EDWARD CLOW HANDSAKER

AKA LOUIS EDWARD JOHNSON

1892 – 1973

                                            Edward and Alta (Grace)               Edward with sons Earl and Carl

                                              on their wedding day in 1927                         about 1917

Edward was born 25 May 1892 in Junction City, Lane County, Oregon to Edward Baker and Mary Amanda (Clow) Handsaker. He was their first born and his second son. (First son was Samuel Looney with Annie Smith Handsaker).

Known as Eddie he lived in Junction City with his little sister Frances for the first few years of his life, and later near Anlauf, Oregon on his father’s homestead.

In 1903 his parents divorced. Edward stayed with his father and his sister Frances went to an orphanage because her mother Mary apparently didn’t want her and her Father Edward Baker, a traveling preacher could not afford to keep both children.

Edward married Anna Susannah Pauline Engel in 1913 in Junction City, Oregon. He was 19 years old and Anna was 15 years old. They moved around a lot, mainly in Lane and Douglas Counties, with Edward working in the lumber mills. He joined the Oregon National Guard in 1915 in Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Edward and Anna had two children, Earl Edward in 1914 and Carl in 1916. Anna died October 1918 from the Spanish Influenza in Portland, Oregon. She was nine months pregnant and the baby died also.

One day in about 1920 my father Earl watched Edward crossing the road where they lived on his way to work. He never came home.

Edward re-married in 1923 to Velda Van Tuyle. The marriage only lasted about a year when Velda filed for divorce in Portland on the grounds that Edward was a womanizer and drunkard. He did not respond to the divorce so she won by default. He had disappeared again.

Apparently, Edward moved to southern California and was bootlegging alcohol from Mexico (he also had done that in Oregon). This was during prohibition. He changed his name to Louis Edward Johnson and married Alta (Grace) Grassa Corrales on August 23, 1927. They had seven children: Alta Mae, Edward James, Delores Lillian, Patricia Frances, Virginia Ann, Mary Jean and Richard Louis.

Earl and his brother Carl never heard from their Father again and never knew what happened to him. To my knowledge, no one in his immediate family, including his Mother, Sister Frances or other relatives ever heard from him again. It is possible he stayed in touch with his father Edward Baker. His half-brother Alfred remembers Edward stopping by the home he and Edward Baker lived in Ashland about 1932.

DNA finally solved the mystery in 2019.