William Andrew Johnson
William Andrew Johnson was a lifelong Tennessean who was primarily employed as a restaurant cook. He was described as a "quiet, bright-eyed" man, a "great favorite" in Knoxville, and he was "regarded by many as the best pastry chef in East Tennessee." William Andrew Johnson was believed to be the last surviving American to have been enslaved by a U.S. president. Johnson, his two sisters Florence and Elizabeth, his mother Dolly and his Uncle Sam were all once legally the property of Andrew Johnson, who became the 17th President of the United States following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. In later years, when describing his lifelong relationships with Johnson's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, Johnson said "They treat me just like I was one of the family."
Local media covered Johnson and his recollections of the late President with some regularity beginning in the 1920s, although the coverage often described Johnson in fairly patronizing terms. William A. Johnson made national headlines in 1937 when he visited the White House at the invitation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gave him a silver-handled cane engraved with both of their names. Meeting Roosevelt one-on-one had been a dream of Johnson's since at least 1934, when he told a local reporter, "I feel like he's one of my kin folks, since I used to stay in the White House, too."
Biography
Early life
William A. Johnson was born at the home of Andrew Johnson in Greeneville, Tennessee in 1858 during the waning days of the Old South. He was born enslaved due to an antebellum American legal principle called partus sequitur ventrem, which meant that since his mother was a slave, he was one, too. He was Dolly Johnson's only son, born roughly a decade after his older sisters Liz and Florence. Per Jesse J. Holland in The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House, this child received two Johnson family names. William was the first name of Andrew Johnson's "beloved brother," and Andrew was, of course, the first name of former Tennessee governor Andrew Johnson, just then the newly elected junior U.S. Senator from Tennessee. In 1932, reporter Bert Vincent quoted Johnson as saying, "Massa named hisself. He called me William Andrew."Andrew Johnson's great-granddaughter Margaret Johnson Patterson stated in 1943 that William Andrew Johnson was the only one of Dolly's children to be born in Greeneville, where Andrew and Eliza Johnson had their family home. The father of William Andrew Johnson is identified on his death certificate as Andrew Johnson's fourth-born child with Eliza, Robert Johnson, making him Andrew Johnson’s grandson. In a 1927 interview, a newspaper account stated that " dearest playmate was a grandson of the president, and no great distinction was made between the two small boys, the white boy claiming as ancestors his grandfather, the chief leader of the nation, and his grandmother the first lady of the land, while the other little boy was a slave, born in bondage, the property of the little white boy's grandfather." The little white boy in question is most likely Andrew Johnson Patterson, born 1857 to David T. Patterson and his wife Martha Johnson, oldest daughter of Andrew and Eliza Johnson. One of Andrew Johnson's granddaughters gave William A. Johnson piano lessons at 10 a.m. daily. Eliza McCardle Johnson and Martha Johnson Patterson also helped teach William A. Johnson some of the cooking skills that sustained him in later life. After one of his regular lunches with Andrew Johnson's granddaughter, he told a reporter in 1936: "Her own mammy and her grandmammy, too, taught me how to make pies and chicken dumplings and corn muffins. Miss Johnson sure did like her good cookin' and Miss Patterson did too."
In the late 1920s, William Johnson recalled living on Cedar Street in Nashville when Andrew Johnson was military governor of Tennessee amidst the ongoing American Civil War. He told a reporter a story of that era: "He was trying to keep Tennessee in the Union, and as he spoke on the capitol grounds, two shots were fired at him by secessionists. The bullets entered trees near him...My mother had me with her near Marse Andrew when the shots were fired. She 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."
Andrew Johnson is said to have freed his personal slaves on August 8, 1863, although, as William Johnson told it some 70 years later, it was actually Eliza Johnson who broke the news: "Mrs. Johnson called us all in and said we were free now. She said we were free to go or could stay if we wanted to. We all stayed."
File:The photographic history of the civil war.. .jpg|thumb|Alexander Gardner took this photo of Lincoln's second inauguration at the U.S. Capitol. Andrew Johnson was quite drunk for his own swearing-in earlier in the morning; he is the individual in the front row, far right, holding his hat over his face. Lincoln was assassinated 42 days later and Johnson succeeded him as President of the United States. |left
According to Andrew Johnson's great-granddaughter Margaret Johnson Patterson in 1943, William and his mother Dolly stayed in Tennessee while most of the rest of the family moved to the White House in Washington, D.C. in 1865. According to a 1929 interview with William Johnson, he was living with Andrew Johnson's family in Nashville when Lincoln was assassinated; he recalled how "the missus," Eliza McCardle, was "horror-stricken." Per William Johnson, he did go to Washington when Johnson was installed in the White House, "There Marse Andrew made me his body servant, and I was with him until he died...When his suits needed pressing he would order me to heat the big flat iron and he would do his pressing. I guess it was the same iron he used to press suits with when he was a tailor in Greeneville...I used to sleep by the door of his bedroom. He would go to bed generally about 9:30, but every night about 12 he would get up and walk the floor for half an hour or more. Seemed like he was thinking. Sometimes he would mutter things out loud. Then he would go back to bed and sleep soundly." Johnson also recalled, "My ol' missus used to make good cakes. Missus Johnson, when she was here in the White House, she go back in the kitchen and do her own danged way." In the late 1930s, Johnson recalled some of his work in service to the Johnsons:
Per the younger Johnson, "After he came back from Washington I was with him all the time. I slept right in the same room with him." William A. Johnson "became Andrew Johnson's personal servant—we were together on many trips and I usually slept on a cot in his room when we were away from the home at Greeneville."
Andrew Johnson mentioned William Andrew and his sister Elizabeth in the last letter he ever wrote, which was sent to his daughter Mary Johnson Stover ahead of a visit to her house in Carter County, Tennessee: "William is very anxious to come and perhaps I may bring him as he is...desirous to see Liz and the children." William A. Johnson stayed in Andrew Johnson's room after the former president and recently elected U.S. Senator suffered a stroke at his daughter Mary Johnson Stover Brown's home in 1875. William Andrew Johnson was with Johnson through his final illness, hardly sleeping over the course of the former President's decline, and was with him when he died.
A contemporary neurologist credits William with astute observation skills and his clinically valuable description of Johnson experiencing "one of the earliest known cases" of the medical condition asomatognosia. Neither William A. Johnson, nor Liz and her children were mentioned in newspaper accounts of Johnson's final hours, which otherwise listed the presence of three doctors, Eliza, Martha, Mary, Mary's three children, and Frank.
In 1881, a visitor to Greeneville reported that "some colored people" were living in the old Andrew Johnson tailor shop and were taking good care of the building; this is likely William and his mother Dolly. In the 20th century a Greeneville newspaper stated, "Older citizens will remember the elaborately decorated and delicious cakes that occupied the place of honor at the big parties which the late Col. and Mrs. J. H. Doughty gave, which were baked by William Johnson."
The death date of Johnson's mother, Dolly Johnson, is unknown, but the National Park Service estimates that she died between 1890 and 1892. Her children seem to have all departed Greeneville for Knoxville after her death; in 1891, there is an entry in the Knoxville city directory for Johnson, Wm, c, pastry cook Hotel Hattie.
File:P15138coll25 2316 full.jpg|thumb|"Shears and goose" are traditional symbols of the tailoring profession; William Andrew Johnson recalled warming up a flat iron, like the one pictured, for pressing Johnson's suits
Turn of the century
In the early 1900s, Johnson worked baking cakes and pies at a Tennessee business called Hattie House. Later in life he recalled that U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt stayed at the Cumberland Hotel when he visited East Tennessee. In 1910 he was living in the household of his sister Florence Johnson Smith and his niece Mabel Smith at the corner of McGhee and Dora in Knoxville and working as a cook at a hotel.1920s
William A. Johnson never married. The last member of immediate family, his older sister Florence Johnson Smith, died in 1920. Beginning in the 1920s, William A. Johnson became a minor celebrity in East Tennessee. He lived at 325 Douglas Street in Knoxville, and was interviewed a number of times for newspaper articles and radio programs. He was sometimes included in events commemorating Andrew Johnson. For instance, in 1923 he was present for a ceremony in which Andrew Johnson's descendants donated the President's "old tailor shop" building to the state of Tennessee.Similarly, in 1925 a Nashville paper reported that William A. Johnson was to appear at a Memorial Day celebration at Rutledge, Tennessee, along with former Tennessee governor Alf A. Taylor. After the fact a Knoxville newspaper reported that a Congressman attended, that the old Johnson Tailor Shop building was celebrated, and that "A silver dollar belonged to President Johnson was on exhibition. His slave was introduced to the audience and spoke briefly." A couple of days later the same paper reported, "The stage was decorated with cut flowers, and on a table belonging to Andrew Johnson there was a huge cake, baked by William Andrew Johnson, a slave of President Johnson, the cake being donated by Andrew Johnson Patterson, a grandson of Andrew Johnson." In 1927, Johnson was hired as the cook at the Rutledge Inn in Rutledge, Tennessee, and spoke to a newspaper about his history with Andrew Johnson, about whom he spoke with "tender regard." There was another burst of publicity centered on William A. Johnson in 1929, when was he was hired to be a doorman at Knoxville's Andrew Johnson Hotel. A reporter from the Columbia Record of Columbia, South Carolina visited the hotel and recorded some of Johnson's reminiscences:
During another interview that year he recalled that Andrew Johnson once traveled overseas and visited Napoleon's redoubt at St. Helena. The elder Johnson brought back cuttings of willows growing on the island that he planted at the house in Greeneville. Around Christmastime 1929, William A. Johnson solved the "case of the stolen drapes" at the Andrew Johnson Hotel when he noticed a woman leaving with curtain fabric hanging out of the back of her suitcase. The assistant manager chased her down and found she was also carrying towels, a coffee pot, and spoons from other regional hotels.