William T. Johnson and family papers. General printed items. Folder 01-40, approximately 1830-1950. - William T. Johnson and family papers. General printed items. Folder 01-40, approximately 1830-1950.

William T. Johnson (1809?-1851) and his sister, Adelia, were the children of Amy Johnson, a enslaved woman freed in 1814 by William Johnson, a planter of Adams County, Mississippi. William T. and Adelia were freed in 1820 and 1818, respectively. In 1820, Adelia married James Miller, a free African American from Philadelphia. Miller was a barber and a respected businessman in Natchez, Mississippi, and he trained his brother-in-law, William T. Johnson to become a barber. In 1830, William T. Johnson moved from Port Gibson to Natchez to pursue the trade, having purchased Miller's unexpired lease. Five years later, William married a former enslaved woman, Ann Battles (1815?-1866). In 1822, she and her mother, Harriet Battles, had been freed by Gabriel Tichenor of Natchez. William T. and Ann Johnson had ten children: William (born 1836), Richard (born 1837), Byron (1839-1872), Anna (1841-1922), Katharine (1842-1901), Phillip (born 1844), Eugenia (born 1845), Alice (born about 1846), Josephine (born 1849), and Clarence (born 1851). Between 1835 and 1850, Johnson acquired three barber shops, a bath house in Natchez, and a plantation; he also maintained business connections in New Orleans.</br></br>In the late 1840s, Johnson became involved in a dispute with Baylor Winn and Benjamin Wade regarding a property line on his plantation. In May 1851, after the circuit court ordered a survey, the dispute was settled out of court. However, on June 16, 1851, Johnson was fatally wounded in an ambush, and before his death on the morning of June 17, he named Winn as his assassin. At the time of his death he owned more than 2,000 acres of land in Adams County.</br></br>On Johnson's death, his son Byron became head of the family. William Johnson, Jr., suffered from mental illness, and by 1866 he was confined in a New Orleans asylum. In 1865, Byron enlisted in the Mississippi Federal Colored Militia. Other male members of the family were exempted from service due to health problems. Following the war, Byron leased St. Genevieve Plantation (Concordia Parish, La.) from Ayers P. Merrill, Jr. Byron subscribed in the survey of the proposed Natchez-Jackson Railroad in 1869 and rented Carthage Plantation (Adams Co., Miss.) from John and Katherine Minor in the same year. Byron also leased Black Lake Plantation (Concordia Parish, La.) from Lucien Malus for three years in 1870. Anna L. Johnson, Juanito Garrus, Carlito Garrus, and Byron Johnson contracted with freedmen to work Carthage Plantation. Black Lake Plantation was worked by freedmen in accordance with an agreement signed by the Garruses, Anna L. and Katharine G. Johnson. In 1871, Byron received a judgment for $2,000 in a suit against Stephen Duncan involving a mortgage of Magnolia Plantation, a case begun in 1862.</br></br>After the death of Byron Johnson in 1872, Anna L. Johnson was the most prominent figure in the family. Anna, Alice, Josephine, and Katharine taught in the Natchez primary schools. Richard Johnson worked his family's Peachland Plantation (Adams County) in the 1890s. Anna lived at Peachland during the period 1912 through 1920. Their nephew, William R. Johnston (died 1938), received his undergraduate degree from Wilberforce University (Ohio) in 1897 and earned a medical degree from Howard University. While studying at Howard, he boarded with Dr. & Mrs. Henry Lewis Bailey. Johnston practiced medicine in Natchez until his death in 1938.</br></br>William T. Johnson's diaries were edited for publication by William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis and appeared under the title <em>William Johnson's Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary of a Free Negro</em> (LSU Press, 1951). This work provides additional information about the family.</br></br>Harriet Battles (born approximately 1792) was a free person of color of Adams County, Mississippi and the mother of Ann Battles Johnson. She was at one time enslaved by Gabriel Tichenor, who emancipated her and her young daughter through a deed of manumission in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1826. Harriet was about 30 years of age when she was freed. Harriet and Ann returned to Adams County in 1829; there, Harriet purchased from Tichenor and his wife a lot of land on State Street in Natchez for the sum of two dollars.</br></br>Dr. Henry Lewis Bailey was born in Halifax, Virginia and graduated from Harvard University in 1889. He was one of Harvard University's first African American graduates. Bailey was also one of the founders of the Niagara Movement, a black civil rights organization led by W. E. B. DuBois. Bailey received his M. D. from Howard University Medical College in 1896 and went on to work as a doctor and as an educator at Washington City High School and Howard University. William R. Johnson boarded with Bailey and his family during his studies at Howard University Medical College; letters in the collection suggest that Bailey served as a mentor to him. Bailey died in 1934.</br></br>G. David Houston (1880-1940) was an African American civil rights activist and principal of the Armstrong Manual Training High School in Washington, D.C. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he graduated Harvard University in 1904; he later completed his Masters Degree in 1916 and a Master of Education from Harvard in 1930. He married Dora Mayo Lawrence and had two children, Dorothy and Ethel. Following teaching positions at Tuskegee Institute and the Fredrick Douglass High School in Baltimore, Houston was invited in 1912 to serve as head of the Department of English at Howard University. Houston was a contributor to <em>The Journal of Negro History</em> and published in 1938 a work entitled <em>Basic English Grammar</em>, which was adopted by the public schools of the District of Columbia. His eulogy for Dr. Henry Lewis Bailey was also published in the July 1934 issue of <em>The Crisis</em>, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.