Famous explorer and photographer Martin Johnson spent the first ten years of his life in Lincoln. Johnson was born in Rockford, Illinois, in the fall of 1894.  His father, John Johnson, moved his family to Lincoln in the spring of 1895, and opened a jewelry store. The family then moved to Chanute. After traveling with Jack London, Martin went to Independence, Kansas. He began traveling, selling photographs for a penny a piece. He met Osa Leightly, who later became his wife, when he was photographing her younger brother in Chanute. Sometime in the early 1940s Martin and Osa made a trip to Lincoln that was recorded in the Lincoln Sentinel-Republican Jan. 3, 1957.

 

Martin Johnson died in a place crash in 1937 at the age of 52. The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute is dedicated to the lives and adventures of these history-making Kansans with a Lincoln County connection.