Surnames: JOHNSON CROTHERS BROOKS MORGAN

----Source: CLARK COUNTY REPUBLICAN & PRESS (Neillsville, Wis.) 08/23/1917

Johnson, William G. (3 Augl 1886 - 18 Augl 1917)

William G. Johnson died at his home near Morristown, S.D., Aug. 13, 1917, aged 31 years and 10 days, the cause of his death being cerebral meningitis. He was taken ill on Friday previous to his death, the disease as is usual, making rapid progress notwithstanding the efforts of the best medical help that could be reached.

He was born near Oxford, Wis., Aug. 3, 1886, being the son of William N. Johnson and Mary J. Meren___?. He finished the common school course and came here (Neillsville, Clark County, Wis.) in 1901 to attend high school, making his home with his sister, Mrs. Geo. E. Crothers. He graduated from Neillsville High School in the class of 1905, and the next year took a course in telegraphy at Janesville. Later he had charge of the station at Corning, north of Portage, where he also operated a potato warehouse. Later he went on the road as a traveling agent for the Starks Potato Co., and followed that work for some time. In 1911 he went to North Dakota near Morristown and took a claim, which he improved and proved upon. Nov. 5, 1913 he was married to Miss Beatrice Brooks of Lynn, who had been a schoolmate and had also taken a claim near his. She with their little daughter Evelyn, two years old, survive him. He leaves also three brothers and two sisters: E. C. Johnson of Packwaukee, T. B. Johnson of Endeaver, and John M. Johnson of Oxford; Mrs. G. E. Crothers, Neillsville, and Mrs. C. U. Morgan, Oxford.

William Johnson was a high type of manhood. He was honest, intelligent, clean in character, manly in all his ways, even as a boy, scorning everything mean or unmanly. For four years he was with us in our home and often since then has he come and gone, and never once have we seen in him anything that was not good and kind and noble. To us he was at once like a younger borther and a son; and while his death touches our household most keenly, it brings the deepest sorrow to the young wife in her western home.