Spouses
Birth Date28 Feb 1811
Birth PlaceCleveland, Cumberland County, North Carolina
Death DateApr 1860 Age: 49
Death PlaceFulton, Itawamba County, Mississippi
Misc. Notes
Mary Jane Johnson was born 28 Febuary, 1811 in Cumberland County, North Carolina to William B. Johnson. It is speculated that her mother was Mary Edwards based on a 14 Sept. 1807 marriage of a William Johnson to a Mary Edwards. Mary was the second of 5 children born to William B. Johnson, with an older sister named Betsey Ann, and 3 younger brothers named (in birth order), William A., Henry, and the youngest child Norman.
Marrying Gray Partin in October 1832, by 1837 they had moved to Alabama where Gray secured a land patent in Autauga County. By 1840 the family, including four children, had moved to Itawamba County, Miss., where Gray subsequently secured 320 acres in June of 1843.
Mary Jane Johnson was left one hundred dollars in her father William Johnson's will dated March 10, 1849 and probated in Cumberland County, NC. By the 1849 date of her father's will, her mother, her sister Betsey Ann, and apparently her youngest brother Norman had all died.
M ary Jane died between the Census of 1850 (taken Sept. 9th, 1850), where she is named along with her four daughters, and the State of Miss. 1853 Census, where there are only four females listed in the home. She would have been around 39 or 40 years of age at the time of her death. No daughters had married until Mary Ellen in Jan. of 1854, so she was not absent from home at that census.
By the time Mary Jane had died she bore 10 children in all, with her youngest, Francis Marion, being between 2 to 5 years of age.
92 year old Benny Cecil Sentor, owner at that time of the property where the cemetery is located, in an interview on April 21, 2000, related the oral family tradition handed down that , "Gray Parton's wife was the first person buried in the Partin Cemetery. She requested to be buried near her home, so her children could run and play near her grave." Her brother Henry Johnson & wife Sarah & daughter Jane are buried next to his sister Mary Jane & her husband Gray with marked headstones. Yet there are no headstones for Gray Partin Sr and wife Mary Jane, just several jagged fieldstones marking burial spots.
But of the 18 graves said to there, only the 4 Johnson's and Gray Partin's nephew R.P. Blalock have any recognizable headstones, yet two of these do not stand upon their owner's burial sites.
John Norman Johnson's original headstone was replaced at the cemetery he was buried in, which is adjacent to the Mt. Vernon Baptist Church. The original was then removed to the Partin Family Cemetery - about 1 to 2 miles south, where his parents are buried. This headstone rests upright just outside the fenced Partin Cemetery.
The other is Richard Blaylock's CSA upright headstone. He is buried elsewhere and his original CSA commemorative headstone ("R. P. Blaylock - Co. F 24 Miss Inf CSA") was also moved here when replaced by the family with a newer one. The story has it that in the 1920s or 30s grave robbers dug into the ground beneath it, evidently looking for Civil War memorabilia, but of course found nothing as the body did not reside below.
The other 16 or so graves are marked off with clay bricks or broken fieldstone. Others said to be buried here: Henry and Sarah Blalock Partin, father of Gray Partin, and their son William Partin and his wife Matilda; John M. Blalock and his wife Mary Partin; Charlie Blalock; and a James Waddle.
Within 10 years of Mary Jane's death, her husband Gray had died. The saving grace for her was to be spared the deaths of 5 of her 6 sons in the Civil War between 1861 and 1864.
Between the censuses of 1870 and 1880, the last of her 5 remaining children, Mary Ellen, had removed to Texas.