Bannock County
IDGenWeb
An honest, capable and fearless judiciary is the last bulwark of liberty
among a free people; and without this their doom is sealed. There may be
great commercial enterprise, vast industrial activity, voluminous
agricultural production, with social splendor, artistic adornment and
intellectual power, but in a free, able and untrammeled judicial system
liberty rests for protection and both individual right and the general
weal find their best and their ultimate security. The states of the
great Northwest realized this early in their history. When they were new
and uncivilized the lawless element was disposed to run riot and defy
authority, but heroic measures were taken to clear the atmosphere, and
then the forms of law and the channels of its administration were firmly
fixed within definite metes and bounds. Once put in motion, her forces
have worked harmoniously, and the succession to her scepter has been
kept in proper hands. Among those who have capably held official place,
administering justice freely, without price, speedily without delay and
fully without denial, must be mentioned Hon. Thomas A. Johnston, probate
judge of Bannock county in this state. He was born in Canada in 1848,
the son of James and Fannie (McElroy) Johnston, natives of Ireland who
came to the United States soon after their marriage, and after living
for a time in New York, settled in the province of Ontario, and there
engaged in farming until his death in 1872, at the age of seventy-eight.
His widow died in 1882 at the age of sixty-seven. Of their eleven
children the Judge was the sixth in order of birth. His life has been
one touching both extremes of fortune, and almost every form of trial in
toil and struggle. His school days were passed in his native country,
but his education was obtained mainly from subsequent reading and from
contact with the world. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a
shoemaker to learn, the trade, and worked at it for fully twenty years,
conducting for two years of the time a shoe store at Bradford. Pa. He
then passed six years at Central City, Neb., and six at Rawlins, Wyo.
From that place he came to Pocatello, Idaho, working for the railroad
company until 1884, when he opened a shoe store in Rawlins which he
carried on until 1889, thence returning to Pocatello, where for two
years thereafter he conducted a cigar and tobacco business, and for six
or seven did carpenter work. He was then elected police judge of
Pocatello, and at the end of his term of six years, in 1901, was elected
probate judge of Bannock county on the Republican ticket. Since his
tenure of this office began he has won praise from all classes of the
people for his manifest fairness, independence and ability in the
discharge of his official duties, and has kept the standard of his
office high and its atmosphere clean and pure.
In fraternal
relations Judge Johnston is connected with the Ancient Order of United
Workmen. He was married in 1873 to Miss Ella B. Doolittle, a daughter of
Leland and Virna (Rosson) Doolittle, natives of New York. Her father was
a prominent physician and surgeon, and during the Civil war served in
that capacity in a New York regiment. Mrs. Johnston was born in Indiana
and her marriage occurred in Nebraska.
Extracted from Progressive Men of Bannock, Bear Lake, Bingham, Fremont and Oneida Counties, Idaho, published in 1904, pages 263-264, contributed 2021 Jun 15 by Norma Hass
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