Bob: My family has been in Cheyenne for a long time. Both the maternal and paternal great-grandparents were here from [the] mid-1800s. Wow. My paternal grandfather immigrated from Denmark.

Misty: I have Danish heritage also!

Bob:
Oh, okay. Danes are good people.

And my maternal great-grandfather—ultimately, his family came over from Scotland—but he came to Cheyenne from Ohio. Both of them [arrived] in the mid-1800s. And the maternal grandfather worked in the grocery business and had a wholesale grocery here in Cheyenne. His name was Ephraim S. Johnston. He was one of the board members of the original Industrial Club, which is now the Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce.

That was started up in 1907. And so he was a prominent businessman in Cheyenne. His brother, who also came out from Ohio—a younger man, about 13 years younger than him—was named George P. Johnston. He was a physician, and a prominent physician here in Cheyenne. Delivered a lot of babies and did a lot of house calls. But he had good stories. He has—had—great stories.

He was upset about the lack of regulation for the medical industry, and he and another man wrote the first medical laws for the state of Wyoming. And he had medical license number one. Right?

He was also the physician that pronounced Tom Horn dead after they hung Tom Horn. Tom Horn is [was] a cattle enforcer back in the day, when the Cattlemen’s Association was very prominent and very powerful. And he was accused of killing a young man north of town here named Willie Nickell.

The issues were cattle ranchers versus sheep ranchers. Oh, and Willie Nickell’s dad was a sheep rancher. And the cattle ranchers hated the sheep ranchers—and vice versa.

And the story is, Tom Horn was hired by the Cattlemen’s Association to get rid of Willie Nickell’s dad. He is accused of shooting Willie Nickell—the young man—because he thought he was his dad. North of [town]. And there’s still controversy today about whether or not Tom Horn actually did that.

He was—he was made a semi-connection to a law enforcement individual in downtown Cheyenne. [He] was subsequently tried and then hung in 1903—the last hanging in the state of Wyoming. So [that] happened right downtown.

So anyway, [George Johnston] was the physician that pronounced him dead. And he was also the physician that did the autopsy on Willie Nickell.

Misty: And this is your dad’s father?

Bob: This is my dad’s great-uncle.

Misty: You know a lot of the history of your family. Did they write it down?

Bob: Oh yeah. My wife, Jill Jensen, has done a ton of research on all the genealogy of the Johnston and the Jensen family—plus her family, the Evans family, which is more of a Colorado family (but—and Kansas).

But our family—the Johnstons and the Jensens—have been here since, well, before statehood. And my grandfather was born 10 days after statehood in 1890. Yeah, it’s great. It’s a great story. And he was a great man.

My father was born in 1916, and my mother born in 1913. Here in—it—well, she wasn’t born here in Cheyenne, but my dad was. And actually, my dad was born in Detroit, but [his] family moved here. His dad was a druggist, and he came back to Cheyenne—got his license to be a druggist—came back to Cheyenne, had a drugstore downtown. And my dad was an infant when they moved back to Cheyenne.

Bob: And so I was born here. And my daughter was born in Wyoming—we lived in Casper at the time—in ’84. But the point is, is that the family—the Jensen and Johnston family—has been here for a long time in Wyoming. And the issue of being able to have roots that deep here is a blessing.

It’s a lot of fun, because we have a lot of friends—other friends—that have the same kind of story, that their family goes back a long way.

Misty: Do you guys talk about that together?

Bob: We do. They live here still—the Lummis family, the Murray family. We’re related to the Murray family because my great-uncle Jim Murray—who my Aunt Evelyn Jensen married—was the first air mail pilot to deliver air mail to the city of Cheyenne.

So that’s—that’s an interesting connection. The Murray family is a prominent family here in town and has deep historical roots in the city as well. And so it’s fun to be able to have that connection.

And then the Lummis family is a ranching family here in town, and Del Lummis and I are the same age. And it’s one of those stories where we don’t remember even meeting each other. We met when we were, like, two years old—one year old. Our families knew each other and were friends, and so we would go over to the ranch, and we’d play in the stone barn and just have a lot of fun growing up as kids.

And it’s nice to have the heritage of deep roots in a community, and the contribution that our ancestors made to make Cheyenne and Wyoming a better place—and then, hopefully, we carry on in that tradition as well.

Misty:
Do you feel like, as you move through your life contemporarily, that your ancestors are with you in mind and spirit?

Bob:
Yes, I do. I have a—I have a sense of responsibility to live up to their expectation for making a contribution. So I’m—I’m privileged to be able to have spent my whole life here.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.