Edward William Johnston: Other Mysteries Partially Solved

After the death of Marie Antionette Estelle Costar Villagrand (1802-1848),

Edward William Johnston married -- circa 1858/1859, Margaret Wooley/Woolley (1821-1867), daughter by a first wife (Eliza Denman) of Abraham (Abram) Roll Wooley/Woolley , a former lieutenant colonel whose second wife was Caroline Letitia Preston (1806-1840), sister of Henrietta Preston (1803-1835), the first wife of Albert Sidney Johnston. Holy cow – how complicated is that?  

Margaret A. Wooley/Woolley had an estate larger than Johnston's. I'm almost certain she was A. R. Wooley/Woolley's daughter, but there is a remote possibility that she could have been his third wife. They all three lodged together in Washington, DC, in 1850, along with Margaret Jewett, Sally Johnston and Cornelia Johnston. By 1860, A.R. Woolley was dead; Edward William Johnston and Margaret A. Johnston were living in St. Louis, along with Margaret Jewett and John W. Chapman. 

Il Secretario is Spanish; Il Segretario, Italian.

Johnston served as secretary to the US Commissioner to Mexico as of 1850 (see US Census). But he had already begun using the pen name Il Secretario in the 1840s – before the Mexican-American War. 

Final note: briefly in the 1820s, Johnston served as secretary for the then new Lunatic Asylum of South Carolina pictured above. He also acquired about the same time, with his brother Algernon Sidney (A. S.) Johnston, a book and stationary store in Columbia, South Carolina.