California Biographies 

Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. 
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


DENOON HOWARD  JOHNSON .An able representative of the agricultural and horticultural interests of 
Santa Barbara County, Denoon Howard Johnson is a valued resident of Naples, where he owns and 
operates a large, well appointed and well managed ranch devoted to the raising of lima beans and 
walnuts. He was born October 28, 1838, in Pennsylvania, where his parents lived several years. His 
father, John Johnson, born in Tennessee, of German ancestry, married Abigail Howard, who was born 
in Pennsylvania, and was of English descent.  
 
Completing his early studies in the public schools, D. H. Johnson moved with his parents to Iowa while 
yet a boy, and there gained his first knowledge of the various branches of farming. After living in that 
state twenty-one years, he decided to make a change, and woo fortune under more favorable 
conditions. In 1863 he, therefore, crossed the plains, and much more difficult proposition than it would 
be at the present time, and for three years followed his chosen industry in Sonoma County, California. 
Coming to Southern California in 1866, he spent one year in Santa Barbara County; about seven years 
on a ranch in Los Angeles County; one year in Ventura County, and then returned to Santa Barbara 
County. In the spring of 1883 Mr. Johnson located near Naples, at Dos Pueblos Canyon, where he 
began farming on an extensive scale by beginning the improvement of a ranch containing 208 acres. 
He not only raised strawberries and small fruit at first, but built up quite a business as a stock raiser and 
dealer. Mr. Johnson has since varied his crops, at the present time making a specialty of raising lima 
beans and walnuts, from both of which he gathers large and profitable harvests.  
 
On October 15, 1870, Mr. Johnson married, at Healdsburg, Sonoma County, Miss Alice Allen, who was 
born in Ohio, where her father, William Allen, was for many years engaged in work as an expert 
carpenter. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson has been blessed by the birth of five children, namely: 
Abbie L., who became the wife of William J. Rutherford, a stock raiser and dealer in Santa Maria, has 
three children, Mary, Wilfred and Helen ; Vesta L., wife of S. F. Smith, who is engaged in farming on a 
part of Mr. Johnson's estate, has one child, Alice; William, who has charge of a portion of the parental 
ranch, is married, and has two children, Ellen and Lester; Gertrude, who married J. Lane, of Goleta, has 
one child, Doris, and May, the wife of Roy F. Hoffman, of Oxnard, and they have two children, Gladys 
and Mildred. Politically Mr. Johnson invariably votes the democratic ticket, and religiously he is a 
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.