tolle.12
Oxley owned 126 acres on Boyd Creek, which is a couple of miles south of Glasgow, the county seat.13
We know of nine children, but there might have been one or two older ones who had moved out on their own before they were counted in the census.14 The 1850 census provides a snapshot of the family.15 Their known children include: Lucinda (born about 1820), Nancy (abt 1822), John (abt 1827), Elizabeth (abt 1829), Polly Ann (Feb 1832?), Oxley (Aug 1833), William M. (Dec 1835), James (May 1840), and Sally Ann (abt 1843).
John Johnson married Martha A. Clark in 1846. He was still a minor and required his father's permission.16 The young couple were not enumerated in Barren County in 1850, but had joined the group in Missouri by the middle of the decade.17 An index of Kentucky marriages lists the union of an Oxley Johnson to Millie E. Jones in Christian County three decades later, 26 Feb 1881.18 It is just possible that the groom might have been a son of John and Martha. Or perhaps a distant cousin.
Two of the Johnson boys married Stallsworth sisters: Oxley married Martha Ann and William married Nancy J. Although Barren records show marriages for a couple of Elizabeths and a Nancy, there is no indication the women in question were the daughters of Oxley and Catey. Polly Ann never married and was living with her brother, James, in 1900.19
Oxley apparently died not long after the 1850 census, in the spring of the following year.20 All of the family apparently had left Barren County by 1860. Catey and two of her younger daughters, Polly and Sallie, had moved to nearby Warren County where they were counted in the census of that year along with a 5-year-old Samuel.21 The three youngest boys eventually settled in southeastern Kansas, where they died in the first decades of the new century.
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Notes:
1 Blossom (born Iva Dell Lowe) was the granddaughter of Oxley Johnson, Jr., and the grandmother of the author.
2 The will of John Oxley, dated 24 Feb 1767, cites his daughter Mary Johnson, son-in-law Isaiah Johnson and grandsons Elijah and Isaiah. Bertie Wills A: 81. The family name of Isaiah and his children is spelled in various records about half the time as "Johnston" with a 'T'.
3 Bertie Deeds G: 48. On 5 Jul 1747 Wm Stancill & his wife Africa sold 245 acres on the Cashy River to Joseph Jordan for 62/10/0. Recorded Aug 1747.
4 "Isiah Johnston" of Dobbs County to his son John Johnston for 1 shilling 200 acres adjacent to Wills Quarter Swamp, 27 Mar 1767. Witnessed by John Barber, George Oxley. Loose Deeds 2: 210. In Stephen E. Bradley, Jr., Deeds of Bertie County, North Carolina, v 1 1757-1772 (Keysville, VA: Dr Stephen E. Bradley, Jr., 1992), 913. John may have been an older child by a previous marriage and therefore not kin to John Oxley, who thus had no reason to include him among his heirs.
5 John Johnston, planter, son of Isaiah Johnston to Thomas Clarke for 25 pounds proclamation 200 acres adjacent John Williams, south side of Wills Quarter Swamp, 20 Sep 1770. Witnessed by Peter Clifton, George Oxley, and Thomas Boswell. Loose Deeds 2: 217. Bradley, 930. (Seven decades later John Johnson, son of Oxley Johnson, Sr., married Martha A. Clark in Barren County, Kentucky. Although there is not a shred of proof, it would not surprise me to find that Martha's antecedents reach back to Tidewater North Carolina.)
6 Clarence E. Ratcliff, North Carolina Taxpayers 1701-1786 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1989), 107, 150; Heads of Families in North Carolina, 136. The names of Reddick and Hardy also appear in the Newberne District. Dobbs County was created in 1758 and abolished in 1791, its records going to Lenoir County.
7 Edythe Rucker Whitley, Marriages of Roane County, Tennessee, 1801-1838 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1983).
8 One of the Rogers families most active in the area was that of the British-Cherokee clan headed by the brothers John and Charles. One of Charles' daughters, Tianna (or Diana), married the young Sam Houston. See Worth S. Ray, Tennessee Cousins (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1977 [1950]), 459. Whether they were kin to Catey is unknown.
9 Whitley, Marriages of Roane County.
10 See publications of the Roane County Genealogical Society, Kingston, TN, e.g.: Roane Ramblings, and Cemeteries of Roane County.
11 1830 Census, Barren County, Kentucky, 174, 175, 139. AIS abstract. There were also a lot of Johnsons/Johnstons.
12 Martha Powell Reneau, Marriage Records of Barren County, Kentucky, 1799-1849 (Glasgow, KY: author, 1984), 262. George died in 1847 or 1848 of fever. I do not know what became of his widow.
13 Barren County tax lists for 1848, 1849, 1850.
14 See 1840 Census, Barren County, Kentucky, 121. The data show four boys and five girls. Since the youngest girl, Sally, did not come along until about 1843, the extra female may have been an elder sister.
15 1850 Census, Barren County, Kentucky, 413. 2nd Division, family 143. Oxley's age was 51, Catherine's 48.
16 Reneau, Marriage Records, 144. A bond was issued 4 Jun 1846 for John Johnson to Martha A. Clark. Consent his father Oxly Johnson. Bondsman Pleasant Clark, witnesses H. Eubank, M.L. Reynolds. Married the following day, 5 June, by W.D. Jourdan.
17 See 1860 census, Harrison County, Missouri, 645, which lists John and Martha with two boys born in Missouri.
18 Automated Archives CD.
19 1900 Census, Scott County, Missouri, 13. Town of Morley. ED 101, sheet 5.
20 In an effort to prove his birth was in 1832 rather than 1833 to qualify for a higher Civil War pension, the younger Oxley stated that his father died in March 1850 when he was 18. Since the father was alive four months later when the census taker came by (and other evidence places the son's birth in 1833), the year of Oxley's death is likely 1851.
21 1860 Census, Warren County, Kentucky. District 1. Family 1414. Bowling Green PO. In the same district was a garbled entry (Family 854) for John Johnson (age 8) and Oxley (15) who were living with John and Keziah Garrison. Although John Garrison was from a Barren County family, I have found no connection to the Johnson or Rogers lines. Perhaps this was the Oxley who later married Millie Jones, otherwise unknown.
