Researching information on my grandfather's parents and family. His name was Hal Johnson, born in Mississippi in 1878, died in Arkansas in 1962. His father was Thomas Johnson of Mississippi born in 1835 and his wife was Mary Johnson. I do not know her maiden name. Her father was from Mississippi, her mother from Alabama. Thomas Johnson's parents were from Georgia.

I am also seeking information on Hal Johnson's first wife, Bettie Elizabeth Gable. I am not sure about the spelling of her name, this was the name I was given by my mother. She was born about 1883 in Arkansas, I think, and died in childbirth in Arkansas about 1912, when my Mother was about 4 years of age. The Arkansas death records start in 1914, so I have been unable to gather any information on Bettie's background so far. I was told she died having a 19 lb. baby which the doctor tried to deliver by forceps. Both the baby and my grandmother died. She and my grandfather, Hal, had 14 children before my Mother, Iva Aretta Johnson and her sister, Minnie Johnson were born, and they all died either at birth or by freak accidents in infancy. I was told of those 14, there two sets of twins and one set of triplets, and all were boys except one of the twins. Minnie Johnson died at the age of 22 due to blood poisoning (lockjaw as it was known then), and my mother was the only one of their children who survived to the old age of 74. She died in 1982 in a nursing home, cause unknown. My Mother, Iva Aretta and Minnie Mabel Johnson
married brothers, Lewis and Charley Rettig. Lewis and Minnie had two daughters, Marie and Dorothy. After Minnie died, Lewis remarried, Mary Hammock, and they had one daughter, Geraldine Rettig. Charley and Iva Rettig had a son in 1925, Harold Clinton Rettig. When the baby was six weeks old, Charley drowned while swimming in a local pond with friends. My Mother was left a widow at age 16 with a 6-week old baby. She married my father, Leonard Palmer Hopkins in 1929 and they had three children, Glen Hopkins, Leonard Wright Hopkins, and me, Minnie Louise Hopkins. They were still married in 1959 when my father died of a malignant brain tumor. I have researched my father's family back 12 generations to England and Ireland.


I do have information on Hal Johnson's second wife, Gertie, and their children together. I am however, still researching background family information on Hal Johnson and Bettie Elizabeth Gable Johnson. They are listed on the 1910 Census, living in Arkansas with their children, Iva and Minnie.

I would welcome any information available on the Johnson Family, Hopkins Family, or Gable Family.