Grave 10 - Captain William Harrison Johnson

A southern pine coffin contained an incomplete skeleton together with lead shot, 18 metal buttons, fragments of brown cloth. The remains were of a 34-year old man, slight in stature, 5 feet 3 inches. There was a circular hole near the left mandible about the diameter of a shot recovered with this burial. The remains were those of Captain Johnson, who came to Seven Rivers in the early 1870's. In 1877 he was known to be living at the Beckwith Ranch.

The Las Vegas Gazette of August 31, 1878 reported that "Hugh M. Beckwith shot and killed his son-in-law, Captain Wm. Johnson. Someone at the scene then shot Beckwith."

Captain Johnson had married Beckwith's daughter, Camilla, in 1875. One evening in 1878 as the family was dining--Captain Johnson, his wife Camilla, Billy their 3-year old son, and Grandpa Hugh Beckwith--the Captain carelessly betrayed the fact that his military service had been in the Union Army. Grandpa Hugh cursed, left the table, fetched his shotgun, pressed it to the Captain's head, and pulled the trigger.

Grandpa Hugh then sprang onto a saddled horse and rode out the gate, but Wallace Olinger standing nearby fired with a pistol shearing off the end of Hugh's nose. Grandpa Hugh rode on to Texas, recovered, opened a store, where, 15 years later, he was found bound and beaten to death.