Guide to the Johnston Family Papers and Photographs 1782-2013
Arrangement
Repository
Heinz History Center
Title
Johnston Family Papers and Photographs
Creator
Johnston family
Collection Number
MSS 387
Extent
9.0 linear feet(15 boxes, 4 shelf volumes, and O/S material)
Date
1782-2013
Abstract
Members of the Scotch-Irish Johnston family have lived in the Pittsburgh region since 1787. Samuel Reed Johnston was a partner in an early printing house and bookbindery in Pittsburgh. His son, William G. Johnston, founded the printing house of William G. Johnston and Co. in 1857, which operated in Pittsburgh for nearly a century. The Johnston Family Papers and Photographs contain correspondence, newspaper clippings, genealogical charts, wills, William G. Johnston's unfinished manuscripts, scrapbooks, family photographs, and other related material.
Language
The material in this collection is in English.
Author
The guide to this collection was written by Nick Hartley.
John Johnston was born near Castle Derg, Ireland in 1765. He and his family immigrated to America four years later, in 1769, and settled in the Cumberland Valley region of Pennsylvania. Johnston's father, Dr. Samuel Johnston (b. 1727), served as a surgeon in the Revolutionary War and died of camp fever in 1777. His mother, Eliza (Mary) Sproul Johnston (b. 1728), died in 1794 and was buried next to her husband in Shippensburg, Pa.
John Johnston was apprenticed in the watch- and clock-making business in Chambersburg, Pa. In 1787, he married Mary Reed (1767-1839) and moved to Pittsburgh, where he erected a three-story brick house on the corner of Front Street (now First Avenue) and Chancery Lane. John Johnston served as postmaster in Pittsburgh from 1804 to 1822, and he was also a trustee of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. He died in 1827.
In 1820, John Johnston's son, Samuel Reed Johnston (1797-1854) became co-publisher of the Gazette with his business partner and brother-in-law, William Eichbaum, the husband of Rebecca Johnston (1792-1882). They published the newspaper (which they rebranded as the Pittsburgh Gazette and Manufacturing and Mercantile Advertiser) until 1822, when they sold their shares to David MacLean. In 1824, Samuel Johnston became a partner in the printing firm Johnston and Stockton, which operated a printing office, bookbindery, and bookstore on Market St. in Pittsburgh. The following year, the firm established a paper mill in Fallston, Beaver County, which produced writing, printing and wrapping paper. In addition to his printing ventures, Samuel Johnston served several terms as Treasurer of the City of Pittsburgh and as Treasurer of Allegheny County throughout the 1840s. In 1824, he married Mary Nelson (1802-1839), with whom he had four children. He died of cholera in 1854.
William G. Johnston
William Graham Johnston, the elder of Samuel and Mary Johnston's two sons, was born on August 22, 1828. In 1842, Johnston enrolled in Belle Vernon Academy, where he spent two years. In 1844, following the academy's closure, Johnston became a student at the Western University in Pittsburgh (now the University of Pittsburgh). The school as well as the Johnston family residence was destroyed in the "Great Fire" of 1845—which damaged roughly a third of the city. Rather than resuming a formal education, Johnston joined his father's printing business, the offices of which had been spared from the fire. In 1849, Johnston temporarily left the company and traveled with a group of friends and associates to California in search of gold, reaching San Francisco in August of the same year. He wrote an account of the expedition in Experiences of a Forty-Niner (1892).
Johnston returned to the family printing and bookbinding business early in 1850. In 1857, three years after his father's death, Johnston founded the printing house of William G. Johnston and Company, which specialized in printing, binding, and stationery. The company initially operated on Wood Street near Third Avenue in Downtown, Pittsburgh. In 1885, a larger building was constructed on the corner of Ninth Street and Penn Avenue, where the company operated for over seventy years. In addition to managing the printing company, Johnston also served as president of the Citizens Insurance Company, Duquesne National Bank, and the Pittsburgh Steel Casting Company. During the railroad strike of 1877 and the resulting riots, Johnston served as the chairman of a Public Safety Committee. In 1852, William married Sarah Stewart (1829-1889), with whom he had six children: Valeria (b.1855), Elizabeth (b.1857), Sarah (b.1859), Paul (b.1861), Mary (b.1863), and Stewart Johnston. Johnston moved to Watertown, New York in 1894, and died there in 1913.
For more information on William G. Johnston, please consult his books, The Life and Reminiscences of William G. Johnston (1901) and the abovementioned Experiences of a Forty-Niner, which can be found on the shelves of the Thomas and Katherine Detre Library. See staff for assistance.
Stewart Johnston
Stewart Johnston, the youngest of William G. and Sarah Stewart Johnston's children, was born in 1865 in Pittsburgh. In 1887, he graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York with a degree in civil engineering. He began his career as a draftsman for the Pittsburgh Steel Casting Company, of which he was made superintendent in 1889 and president in 1890. In 1898 Stewart founded the Pittsburgh Steel Foundry Company. He served as its president until 1925, when he was elected chairman of the board of directors at the reorganization of the company into a corporation.
In 1891, Stewart Johnston married Eleanor Dudley Hogg (1865-1939), the daughter of a prominent banker in Fayette County. Eleanor and Stewart Johnston had three children: Percival H. Johnston (died in infancy, 1895), Stewart Johnston Jr. (1896-1910), and Caroline Austin Johnston (1898-1939).
In 1922, Caroline Johnston married Samuel Adams Hartwell, a Harvard graduate from Louisville, Kentucky who worked for the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) in Pittsburgh. He and Caroline had three children: Eleanor (1923-2009), Caroline (b. 1926), and Samuel Adams, Jr. (b. 1930). Caroline Hartwell married Charles Prescott Stewart II.
Scope and Content Notes
The Johnston Family Papers and Photographs are housed in fifteen archival boxes and are arranged in eleven series. Series have been designated for Samuel and Alice Hartwell, Samuel Hartwell Jr., Hogg Family, Johnston Family, Eleanor Johnston's Genealogical Research, Paul Johnston, Stewart Johnston, William Johnston, The William G. Johnston Company, Photographs, and Oversized Material. The papers include correspondence, newspaper clippings, genealogical charts, wills, William G. Johnston's unfinished manuscripts, scrapbooks, and other related material. The bulk of the papers consist primarily of correspondence between family members. Scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings, genealogical charts, and ephemera.
Arrangement
The Johnston Family Papers and Photographs are arranged by family member and material type, and have been divided into the following 11 series:
Series 1. Samuel and Alice Hartwell
Series 2. Samuel Hartwell, Jr.
Series 3. Hogg Family
Series 4. Johnston Family
Series 5. Eleanor Johnston Genealogical Research
Series 6. Paul Johnston
Series 7. Stewart Johnston
Series 8. William G. Johnston
Series 9. William G. Johnston Company
Series 10. Photographs
Series 11. Oversized Materials
Conditions Governing Access
None.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Charles Stewart III in 2001 and 2014.
Preferred Citation
Johnston Family Papers and Photographs, 1782-2013, MSS 387, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Jaimie George and Nick Hartley in March, 2014.
Conditions Governing Use
Property rights reside with the Senator John Heinz History Center. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to reproduce or publish, please contact the Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives of the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Related Materials
Accession # 2001.121, held in the museum division, includes a black sequin gown and ruched boa, c.1900, most likely belonging to Julia Ely Johnston, the third wife of William Graham Johnston.
William G. Johnston and Company Records, 1857-1915, AIS.1964.43, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.
Separated Materials
Ten volumes have been transferred to the library and have been individually catalogued. These books range in content from family Bibles, hymnals and psalm books, to family histories on distant relatives, as well as others that pertain to regions of Pennsylvania with familial associations.
Library accession 2003.0069: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary: The Garden Club of America, Philadelphia, 1938.
Library accession 2003.0070: The Manuscripts of J.J. Hope Johnstone, Esq. Of Annadale.
Library accession 2003.0071: Historical Sketch of Franklin County.
Library accession 2003.0072: Minnesota Society, Sons of the American Revolution, Year Book, 1889-1895.
Library accession 2003.0073: History of the Dudley Family: Volume II (1887) and 100 pages between Volumes II and III (1889).
Library accession 2003.0074: Hogg Family Bible.
Library accession 2003.0075: Landmark Architecture -- Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.
Library accession 2003.0106: Psalms and Hymns.
Library accession 2003.0107: Bible of Mary Neilson.
Subjects
Corporate Names
William G. Johnston Company.
Johnston and Stockton Company.
Pittsburgh Steel Foundry Corporation.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Western University of Pennsylvania.
Personal Names
Johnston, William G. (1828-1913)
Johnston, Samuel Reed (1797-1854)
Johnston, Stewart (1865-1933)
Johnston, Eleanor H. (1865-1939)
Hartwell, Samuel A. (1892-1969)
Hartwell, Samuel A. (1864-1926)
Hartwell, Caroline A.
Hogg, John T. (1828-1913)
Geographic Names
Highland Park (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
Coraopolis (Pa.)
New Haven (Pa.)
Other Subjects
Printing--Pennsylvania--History.
Steel castings industry--United States--History.
Gold rushes--1840-1850.
Paper mills--United States--History--19th century.
