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Field Note 014  ·  Blooming Grove
An old sepia photograph of a young woman in a white knotted cap and a long sleeveless white dress, looking back over her shoulder and pointing at a sign reading Blooming Grove City Limit beside tall grass

City limit

One of the most-used old pictures in Blooming Grove shows a young woman pointing at the city-limit sign. Her name was Frances Butler Johnson.

Written by Robert Phipps  ·  Photographs of Frances Johnson: courtesy of Diane Hinkle Richards · Framed print: Blooming Grove Historical Society

A woman in a white cap and a sleeveless dress points at a sign: BLOOMING GROVE, CITY LIMIT. She looks back over her shoulder as if she has just got home. The Blooming Grove Historical Society keeps a copy in a small gold frame, labelled with her name: Frances (Butler) Johnson.1

The picture gets used all over town. A second one was taken the same day: the same cap, the same dress, gloves in her hand, outside a brick house.

An old sepia photograph of the same young woman in a white knotted cap, beaded necklace and long white dress with large buttons, holding gloves, standing beside a brick house with a lantern by the door
The same day, at a brick house. Courtesy of Diane Hinkle Richards.

Frances was born on 17 November 1906, the daughter of Bob Butler and Effie Whorton.2 The Whortons were a Blooming Grove family. Her mother was the daughter of James Tennyson Whorton and Martha Boone.3

Her childhood had two hard losses. Her little brother, Robert Edgar, died in June 1915 at seven. Her mother died in January 1917. Frances was ten.4 Both are buried at Rose Hill Cemetery.

She married Lewis E. Johnson and made her home in Dallas. She died there on 5 January 1940, at thirty-three.5 After a funeral in Dallas the next morning, she was brought home and buried at Rose Hill. Two men of her mother's family, Homer and Tennyson Whorton, were among those who carried her.6

Who took her picture, and where the sign stood, nobody has written down. If you know, we would like to hear from you.

A small gold frame holding a copy of the city-limit photograph, with a typed label above it giving Frances (Butler) Johnson's name, dates and parents
The framed copy at the Blooming Grove Historical Society, with its label.

Sources: the Blooming Grove Historical Society's framed print and its label; her obituary in the Corsicana Daily Sun, 6 January 1940; the Navarro County TXGenWeb Rose Hill Cemetery lists. The two photographs came to the archive from Diane Hinkle Richards.

Notes and sources (6)
  1. Framed print and label, Blooming Grove Historical Society, photographed 26 September 2026. ↩
  2. “Rose Hill Cemetery, incomplete list, J,” Navarro County TXGenWeb, Edward L. Williams; marker photo by Dana Stubbs. ↩
  3. “Rose Hill Cemetery, incomplete list, B,” Navarro County TXGenWeb (Effie (Whorton) Dillingham-Butler, 1875–1917). ↩
  4. “Rose Hill Cemetery, incomplete list, B,” Navarro County TXGenWeb (Robert Edgar Butler, 1907–1915; Effie Butler, 1875–1917). ↩
  5. “Dallas Woman Was Buried Saturday At Blooming Grove,” Corsicana Daily Sun, 6 January 1940, as posted by the Blooming Grove Historical Society, 3 September 2014. ↩
  6. Corsicana Daily Sun, 6 January 1940, which spells the name Wharton. ↩

Last revised 6 October 2026.

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