✦ The Robertson Connection ✦

Gustave & Elizabeth Johnson

Gustave Johnson · 26 May 1877, Helsingborg, Sweden – date unknown
Elizabeth "Betty" Johnson Mulholland · 1894 – date unknown

Uncle Gus and Aunt Betty · Bound to the Family Through Margaret Robertson

Gustave Johnson, Macdonald Studios, Brooklyn, c. 1895–1902

Gustave Johnson
Macdonald Studios · 179 Myrtle Ave., Brooklyn
c. 1895–1902

From Helsingborg to Brooklyn

Gustave Johnson was born on 26 May 1877 in Helsingborg, Sweden — a port city at the southwestern tip of the Scandinavian peninsula, looking across a narrow strait toward Denmark. He arrived in the United States sometime before the turn of the twentieth century, settling in Brooklyn, New York. A formal studio portrait survives from this early period, taken at Macdonald Studios on Myrtle Avenue: a young man in a bow tie and three-piece suit, clear-eyed, with his whole American life ahead of him.

In Brooklyn, Gustave married Margaret Elizabeth Robertson, the daughter of David Robertson and Elizabeth Gray — Scottish immigrants who had raised their family in Kings County. It was through Margaret that Gustave Johnson would become, for the rest of his long life, a presence at the center of a larger family story. Margaret was the sister of Joseph Robertson Sr. — the man who would become father to Lillian, Helen, and Joseph Jay Robertson.

When Lillian J. Robertson married Miles Murtha O'Brien, and when young Joseph Jay grew up in the O'Brien household on Central Avenue in Caldwell, New Jersey, Gustave Johnson was already woven into that family web. He was not a blood relation. He had married into a family that then became bound to another. And yet there he is, decade after decade, in the photographs. He shows up. He keeps showing up.

Born: 26 May 1877 · Helsingborg, Sweden
Settled: Brooklyn, New York; later Richmond Hill and Ozone Park, Queens
Married: Margaret Elizabeth Robertson · c. 1893–1894 · Brooklyn
Children: Margaret E. Johnson · Elizabeth "Betty" Johnson (Mulholland) · John Johnson
Widowed: 18 June 1929 upon Margaret's death · age 52
WWII Draft Registration: 1942 · age 64 · employed by Henry Gundarf, 114 Broadway, Brooklyn
Last Census Record: 1950 · Queens, New York · age approximately 73
Date of Death: Not yet located · absent from the O'Brien 50th Anniversary photograph, 1978

Margaret Elizabeth Robertson Johnson

c. 1873 – 18 June 1929 · The Thread That Connects

Margaret Elizabeth Robertson was born around 1873, the daughter of David Robertson and Elizabeth Gray — both natives of Scotland who had made their home in Brooklyn's Kings County. She appears in the 1875 Brooklyn census as a young child in her father's household. By the early 1890s she had married Gustave Johnson, and together they would raise their family first in Brooklyn, then later in Richmond Hill, Queens, at 111-11 113th Street.

Margaret was the sister of Joseph Robertson Sr. This single relationship is the thread that connects Gustave and Betty Johnson to the O'Brien story. Joseph Robertson Sr.'s children — Lillian (who married Miles Murtha O'Brien), Helen (who married Leslie Verhoek), and young Joseph Jay — were Margaret's nieces and nephew. That made Betty Johnson their first cousin.

The Robertson family stayed close even as the children established their own households. In the 1905 New York State census, Margaret is found in her father David Robertson's household in Brooklyn — her daughter Betty, then about eleven years old, beside her. The Robertsons were still a household, still a presence around one another, a decade into Margaret's marriage.

Margaret died on 18 June 1929, at the age of 56, of rheumatic valvular heart disease. She was buried at Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn. Her death certificate was signed by Gustave Johnson as informant. He was 52 years old, and had at least twenty more years ahead of him — years he would spend still showing up for the Robertson-O'Brien family he had married into three and a half decades before.

Elizabeth "Betty" Johnson
c. 1912–1919 · approximately 18–25 years old

Elizabeth "Betty" Johnson Mulholland

Elizabeth Johnson — Betty to everyone who knew her — was born in 1894, the eldest child of Gustave and Margaret. She grew up in Brooklyn and Richmond Hill, surrounded by the Robertson cousins who would remain her lifelong family. Lillian Robertson O'Brien, born in 1905, was her first cousin; so were Helen and young Joseph Jay. Betty was eleven years older than Lillian, fifteen years older than Joseph Jay — old enough to have been a steady presence in their childhood, young enough to remain a fixture at family gatherings well into their adult years.

In October 1925, Betty married John J. Mulholland at her parents' home at 111-11 113th Street, Richmond Hill. The local paper described her gown of white satin crepe embroidered with ribbon flowers, a shower bouquet of roses and lilies of the valley. The matron of honor was the bride's cousin — almost certainly one of the Robertson cousins. John's brother Daniel served as best man. Albin Reihs, a member of the American Legion, played Mendelssohn's Wedding March.

That best man, Daniel Mulholland — Danny — would turn out to matter enormously to the family that followed. Barbara Ann O'Brien Hamall, daughter of Miles and Lillian, recalled how her parents first met:

"Met Daddy at Aunt Betty's — her brother-in-law, Danny Mulholland, was a friend of Dad's."

— Barbara Ann O'Brien Hamall, daughter of Miles & Lillian O'Brien

Betty's home was where Miles Murtha O'Brien met Lillian Robertson. Without that introduction — without Danny Mulholland's friendship with Miles, without Aunt Betty's door being open — there is no O'Brien family. Six children, nineteen grandchildren, and all that followed: it traces back to an afternoon at Betty's house in Queens.

The marriage brought grief before it settled. Their daughter Eleanor was born around 1927. On 4 March 1934, Eleanor died at age 7 at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn, of a typhoid-related illness. She was buried at Evergreens Cemetery — the same ground where her grandmother Margaret Johnson had been laid to rest just five years before. By the end of that same year, Betty and John had adopted Geraldine Curtis, born 23 December 1934. Geraldine grew up in Ozone Park, later married, and became Geraldine Hegner. She died on 24 December 2021 — Christmas Eve, one day after her 87th birthday.

John J. Mulholland died on 27 June 1961, at age 69, in New York City. Betty is present in the photographs at every era of O'Brien family life — the elegant young woman in the formal portrait; the confident matron in the later studio sitting; the recognizable face at Miles and Lillian O'Brien's 50th wedding anniversary in 1978. More than half a century of showing up.

Born: 1894 · Brooklyn, New York
Married: John J. Mulholland (9 Oct 1891 – 27 Jun 1961) · October 1925 · Richmond Hill, Queens
Address: 111-11 113th / 118th Street · Richmond Hill and Ozone Park, Queens
Daughter: Eleanor E. Mulholland · c. 1927 – 4 March 1934 · died age 7 · Evergreens Cemetery
Adopted Daughter: Geraldine E. Mulholland (Hegner) · 23 December 1934 – 24 December 2021
Husband died: 27 June 1961 · New York City · age 69
Present at: Miles & Lillian O'Brien 50th Wedding Anniversary · 1978
Family memory: Miles & Lillian O'Brien met at Betty's home — Danny Mulholland (John's brother) was a friend of Miles O'Brien · per Barbara Ann O'Brien Hamall

Why They Belong in This Story

Betty Johnson Mulholland did not just belong to this story — she helped start it. Her home was where Miles Murtha O'Brien first met Lillian Robertson. His friend Danny Mulholland, John's brother, brought him through the door. Betty's cousin Lillian was there. The rest is the family.

For decades, the O'Brien and Robertson family members knew Uncle Gus and Aunt Betty as familiar faces at gatherings — without always knowing exactly how they fit in. The answer lies a generation back, in a Brooklyn marriage between a young Swedish immigrant and a daughter of Scottish immigrants. Margaret Robertson, sister of Joseph Robertson Sr., married Gustave Johnson. Their daughter Betty became first cousin to Joseph Robertson's children — Lillian, Helen, and Joseph Jay. When Lillian Robertson married Miles Murtha O'Brien, Gustave Johnson became family to the O'Briens by extension. He was Uncle Gus. Betty was Aunt Betty. The Swedish branch of the family tree, grafted quietly — and consequentially — onto the Scottish-Irish one.

The Robertson Siblings — The Shared Grandparents

David Robertson & Elizabeth Gray (Scotland → Brooklyn)
  ├─ Margaret Robertson
  │    → married Gustave Johnson
  │    → daughter: Elizabeth "Betty" Johnson (Mulholland)
  │
  └─ Joseph Robertson Sr.
       → children: Lillian J. (O'Brien) · Helen (Verhoek) · Joseph Jay Robertson

Betty Johnson and Lillian / Helen / Joseph Jay Robertson are first cousins through their shared grandparents, David Robertson and Elizabeth Gray of Brooklyn.

Gustave Johnson was photographed with Lillian Robertson O'Brien and her sister Helen in the late 1930s or early 1940s — his arms around them both, all three of them smiling outside a clapboard house. He was photographed with Lillian Marie O'Brien Ambrosio. In the summer of 1955, at approximately age 78, he held baby Kathleen Ambrosio — Lillian Marie's infant daughter, a third generation — while Lillian Robertson O'Brien stood at his side. He was still there. Still part of it.

His date of death has not yet been found. He does not appear in the 1978 photograph marking fifty years of Miles and Lillian O'Brien's marriage — but Betty does. The search for what became of Gustave Johnson, the man from Helsingborg, continues.