C. Stuart Johnston
Canyon, Randall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Belhaven, North Carolina on Dec. 31, 1900, Claud Stuart Johnston began teaching in Oklahoma after graduating from the University of North Carolina. Fieldwork for the University of Oklahoma prepared Johnson for the Earth Science Department chair at West Texas State Teachers College, where from 1934-39, he also taught courses, secured federal relief program funding for projects, and supervised programs with his wife, Margaret (Counts). Materials they collected formed the core of the Paleontology Collection at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. Johnston returned to Oklahoma to finish a doctoral degree, but puzzlingly left for Boston, Massachusetts, where he died weeks later on July 24, 1939. (2010)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in North Carolina in 1900, Claud Stuart Johnston became an educator and fossil hunter who chaired the Earth Science Department at West Texas State Teachers College from 1934 to 1939. Working with his wife Margaret and federal relief-program crews during the Depression, he gathered paleontological specimens that formed the core of the collection at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. His life ended abruptly and mysteriously in 1939, when he died in Boston just weeks after leaving Oklahoma to finish his doctorate.
Why it matters
Johnston's fieldwork—much of it powered by New Deal relief labor—helped build one of the region's great fossil collections and shows how Depression-era programs advanced Texas science and education.
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Related people
- · Claud Stuart Johnston
- · Margaret Counts Johnston
Themes & tags
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