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When John and Grace (Ellis) Johnson were married he had only a pony which he gave for 40 acres land on Dry Fork. He was 23 years old at the time of his marriage. (The area they lived in is northeast of Nashville, in the area of Lafayette and Hartsville, just south of the Kentucky borderline counties in Kentucky, Allen and Monroe. Meadorville is four miles south of Lafayette.)
From a letter dated 11 June 1925, Dixon Springs, Tenn.
Dear Cousin Jimmie,
"Our Grandfather (John Johnson) was a man of great ability for accumulating, and at one time owned most of the land from where he lived on the Dry Fork of Goose Creek down to Meadorville. In Grandfather's early days most of the people in this country lived in round-log cabins, with floors made of rough split slabs and just a window hole in the wall, with a board shutter, and if a chimney at all, it was a "stick and dirt" chimney. But our Granfather built on the East Fork of Goose Creek a house that was talked about for miles away. The people said that old man Johnson had built a very large two story house, of hewed poplar logs. They said it had a floor upstairs as well as downstairs, and they said, "Don't you think it has glass windows in it, windows made of glass!"
Grandfather and Grandmother lived in the house that was so much talked about until he burned brick in the bottom between Hillsdale and the Church House, and built the old brick house at Hillsdale. They lived together there until one day he and a negro man were on Dry Fork working a cherry saw log down a hillside to where it could be loaded on a wagon, and the log got away from them, and rolled over Grandfather and killed him.
Our Grandmother's name was Ellis, Grace Ellis, and I have been told by Uncle Carrol Johnson, one of her sons, that she was a real worker and at times when she was up with her own work, would go around the neighborhood, and as far as Gallatin, Tenn. and farther up knitting to do. She did not do this because she had to do it, but because she liked so much to have something to do. In her latter days, and I think after Grandfather was killed, she lost her eyesight.
One night after Grandmother lost her eyesight she was lying on a straw bed, asleep, when a tallow candle which had a fork stuck through it into the wall, burned down to the fork, and fell down on the straw bed and set it on fire. The result was that she was so badly burned that she died. Our Grandfather and Grandmother were both buried in the Taylor Grave Yard at the mouth of the Taylor Branch, but I do not know just when." I am your old cousin, Henry T. Meador
Additional information courtesy of D&P Nutt Findagrave #47623402
Family links:
Spouse:
Grace Ellis Johnson (1787 - 1846)
Children:
Isaac Ellis Johnson (1810 - 1832)*
Jacob Spencer Johnson (1812 - 1844)*
Susannah J. Johnson Meador (1813 - 1863)*
John Stanley Johnson (1814 - 1897)*
Thomas Davidson Johnson (1815 - 1844)*
William Carroll Johnson (1819 - 1909)*
Andrew Jackson Johnson (1819 - 1873)*
Willis Pressmill Johnson (1821 - 1848)*
Burial:
Taylor-Meador Cemetery
Macon County
Tennessee, USA
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