The "too many Johnsons" problem - how to find the Ronald E Johnson who was married to Rose M Johnson
I'm doing some historical research that requires me to find the relatives of the Donald E and Rose M Johnson who platted a housing development in 1952 in Ramsey County, Minnesota. Is there a way to do an advanced search for a Ronald E Johnson who was married to Rose M Johnson? Their plat included a street called "Roth Place" and I'm wondering if Roth might be a family name, but there are too many Ronald and Rose Johnsons in Minnesota to find them. (I have found the origins of many street names in the research area this way, but Roth has me stuck.)
Answers
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@Scott1894 Assuming you do mean Donald not Ronald (the above is confusing on this point), could this be him? He's in the St Paul area in 1950 with the correct wife name, and he 'buys and sells real estate'. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6F9S-4XT1?lang=en
Could this be your Roth perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Roth_(politician) (would be interesting to know what sort of thing/person other streets in the development are named after - this is a stab in the dark really)
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Based on what @MandyShaw1 found I added a few things to this PID which seems like a plausible fit for what you have provided so far. Now then again this is for Donald Ernest Johnson I looking at his family line I don't see any 'Roth' names that appear
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Thanks for your help @MandyShaw1 and @Mark McKenzie_1 ! I think you have found the Donald E and Rose M who platted this small subdivision. (Thanks to your expertise in searching on spouseGivenName!) I don't see any relatives named Roth for either one. There were only two streets identified in the plat, the second being renamed when the adjacent plat was later filed—I will look up the original plat again on Tuesday when I go back to the County Recorder's Office and see if that name provides any clues. I hope to also find the original deed to the property to see who the Johnsons bought it from, since maybe there was farmhouse on the property that could have been owned by a Roth. Also, property owners who file plats often work with developers who are doing all the work. There were others who signed the plat application, but hard to read their signatures (but clearly not Roth). Donald E and Rose M Johnson are stated as the property owners who filed it.
In general, I find that when a street is given a person's name, 2/3 chance it is a close relative of the people who filed the plat, but the last 1/3 of them are harder to figure out. In this case, Roth Place crosses six different subdivisions, but checking the plat filings showed that the Johnsons' plat was the first to use the name Roth. If I find anything, I'll post the follow-up here. Thanks again for your help!0 -
@MandyShaw1 @Mark McKenzie_1 I went down to the County Recorder's Office today to look up plats and deeds. I found that there were two streets in the plat: Roth and Bessie (Bessie St. was renamed after being subsumed by later plat). I don't see any relative of the Johnsons named Bessie (or Elizabeth). There are some "Bessie Roth" entries found in Ramsey County, including one who died two years before the plat was filed. But I don't see any family connection between these Bessies and the Johnsons. The Johnsons bought the land from Stephen and Dorothy Fink, but that is a dead end, too. I might toss this out to social media, to see if anybody locally knows who Roth was… It may remain a mystery lost to history.
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@Scott13241 Maybe try local historical societies? The origins of street names are the sort of thing local historians lap up, I'd have thought. Or is there a local history/Local Studies library locally whose librarians you could consult?
This is veering away from the family history that is the usual topic of this forum, to be honest.
The politician I found above was married to an Ella, btw, though I suppose it's just possible she went by Bessie.
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@Scott13241 having said which, have you looked at Charles Roth LBXM-34T? He has a wife called Bessie and is a real estate agent with a WW2 draft registration, as is Donald's father Ernest on both counts (the latter source is attached to LBXM-34T which looks like it needs merging with our Ernest GQDX-8FK). I would take a small bet this is our man. Maybe he and Ernest both put money into the plat?
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@MandyShaw1 Thanks for your help! You are right that this platform and genealogy community is not primarily for history name research, so I won't keep pestering you.
Actually, I am doing this research for my local historical society, precisely because they are interested in local place names and are assembling a series of presentations about names in our area. I volunteered to cover place names on the south side of our local lake. I use property records, plat maps, old newspapers, old city council minutes, historic maps, and genealogy databases to figure things out. I have tracked down all the park names, pond names, school names, and most of the street names. But there are a handful of street names that aren't clear, and there is no one left alive to tell the tale.
The Charles and Bessie Roth you found are good possibilities, but I have no way of knowing if they have any connection to the Johnsons, and we live in a metro area of millions of people. At least both these Roths and these Johnsons lived in the same side of the city, and if they both worked in real estate, that makes it more likely. The Roths did not sign the plat filed by the Johnsons. This was before the age of the internet, so no way of knowing if Roth, Johnson, and Blomquist were partners in realty.
The other Roth, the politician, is too far out from the metro to be a possibility.
Thanks again for your help. I learned something about how to use familysearch!0
