Shoemaker, Contractor, and Probate Judge Thomas A. Johnston [otd 07/19]

Versatile pioneer and Probate Judge Thomas A. Johnston was born July 19, 1848 in Ontario, Canada. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. Around 1868, he crossed over into the U. S. to work in a shoe store in northern New York. He was then briefly attracted to the oil boom in western Pennsylvania, but moved on to Nebraska in the summer of 1869.

Thomas A. Johnston. [French]

Besides operating a shoe shop, he tried his hand at farming near a small town about 23 miles northeast of Grand Island. Of the next seven years or so, he spent one as a “drummer” (traveling salesman) for a wholesale shoe company. Around 1876, he decided that Rawlins, Wyoming, offered better prospects for his shoe business.

Rawlins held him until early 1882, when he went to work for the Oregon Short Line Railroad. The OSL was then laying track westward into Idaho, crossing the border during the summer. Johnston helped build the needed railway stations and shops. Finally, in November 1884, OSL tracks reached Huntington, Oregon, and connected with a line from Portland. The major work done, Johnston returned to Rawlins and his shoe store.

However, during his stint with the OSL, Thomas became acquainted with Pocatello station. As the point where the OSL and the Utah & Northern rails crossed, a thriving town was bound to grow there. The fact that the spot was inside the Fort Hall Indian Reservation complicated matters, however. The railroads had paid the tribes for a track right-of-way, but that allowed little room for a station, much less a town.

So they had bought enough additional land to build a small depot. Later, they squeezed a hotel onto the plot. But that wasn’t enough and squatter cabins soon spread beyond the company land. Finally, in the spring of 1888, a new agreement provided enough land for more growth. At that point, Johnston closed his shoe store in Rawlins and moved to the new town.

Actually, he left the shoe business for good and ran a cigar shop. Meanwhile, a town was incorporated and, by 1890, had an estimated population of about 3,000. Surely sensing that the area would continue to grow, Johnston closed his cigar store and engaged in carpentry and general building construction. Two years later, the legislature acknowledged the town’s growth from a village to a city “of the first class” and authorized city elections.

In 1895, Johnston won a close election for Police Judge, an office charged with enforcing city ordinances. Thomas continued his construction business, perhaps because the judgeship did not pay that well. Voters re-elected him to the position for the next five years, although the 1899 election was again close (he won by less than 50 votes out of about eleven hundred).

Pocatello, 1895. Bannock County Historical Society.

The election in late 1900 saw Johnston move up to the position of Probate Judge, although he won by only 10 votes. Thomas, of course, had only a “common school” education and had never studied law. An Idaho Legal History Society article noted that such men were “schooled in life” and got elected because they were highly respected in the community.

The Probate Judge position offered enough income so Johnston could close his construction sideline. And he was, indeed, respected enough to be re-elected for the next twelve years. He chose to retire voluntarily at the end of 1912. Such was his influence by then that he essentially hand-picked his successor.

Johnston passed away on the last day of 1914.
                                                                               

References: [B&W], [French]

“Early Probate Judges Schooled in Life,” Idaho Legal History Society, Boise, Idaho (Fall 2010).

Progressive Men of Bannock, Bear Lake, Bingham, Fremont and Oneida Counties, Idaho, A. W. Bowen & Co., Chicago (1904).

“[TA Johnston News],” Idaho Statesman, Boise; Idaho Falls Times, Idaho Falls; Deseret News, Salt Lake City; The Journal, Logan, Utah (April 1895 – January 1915).