C. Stuart Johnston

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. A man born on the very last day of 1900, New Year's Eve, December 31st, in Belhaven, North Carolina. That's Claud Stuart Johnston, and right from the start, his life had a kind of dramatic timing to it.

He came up through school, graduated from the University of North Carolina, and headed west to Oklahoma to start teaching. Then fieldwork for the University of Oklahoma pointed him in a new direction, toward the earth itself, the deep old bones of the land. That preparation landed him a chair, the Earth Science Department at West Texas State Teachers College, and from 1934 to 1939 he was something else out there on the Llano Estacado.

Teaching courses, yes, but also securing federal relief program funding for projects, supervising programs, and doing all of it alongside his wife, Margaret, born a Counts. The two of them were out in the field, collecting materials, piecing together what the ancient ground had to say. And what they gathered didn't disappear.

Those materials became the core of the Paleontology Collection at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. That collection is still there. Still telling those stories.

Now here's where the tale takes its turn. Johnston left the college, headed back to Oklahoma to finish a doctoral degree. Sensible enough.

But then, puzzlingly, and that word is right there on the marker, puzzlingly, he left for Boston, Massachusetts. No explanation given. Maybe none was ever found.

And weeks after arriving, on July 24, 1939, Claud Stuart Johnston died. A man who spent years reading the deep history of the earth, and his own story ended with a question mark that nobody's answered since.

What the marker says

Born in Belhaven, North Carolina on Dec. 31, 1900, Claud Stuart Johnston began teaching in Oklahoma after graduating from the University of North Carolina. Fieldwork for the University of Oklahoma prepared Johnson for the Earth Science Department chair at West Texas State Teachers College, where from 1934-39, he also taught courses, secured federal relief program funding for projects, and supervised programs with his wife, Margaret (Counts). Materials they collected formed the core of the Paleontology Collection at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. Johnston returned to Oklahoma to finish a doctoral degree, but puzzlingly left for Boston, Massachusetts, where he died weeks later on July 24, 1939. (2010)