1. Irving Halsey1 Johnson (Josiah, #2)1,2 was born on 14 Jun 1867 at Springfield, OH.3,4 He married Mabel Barker Sanborn, daughter of George Washington Sanborn and Mary Abigail Jackman, on 8 Aug 1894 at Georgetown, MA; Howe Street or Howe house.5,6 He died on 6 Oct 1936 at Newburyport, MA, at age 69. He was buried in 1936 at Belleville Cemetery, Newburyport, MA.
"I have thought lately how much you would have enjoyed going to school with your great grandfather Johnson, Irving Halsey Johnson, born in Springfield, Ohio in 1867.
He was my father, you know, so I will call him, as I always did, Daddy. He taught in an old school with dark corridors and screwed down desks, but that didn't keep him from modern ideas about children.
Over the door to his classroom was a bar where children could chin themselves when they needed to stretch. When a whole class got wriggley, he sent them out to climb up and down the fire escape.
When I taught with him, he was quite old and very deaf. He let students get noisy sometimes, but he had a special formula for getting them to be quiet. He said not a word, but sat on a dest in the front of the room and folding his hands, he started to twirl his thumbs. There is something fascinating about watching a dignified old man perched on a desk twirling his thumbs. When everyone was watching, he said "you can't do this" and began twirling this thunbs counter clockwise. Soon forty five noisey youngsters were sitting at their desks twirling their thumbs, clockwise and counter clockwise, concentrating on keeping up.
When it was quiet, very quiet, daddy took a pin out of his watch pocket, and dropped it, with a noisey clatter on the floor. At least it was noisey in that thumb twirling silence.
"That will do", said Daddy, "quiet enough to hear a pin drop is quiet enough. Go back to your arithmetic." "
Eleanor has written a wonderful book, "The Wishing Year", which paints a fascinaing picture of growing up in Newburyport in the 1920s.7 Irving's family was in Springfield during the panic of 1877.
Irving grew up with very little as a child, he always liked to have leftovers (more food available than necessary) as an adult.8 He was Principal for 43 years from 1892 to 1935 at Kelley School, Newburyport, MA.9 He lived after 1900 at 50 Woodland St, Newburyport, Essex, MA, Most of the Items mentioned in Eleanor's "Family Flotsam" narrative come from this house.10