30 Facts About Dolly Johnson

Dolly Johnson was born in Tennessee, sometime between 1825 and 1830.

Dolly Johnson was reported to be 19 years old on slave-sale documents from 1843, which would put her birth year around 1824.

Dolly Johnson's owner sold her at a big auction in Greeneville.

Dolly Johnson looked around the crowd of buyers before the auction started, and she saw Andrew Johnson and liked his looks.

Whatever happened, by the laws of the day Dolly Johnson was her owner, the master.

Historian David Warren Bowen argues in Andrew Johnson and the Negro that Sam and Dolly were purchased in part to demonstrate an increase in the class status of the once-impoverished Johnsons, rather than because the family had significant unmet needs for labor.

Dolly Johnson was roughly the same age as the oldest child, Martha.

In March 1846, when she was between 16 and 21 years old, Dolly Johnson became a mother herself with the birth of her daughter Lucy Elizabeth, called Liz or Lizzie.

The father of Liz and Florence was never named in any known historical document, and the paternity of Dolly Johnson's children remains officially unknown.

Names of individual slaves were not usually recorded on the slave schedules of the US censuses of 1850 and 1860, but Dolly is believed to be the 24-year-old black woman enumerated as one of four slaves owned by A Johnson in Division 9 in Greene County in 1850.

In 1851, Andrew Johnson bought an eight-room, three-floor brick house in Greeneville, Tennessee, which would be his home base for the remainder of his life, and where Dolly would have worked.

On February 8,1858, when she was between 28 and 33 years old, and approximately eight to ten years after the birth of Florence, Dolly Johnson gave birth to her only son, William Andrew Johnson.

William was the first name of Andrew Dolly Johnson's "beloved brother", and Andrew was, of course, the first name of former Tennessee governor Andrew Dolly Johnson, just then the newly elected junior US Senator from Tennessee.

In 1943, Andrew Johnson's great-granddaughter Margaret Johnson Patterson stated that William Andrew Johnson was the only one of Dolly's children to have been born in Greeneville.

The five enumerated slaves of Andrew Dolly Johnson appear in district 14 of that county.

The next appearance of Dolly Johnson in the documentary record is a photograph.

Dolly Johnson was photographed holding Andrew Johnson Stover, the grandson of Andrew Johnson by his younger daughter Mary.

Andrew Dolly Johnson Stover was born March 6,1860, so the photograph can be roughly dated to 1861.

On March 4,1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed US Senator Andrew Dolly Johnson to be the military governor of Tennessee.

Dolly Johnson took me and ran as fast as she could, not stopping until she got to the basement of the house, which was on Cedar Street.

Dolly Johnson variously claimed to have owned a total of eight to 10 slaves.

Dolly Johnson did not personally convey the news of the liberation of his slaves.

Dolly Johnson said we were free to go or could stay if we wanted to.

Dolly Johnson says he was a very kind master, she having lived in the family for some thirty years.

Dolly Johnson says he quit the tailor business about the time he bought her and never worked at it anymore.

Dolly Johnson's work was listed as keeping house, and while she was illiterate, her daughter Florence could read and write, and her son William was attending school.

William Johnson recalled that Dolly Johnson was given bed frames, bed linens, a pair of linen pillowcases, a drop-leaf table, and cooking utensils.

Dolly Johnson inherited a family-favorite cake pan, and had "many little trinkets" given to him by Andrew Dolly Johnson, and family photos; the trinkets and photos burned in a fire at a hotel where he worked in Knoxville.

Several of Dolly Johnson's grandchildren were given names that overlapped with the given names of Andrew Johnson's family.

The house was given to her by her late mistress, Mrs Dolly Johnson, who died subsequently to her husband, and is occupied by herself and her family as a home.