I am interested in knowing more about John Graham Johnson, Vaughan’s younger brother, known as ‘Gray’. He was born in 1882, and attended University College, London. He joined the 3rd Middlesex Royal Garrison Artillery. He married Hilda Constance Old (known as ‘Fluffy’) in 1911.

At some point the couple left for Canada. They lived in Calgary, and Graham worked as an architect and surveyor in the Canadian Pacific Railway department of natural resources. He was also an amateur musician and played in the Cathedral Orchestra.

He enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force during WW1 and was sent for active service in Europe, sailing on Sept 25th 1916. In Dec 1916 he was wounded at Camiers (not far from Le Touquet) in the left buttock, apparently as a result of a bomb which was detonated by accident. He was treated in London, and was then sent back to Alberta and discharged from active duty.

We have a letter from Gray written in 1944 from Victoria BC. He has been working in the shipyards, but says he has just landed a job connected with a new dpeartment store to be built as soon as a permit is issued. There are records in Victoria BC of plans drawn up by Gray.

Sarah Susannah Johnson’s name came up a few times while Colette and I were looking through the archives. She appears as a witness at the marriage of Charles John Johnson and Matilda Cassell in 1838. We also found a commonplace book with lovely caligraphy, which seems to be a collection of drawings, poems, etc, with an inscription on the front “Sarah Susannah Johnson – the gift of her cousin William Folkard 20th April 1829”. As a result of this I did some research and discovered that Charles John Johnson had an older sister who was baptised Sarah Susanna, born on Aug 9th 1812. She then appears in the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses living with her father in Croydon (her mother died in 1847). It looks as if she never got married.

I have not been able to find any trace of William Folkard. He gave her the notebook when she was 16 years old, and is described as her cousin. If he is a real cousin, as opposed to an honorary one, then he would be the son of one of her parents’ siblings. It makes me wonder whether her mother, Sarah, whose surname we don’t know, was a Folkard. I have not been able to find any record of a marriage between a Johnson and a Folkard in the late 18th or early 19th century. Curiously a Folkard does appear in the family tree, because a Joseph Christmas Folkard married Catherine Cassell who was the sister of Matilda Cassell, wife of Sarah Susannah’s brother Charles John and therefore at rather a long remove from her and not a blood relation. It is possible that the Folkard, Johnson and Cassell families knew each other and were friends.

Michael Johnson 08/05/2020

Colette Knowlden (née Johnson) and I agreed to do some investigations into the family history of the Johnsons. Colette has a number of boxes contaning family archives put together by her uncle (and mine) Richard, and on a visit to Albany, Western Australia in March 2020 we began the job of sifting through the photograph albums and documents found in the boxes. As a result of the Covid-19 lockdown I had to cut my visit short and return to the UK, but since then Colette and I have had regular video conference sessions in which we have gone through all of the material.

I have at the same time been putting together the family genogram or tree, and have been doing research on Ancestry.co.uk. This website is the fruit of all of this work, and I would hope that it can be added to over time.

Michael Johnson 08/05/2020