Dr. Johnstun has been actively identified with the business
interests of Craig since his residence in Holt County. He has been
one of the leading physicians of northwest Holt County, carries on
an extensive drug business, and is largely interested in dealing
in grain.
He is a native of Hamilton County, Ohio; his parents were
among the earliest settlers of that state. His father, Robert
JOHNSTON, was born in Kentucky and, as a boy in 1798, moved with
his father to the area of what is now Cincinnati, but then was
a wilderness with just a scattering of people. Robert JOHNSTON
married Mary WHITE, the daughter of Captain Jacob WHITE who served
in the Revolutionary War.
Captain White settled in Hamilton County,
Ohio in 1793 and was one of the first two or three persons to
locate outside Old Fort Washington, when there were only four
houses where now stands the city of Cincinnati. Captain Jacob White
built the mill from which was shipped the first load of flour
that ever passed down the Ohio River from the Ohio Territory to New
Orleans. This cargo of flour, shipped in 1800, was the commencement
of the large trade that has since existed between New Orleans
and Cincinnati.
Dr. J. L. JOHNSTON was born May 18, 1818 and raised in Hamilton
County, Ohio. He received part of his education in the schools of
Cincinnati and later attended college at Oxford, Ohio. He started
his study of medicine, in 1841, with Dr. Alexander Duncan of Madison,
near Cincinnati, and afterward attended medical lectures at the
college at Cleveland, Ohio from which he graduated in 1844. In
1844, he moved to Daviess County, Indiana and the following year
started to practice medicine, in which he was engaged at that
place until 1856. He then returned to Cincinnati and practiced
medicine until the Civil War broke out. During the war he was
variously employed. In 1863, he was engaged in trading in Tenn.,
was captured by Confederate forces, held prisoner 6 months, and
escaped in Nov., 1863. He then returned to Cincinnati and remained
there until 1867 when he moved to Mo.
He first located at St. Joseph, moved to Atchison County in 1868,
then to Holt County in April, 1870 to make his present residence
at Craig. He has been an ardent and successful practitioner of
medicine in the area, not always an easy or pleasant job in the
rural area. He now feels inclined to retire from the medical profession
to devote full attention to other business matters. He is connected
with the business concerns of Craig, has been influential in developing
growth of the trade of that town, and is a member of the firm
JOHNSTUN & MYERS. The firm has an extensive drug business
in Craig, probably the largest of that trade in the county. The
firm also does a heavy grain business, having the only grain elevator
in the county.
Dr. JOHNSTUN has always been a strong and outspoken Democrat
and as he advances in years, he is yet more strongly convinced
the principles of the Democratic party form the only sound basis
for carrying on a successful form of representative government.
Dr. JOHNSTUN married Mrs. Mattie BOWEN of Ohio in 1865.
Source: "An Illustrated Historical Atlas Map, Holt County, MO.
Published by Brink, McDonough & Co., Philadelphia, 1877
Provided by Dave Roberts of Lyon County, Kentucky,
a former Holt County resident.
