CARBON COUNTY
I am Rebecca Maloney the
County Coordinator. If you have genealogy items of interest
you would like to share- PLEASE
Contact me !
Thank you to the previous CC's and volunteers that have helped with
this MTGenWeb Project!
Jeremiah Johnson
Young John Johnston
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- Johnson is said to have been born with the last name Garrison, in the
area of the Hickory Tavern near Pattenburg, New Jersey. During the
Mexican�American War he served aboard a fighting ship, having enlisted under
a false age. After striking an officer, he deserted, changed his name to
John Johnston, and traveled west to try his hand at gold digging in Alder
Gulch, Montana Territory. He also became a "woodhawk," supplying cord wood
to steamboats.
Rumors, legends, and campfire tales about Johnson
abound. Perhaps chief among them is that in 1847, his wife, a member of the
Flathead American Indian tribe, was killed by a young Crow brave and his
fellow hunters, which prompted Johnson to embark on a vendetta against the
tribe. According to historian Andrew Mehane Southerland, "He supposedly
killed and scalped more than 300 Crow Indians and then devoured their
livers" to avenge the death of his wife, and "As his reputation and
collection of scalps grew, Johnson became an object of fear."
Accounts say that he would cut out and eat the liver of each Crow killed.
This led to him being known as "Liver-Eating Johnson". One tale ascribed to
Johnson (while other sources ascribe it to Boone Helm) is that while on a
foray of over five hundred miles (800 km) in the winter to sell whiskey to
his Flathead kin, he was ambushed by a group of Blackfoot warriors. The
Blackfoot planned to sell him to the Crow, his mortal enemies. He was
stripped to the waist, tied with leather thongs and put in a teepee with one
guard. Johnson managed to break through the straps. He then knocked out the
guard with a kick, took his knife and scalped him. He escaped into the woods
and fled to the cabin of Del Gue, his trapping partner, a journey of about
two hundred miles (320 km).
Eventually, Johnson made peace with the
Crow, who became "his brothers", and his personal vendetta against them
finally ended after 25 years and scores of slain Crow warriors. The West,
however, was still a very violent and territorial place, particularly during
the Plains Indian Wars of the mid-19th century. Many more Indians of
different tribes, especially but not limited to the Sioux and the Blackfoot,
would know the wrath of "Dapiek Absaroka" Crow killer and his fellow
mountain men.
The cabin inhabited by Johnson in the 1880s in
Montana, moved into Red Lodge, Montana and on display at the tourism office
Johnson joined Company H, 2nd Colorado Cavalry, of the Union Army in St.
Louis in 1864 as a private and was honorably discharged the following year.
During the 1880s, he was appointed deputy sheriff in Coulson, Montana, and a
town marshal in Red Lodge, Montana. In his time, he was a sailor, scout,
soldier, gold seeker, hunter, trapper, whiskey peddler, guide, deputy,
constable, and log cabin builder, taking advantage of any source of
income-producing labor he could find. His final residence was in a veterans�
home in Santa Monica, California, where he died on January 21, 1900. His
body was buried in a Los Angeles veterans' cemetery. However, in 1974, after
a six-month campaign led by 25 seventh-grade students and their teacher,
Johnson's remains were relocated to Cody, Wyoming. Thank you
Wikipedia for most of this information
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Karen De Groote, State Coordinator
Suzanne Andrews, Assistant State
Coordinator
Rebecca Maloney, County Coordinator
Contact Information for USGenWeb:
National Coordinator: Linda
K. Lewis
Copyright 2020- Carbon County
MTGenWeb Project
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