Hale Johnson

Hale Johnson was born in Montgomery, Indiana on 23 August 1847; he was murdered in 1902, by a man who owed him a small amount of money.
     Johnson was a lawyer.  Initially a Republican, he left the Republican Party when it refused to endorse the proposed Prohibition Amendment to the Constitution.  In 1896, he was simultaneously the Prohibition candidate for governor of Illinois and the Prohibition candidate for vice-president of The United States.  Johnson traveled widely during the campaign, speaking in some 30 states.

-- Gammon, 2007, p.53

Hale Johnson was born in Tippecanoe County, Indiana  on 21 August 1847.  His father, John B. Johnson, was a surgeon.  Hale Johnson as a young man farmed and taught school.   He enlisted in the Union army as a private, in 1864.  In 1875, he was admitted to the Illinois bar and became one of the more prominent lawyers in Jasper County.
    He married Mary E. Loofbourough in 187 _; the couple had 6 children:  Jesse, Frank, May Bell, Fannie, Ruby, and Hale, Jr.
     Johnson was murdered at the village of Bogota, in Jasper County, on 4 November 1902.  He was practicing law in Newton, the county seat, at the time and had gone to Bogota to collect on an account which had been rendered against one Harry Harris.  An altercation ensued.  Harris obtained a shotgun and fired at Johnson, at close range.  Johnson died on the spot.  Harris immediately jumped into Johnson's buggy and attempted to flee but was apprehended by a deputy who had witnessed the shooting.
     Johnson's body was taken to his home in Newton.  Harris was placed in jail, where he committed suicide a few days later by taking poison.
     Johnson had been nominated by the Prohibition Party in 1896 to be its candidate for Governor of Illinois, but he later withdrew and, instead, accepted his Party's nomination for Vice-President.
             Information from the website "Find-A-Grave" and from the Decatur (Illinois) Herald of 7 November 1902.

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