HILLYER ALTON JOHNSON
Born July 24, 1886 and was the 5th child of Thomas Vestal Johnson and Harriett "Hattie"
Araminta Clemmons
Hillyer
and his wife Luda lived in Fort Worth at the time of Hillyer's death in 1966. They
also lived in Martin, Oklahoma, in Burkburnett, Texas, and in South Texas.
Hillyer lost the fingers of one hand in a cotton gin accident. Having spent a lot of time during his
early years and his mother's illness with the Johnson family's Swedish neighbors,
Hillyer spoke fluent Swedish. He
worked at many jobs including cotton gins, baking, farming, mining, and oil
field work. It was an oil derrick
accident when a boiler exploded in his face that left him with a permanent
pinkish-red complexion on his face. As a result of that accident
and the fact that he could speak Swedish, his nickname was "Olie,"
and he was teased about being a "red-faced Swede". Hillyer believed the Johnson family was
from Sweden.
According
to Elmer, Hillyer and Guice at one time operated a bakery on Mustang Island
down by Galveston. They had a
contract with the Navy and were reportedly doing pretty well. Their father Thomas moved down with his
sons to "help" them run the bakery. He made a muddle and interfered
continually. Hillyer and Guice got
so mad at their father that they left and turned the bakery over to him. Thomas soon went bankrupt and returned
to Oklahoma.
Hillyer
at one time owned thirteen acres of bottom land near Burkburnett. When the Texas/Oklahoma line was
redrawn, the location of the land placed it in a different state. The court house in which the deeds were
recorded burned and Hillyer had no proof of ownership to certify his claim on
the land. Hillyer hired, according
to Elmer, "the crookedest lawyer in Burkburnett" to reclaim the land
for him. Unfortunately, the lawyer
wound up with the land instead of Hillyer.
Elmer said the land had thirteen oil wells on it when he last saw
it. The 1920 census shows Hillyer
and Ludee (census spelling) living at 409 West 3rd Street, in Burkburnett,
Texas, with Floyd age 14 and Marvin age 2 1/2. The same census indicates that Floyd was
born in Oklahoma and Marvin in New Mexico.
Before
Ludy married while she still lived in Greer County in Oklahoma, her aunt had
wanted her to come live with her in Texas and study to become a teacher. Ludy chose to remain in Oklahoma where
she married Hillyer. When Ludy was
a young girl, she fell from a hayloft onto a pitchfork. One of the tines of the fork punctured
her spine. The family was afraid
she would never walk again, but the only permanent damage was her crossed
eyes. Luda always told her family
that she wanted to live to be a hundred.
She had a big celebration when she reached one hundred with a feature
write-up in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. However, according to her son Elmer and
daughter-in-law Doris, after reaching that goal Luda seemed to lose interest in
living and died just a few weeks later.
Ø
Hillyer and Luda had four
children: Floyd, Marvin, Claude (died as an infant), and Elmer.
o Floyd
married Katherine (unknown last name) and their children:
§ Jimmie
§ Jerry
§ Peggie Joyce
§ Judy
§ Camelia (who died young).
o Marvin
first married Teola (unknown last name) and they had 2 daughters:
§ Emma
Nadine
§ Linda
Sue
o He remarried Meryle (unknown last
name) and had 1 daughter:
§ Margaret
Ruth on April 1, 1950 in Ft. Worth, Texas
o Elmer
(Dec 8, 1922) married Doris Marie Genest (Nov 14, 1926) and they have two sons:
§ Thomas Allen on Sept 8, 1946 in Ft.
Worth, Texas
§
Robert
Stephen on Oct 2, 1947 in Los Angeles, California 
Elmer
tried to enlist in the Air Force when World War II came, but was turned down
because he was color blind. For the
same reason, he was not hired by Montgomery Ward catalog warehouse in Fort
Worth. However, he was able to get
a job driving a mail truck for the post office, and worked at that job until he
retired. The traffic lights in the
portion of Fort Worth in which Elmer drove a mail truck were all standardized
and gave him no problems. Elmer
said that when he and Marvin would go fishing together at Texhoma, traffic
lights in the small towns along the way were a problem because the lights were
not standardized at that time. Both
he and Marvin were color blind, as was their father. If there were no cars waiting at a
light, he and Marvin would pull over to wait until they could see how traffic
was moving before they crossed the intersection.