History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

JOHNSTONS IN AMERICA 337
dominant in Ohio and made their home among its dense forests. The eldest
son of David Johnston, John, was a member of the Convention in 1849 which
framed the present constitution of Ohio, and a little later was elected a member
of the National Congress at Washington. He died, aged sixty-one, in 1867.
The second son, Joseph, was an elder in the Presbyterian Kirk for forty years,
and settled in New York city, where he lived to be eighty-seven, and where his
sons, David and John, remain. The third son, William, died i860, aged fifty-one,
leaving three sons and three daughters. The eldest of these, James Renfrew,
who married Anna Hogle, farms his own lands at Coshocton, and has been an
elder of the Presbyterian Kirk forty-two years. He has two sons, Frederick and
James, and a daughter, Margaret. His brother, Thomas, is a consulting engineer
to two important railway companies at Pittsburg.
WHILE
PART III.
The Johnstons or Johnstones in America.
Johnstons from Ireland assisted the British Government against
the French in America, those escaping from Scotland after the defeat
of the Jacobites were equally keen in helping the Americans
to independence.
It would require the evidence of registered documents in public keeping
the only evidence which a Committee of Privileges in the House of Lords will
accept—to refute the common belief that John Johnston, as he generally spelt
his name, the brother of the first Marquis of Annandale, left no legitimate
direct heirs. But an American family claim descent from this John, on the
ground that a written uncertified statement made by Gilbert Johnston of
Brompton, Cape Fear, North Carolina, in 1790, when he was sixty-five, calls
himself grandson to John Johnston of Stapleton. Some of his descendants
infer that this John Johnston was the brother of the first Marquis of Annandale
(see p. 162). The statement is :
" My grandfather John Johnston of Stapleton, officer in a Scottish regiment
in French service, married Elizabeth, her father Gabriel Belcher, French
Protestant. Their children were, 1. John, he and only son died in North
Britain. 2. Gabriel, Governor of North Carolina. 3. Gilbert my father.
4. Samuel lived in Onslow, N. Carolina. 5. Elizabeth married Thos. Keenan
at our home Armagh. My father married Caroline. Her grandfather George
Johnstone, Armagh 1724. Children, Gilbert, Henry, Caroline, Gabriel, Robert,
William, Isabel, John. I married Margaret Warburton, North Carolina, 2
June, 1750. Children, Hugo, Gilbert, Jean, Isabel. Henry died Catawba
County, son James, Col. in war. Caroline married William Williams, son