Early Life
Born in a log cabin on December 30, 1867, Henry Simpson Johnston was a native of Evansville, Indiana. At age twenty-four, Johnston would move to Colorado where he studied law and passed the bar exam in 1891. After a few years in Colorado, Johnston would move to Perry in Oklahoma Territory where he would become a powerful and popular figure throughout the area of Noble County.
Upon announcement that Oklahoma and Indian Territories were to combine into one state, Johnston was elected in 1906 to represent Noble and the surrounding counties at the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. During the Convention, Johnston would be elected to serve in the body's number-two office as the President Pro Tempore of the Convention. During the session, Johnston met many of the Convention’s prominent figures, including future governors Charles N. Haskell, William H. Murray and Robert L. Williams. All of these men would work together to write one of the most progressive Constitutions of any US State, as well as the longest governing document in the world at the time.
On November 16, 1907, the United States Congress accepted the Oklahoma Constitution. On the same day, Charles N. Haskell was inaugurated as the state’s first Governor. Before the Constitution was approved, Johnston ran and was elected to the Oklahoma Senate to serve in the First Legislative Session of the Oklahoma Legislature. Extremely popular, Johnston was selected to serve as the Senate’s first President Pro Tempore of the Oklahoma Senate, the Senate’s highest official behind the President of the Oklahoma Senate.
Johnston was popular among the masses of Oklahoma. Among his most powerful supporters were prohibitionists, Protestant churchmen, and Freemasons. Johnston himself would serve as the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of Oklahoma. So popular was Johnston that he placed his name in the Democratic primary in 1926 to run for Governor of Oklahoma to replace outgoing Governor Martin E. Trapp. Winning the general election, Johnston was inaugurated as the seventh Governor of Oklahoma.
Read more about this topic: Henry S. Johnston
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