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President Andrew Johnson was born in a kitchen loft near the Capitol
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Like Andrew Jackson and James Knox Polk, the other two NC-born Masonic presidents before him, Andrew Johnson moved on to Tennessee for fame and fortune. North Carolina Masons nevertheless honor them all as their own.
Johnson was born December 29, 1808, one of two sons of Jacob and Mary Johnson, workers at Casso’s Inn, a popular inn and stable a mile north of the state capitol. A wedding party at the inn was interrupted with news of Andrew’s birth. Mary was a weaver and Jacob worked as both hostler at Casso’s and as janitor at the Capitol. The original kitchen birthplace stands today within Mordecai Historic Park, open to visitors. (There is a 1999 replica in Greeneville, TN.)
Johnson was never able to attend school so he taught himself to read. When his widowed mother apprenticed him to tailor John J. Selby at 14, customers read to him from oratory books as he worked, sometimes giving him books. At 16 he and friends threw rocks at a tradesman’s house out of mischief. The occupant threatened to call the police so Johnson left town for Carthage, 60 miles from Raleigh. He tailored there and in Laurens, SC, to escape the Raleigh trouble. A year later he returned to Raleigh, found no work and led his mother, brother William and stepfather to Tennessee, never to return.
But later as a Tennessee state senator, Johnson tried to create a new single state out of North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee to be named Franklin. He became Tennessee’s wartime governor from 1862 to 1865, and our 17th president from 1865 to 1869, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Although his Masonic records were lost during the Civil War, we know Brother Johnson was initiated in Greeneville 119 May 5, 1851.
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Produced by the public relations committee of the Grand Lodge AF&AM of Masons in North Carolina,
2921 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27628 MMVIII
Author/editor: Walter J. Klein wklein(at)carolina.rr.com
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