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ROY M. JOHNSON
Vol. 5, p. 1716

An aggressive and strenuous young business man of Ardmore, Carter
County, Roy M. JOHNSON had the foresight and good judgment to profit
largely through his associations with industrial and financial
enterprises in Oklahoma.  His was best known for a number of years as
head of the principal republican newspaper in Southern Oklahoma, but
the chief objects of his attention are now banking and the oil
industry in his section of the state.  He is an alert and progressive
young man of affairs, and has discovered and accepted many
opportunities for disinterested public service.

He was born at Cashton, Monroe County, Wisconsin, July 11, 1881.
His parental grandfather was born and reared in Norway, and on coming
to the United States in 1850 settled in Illinois, but later became a
pioneer settler in Wisconsin.  He finally established his home near
Cambridge, Dane County, that state, where, as a prosperous farmer, he
spent the remainder of his life.    Mr. Johnson's maternal
grandfather was Dr. John B. SKINNER, whose ancestors had come to
America in early colonial times.  He was an early country physician
in Wisconsin, went from that state as a soldier of the Union during
the Civil war, and was member of a regiment of Wisconsin cavalry
until incapacitated by sunstroke, from the effects of which he never
fully recovered.  He was a resident of Cashton at the time of his
death in 1880.

Prof. O. Andrew JOHNSON, father of the Ardmore business man, was
born in Illinois in 1851 and was a child when taken to Dane County,
Wisconsin.  While growing up he acquired a liberal education in
schools and colleges, and is a man of high scholarship who has been
an influential figure in educational affairs and also in the Seventh
Day Adventist Church.  His home was in Wisconsin until 1882, when he
removed with his family to Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, where he continued
his evangelic labors for a decade.  In 1892 he became a member of the
faculty of Union College at Lincoln, Nebraska, but in 1894 returned
to Wisconsin and served three years as president of the Adventist
Conference of that state.  In 1897 he resumed his professorship in
Union College, where he remained until 1900, and then went to Norway,
the land of his ancestors, and became president of the Norwegian
Adventist Conference.  In 1908 he resigned from that position and has
since held the chair of Bible History in Walla Walla College, the
Adventist institution in Walla Walla, Washington.  He is one of the
most distinguished representatives of the religious organization of
the Seventh Day Adventists, and his wife was also a devout and
zealous member of the same body.  Professor JOHNSON married in
Wisconsin Miss Sarah M. SKINNER, who was born in Illinois in 1851.
She died at Walla Walla, Washington, in May 1915.  Roy M. Johnson is
the older of their two sons, while Harry Lynn, who is becoming
distinguished in the area of mechanical inventions, is now president
of the Johnson Automatic Machinery Company of Battle Creek, Michigan.

It was in the public schools of Nebraska that Roy M. JOHNSON
acquired his early training, followed by a course in Union College,
where he was graduated A.B. in 1899.  In the meantime he had also
been a student for three years in Milton College at Milton,
Wisconsin.  Mr. Johnson learned the printer's trade at Battle Creek,
Michigan, where he lived from 1900 to 1903, except the summer of 1902
spent with his parents in Norway.  For four years, 1903-07, he
followed his trade at Beaumont, Texas, employed alternately in the
offices of the two daily papers of that city.

In 1907, the year Oklahoma became a state; Mr. JOHNSON established
his home at Ardmore and founded the Ardmore Statesman.  In a short
time he had made this one of the model weekly papers of the state and
was its editor and publisher until the spring of 1915, when he sold
the plant and business to Edward L. GREGORY of Lawton.  The Statesman
has been an effective exponent of the republican party, and under Mr.
Johnson's control it became the official republican paper in the
South Central section of the state.

Practically from the time he established his home at Ardmore Mr.
Johnson was convinced that the city was the center of what would
ultimately prove a great petroleum oil district.  His confidence was
one of action, and several years ago he mortgaged his newspaper plant
for $2,000 and with some progressive associates leased a tract of
land in the Healdton District.  their activities brought in the now
celebrated field, which, though only one third developed, gives a
yield of 100,000 barrels a day.  Mr. Johnson's individual holdings in
this field are valued at approximately over half a million dollars.

He is now president of the Crystal Oil Company, a heavy stockholder
in the Bess Tucker Oil Company, the Vernon Collins Oil Company, and
the Scivally Petroleum Company, as well as a stockholder in several
developing companies.  His judicious investments have also extended
to farm land, and he is the owner of a large amount of that class of
property in Carter County.  His largest income is from his royalties
in his oil properties in the Healdton fields.  He is a director of
the Guaranty State Bank of Ardmore and a stockholder in several other
banking institutions in Southern Oklahoma.

It was as a sincere and straightforward republican that Mr. Johnson
became so successful in making the Ardmore Statesman a leading organ
of his party in the new state.  For a number of years he has been a
man of prominence and influence among Oklahoma republicans, is a
member of the Republican State Central Committee from Carter County
and in 1914 served as president of the Republican Press Association
of Oklahoma.  There has been less of personal ambition than of broad
civic loyalty in his work as a partisan and citizen, and his name
might be justly linked with all the important movements and
enterprises for the good of his section of the state.  He is one of
the directors of the Ardmore Chamber of Commerce, a member of the
Dornick Hills Country club, the Chickasaw Lake Club, the Ardmore Rod
and Gun Club, and he and his wife are members of the Presbyterian
Church of Ardmore, of which he is a deacon.

For a number of years he has been actively interested in fraternal
work, especially in the various branches of the Masonic Order.  His
affiliations are with Ardmore Lodge No. 31, A.F.& A.M.; Ardmore
Chapter No. 11, R.A.M.; Ardmore Council No. 11, R.&.S.M.; Ardmore
Commandery No. 9, K.T.; Indian Consistory No. 2, Scottish Rite at
McAlester, and Indian Temple of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine at
Oklahoma City.  He is also a member of the Ardmore Lodge of the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Pythias and
the Woodmen of the World.

On April 22, 1913, at Dallas, Texas, he married Miss Odessa OTEY, of
Huntsville, Texas.  Her parents died while she was a young girl, and
before her marriage she was a popular teacher in the Ardmore schools.
They have one son, Otey, born July 14, 1914.

SOURCE: Thoburn, Joseph B., A Standard History of Oklahoma, An
Authentic Narrative of its Development, 5 v. (Chicago, New York: The
American Historical Society, 1916)