Is this my Great Grandmother?

I recently recieved this picture from a distant cousin, Jerry Sanner. He believes that it was taken in 1909, and that the central seated figure may be my great grandmother, Estella Lucinda Randall.

He has tentatively identified the individuals as (L-R):

• Chris Johnston b. 1897 age 12, This would be the younger brother of my grandmother, Rosella Johnston, and the son of Estella and her first husband, Aaron C. Johnston.
• Reuben Hower b. 1858 age 50/52 (he d. in 1919), this would be Estella's second husband.
• Estella (Randall) [Johnson] Hower b. 1866 age 42 (she died in 1916), my great grandmother.
• Clarabelle (Johnston) Byzewski b. 1886 age 22, my grandmother's older sister.
• Margaret Hower b. 1906 age 2.5, my grandmother's young half-sister.
• Joseph Byzewski, husband to Clarabelle.

Rosella would not appear as she had married Alfred Leslie Worland in 1908.
Any help verifying this photo would be greatly appreciated. The family lived in Minnesota.

1858-59 Iowa

August- My great-grandfather, Aaron C. (Acy) Johnston, born in Allamakee County, Iowa.
He is the son of Aaron C. Johnson and wife Elizabeth. (He is my maternal grandmother's father.)

1864 Iowa

April 26, 1864- My great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Johnson, dies in Allamakee County, Iowa at the age of 37. She was the wife of Aaron C. Johnson, and the mother of Aaron C. (Acy) Johnson.

1893

My maternal grandmother, Rosella Johnston, was born on Dec. 8, 1893 in Hibbing, Minnesota.
Her parents were Aaron C. (Acy) Johnston (Johnson) and Estella Lucinda Randall Johnson who had migrated west from Allamakee County, Iowa.
She wed Alfred Leslie Worland in Park Rapids, Minnesota on May 19, 1908.
They soon continued west to Idaho, onward to Oregon, finally settling on Whidbey Island in the 1940s.

Rosella B. Johnston

Boats on the waterfront at Fairhaven. Photograph Collection, Postcard 1911



My grandmother, Rosella B. Johnston, was born December 8, 1893, in Minnesota. She grew up in Fairhaven Township, Minnesota. Her mother was Estella Lucinda Johson, (nee: Randall).

Her father, Aaron C. "Acy" Johnson was a farmer from Iowa. Acy had migrated from Allaamakee Co, Iowa, to Clearwater, Minnesota some time around 1880, with his two brothers, Charles H. and Frank.
Acy died on Aug. 20, 1900 at 3:30 in the morning. He had been kicked in the face by a horse on August 15, leaving him in bad shape.
Pneumonia set in shortly after the accident, which led to his death. He was 42 years of age.

On May 19, 1908, Rosella married Alfred Leslie Worland in Park Rapids, Minnesota.

Notes on Surnames

One difficulty I faced almost immediately was the problem of changing surnames. My grandmother's maiden name was Rosella Johnston, but very quickly this surname became Johnson in the databases. Johnston is simply a variant, names often change as we travel back through time.
Johnson is an English patronymic name meaning "son of John (gift of God)." The name John derives from the Latin Johannes, which is derived from the Hebrew Yohanan meaning "Jehovah has favoured."
The suffix meaning "son," creates several different variations of the JOHNSON surname. Examples: English son, Norwegian sen, German sohn, and Swedish sson. JONES is the common Welsh version of this surname. The JOHNSON surname may also be an Anglicisation of the Gaelic surname MacSeain or MacShane. Johnson was a very popular name among Christians, given the many saints named John, including St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist.

The Journey Begins

I was given a picture. My maternal grandparents- Alfred Leslie Worland and his wife, Rosella.

A cousin I have never met sent me some information. I was given a book, One Man's Family The History and Genealogy of the Worland Family in America 1662-1962.

I learned that Alfred Leslie Worland was born on March 20, 1877 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The Federal Census lists him as living with his family in Excelsior, Hennepin County, Minnesota in 1880. He was two years old.

The 1900 Census places the family in Stearns, Minnesota.

On May 19, 1908, he married Rosella Johnston, who had been born on December 8, 1893 in Hibbing, Minnesota. At the time of her marriage, Rosella was just fourteen years of age.

The 1910 Census shows the family living in Hubbard, Minnesota.

Draft records show that Alfred registered for the World War I draft, 1917-1918, in Hubbard, Minnesota.

In 1925, they migrated west to Idaho, and later on to Medford, and Grant's Pass, Oregon. The Federal Census lists the family as residing in Lane, Oregon in 1930.

In the 1940s, they settled on Whidbey Island, in Washington's Puget Sound. They lived the rest of their lives there. Alfred died November 25, 1948 in Langley, Washington. Rosella passed away on September 18, 1979 in Seattle, Washington.

They had ten children.