MY MOTHER'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY
IN GENERAL
My knowledge of my mother's side of my family, back of her parents, is decidedly sketchy. Her ancestry, on both sides, came largely, if not entirely from Scotland. My maternal grandfather, Dr. William Johnston, was a little Scot not much larger, if any, than I; his brother - my Uncle Jim ( really great uncle) - was also a very short blocky man. William managed to educate himself sufficiently to become a doctor; how good a doctor, I do not know, as I heard only the family's point of view. My grandparents were probably married about 1848 or 1849, their oldest child, my mother, was born late in1850. They moved out to Iowa in their early married career but didn't like it well enough to stay and soon came back to Indiana.
Grandfather Johnston was afflicted with asthma and, in the later years of his life, became slightly addicted to the use of opiates; not enough to really make him a "dope fiend" but sufficiently so that, to quote my father, "enough so that it probably shortened his life." He died in 1879, when I was a year old, when he was only a little over sixty.
"Uncle Jim" was slightly younger and lived in Ossian. I think he was a farmer. He had two daughters, both little chunky women, and a son Remmie (short for Remington), whom I do not recall as being particularly undersized. As I remember him he was red-headed and I think he developed leanings toward being a poet, though I do not recall ever seeing any of his work in print.
My grandparents had several children, of whom four grew to maturity. Uncle Will and Uncle Bob were both fairly large men but Aunt Kit and my mother were very small women. These seemingly inconsequential details are mentioned as possibly bearing in the whys and wherefores of my brothers and I being little fellows although nearly all our uncles on both sides were six-footers.