William Harrison Johnson (1818-Unknown) Stories
When the Civil War began, William and his sons Riley and Thomas joined the Sardis Volunteers of Company G of the 6th Cavalry of the Confederacy. William, a Private, was wounded and was in a prisoner of war camp and hospital. Thomas was so young that he was a bugle and water boy, and was captured and paroled. He was wounded in the thigh and in the arm, and lost a finger. Robert J. Johnson served in the 22nd Georgia Cavalry. According to Luda Johnson in a letter to Jolene Doering, the Johnsons owned a big plantation with a lot of slaves before the war. When Thomas came home from the war, they had lost everything except one mule and a seventeen-year-old former slave. The former slave killed the mule rather than let his former owner have the animal. Thomas Vestal Johnson did not say what happened to the former slave, only that he would never kill another mule. Luda says, "so we can just guess what happened to him."
Some researchers believe that William Harrison Johnson’s cousins, who were the line related to Lyndon B. Johnson, coerced William into enlisting in the Confederacy with the threat that if he did not, his home and crops would be burned and family killed. No one knows, but William did not serve long before he walked away from a Union prison hospital and went home. Yet in a photo taken in his later years, William appears to be wearing his Confederate uniform. The photo was taken at the home of William and Nancy’s youngest son, George Hillyer, who lived in Rome, Georgia, at the corner of Broad and Peachtree Streets.
The above information kindly contributed by Don Johnson & Carolyn Johnson Smith - May 2009