William Johnson House

210 State Street
Natchez, MS

The home of William Johnson is part of Natchez National Historical Park. It is located in downtown Natchez near the corner of State and Canal Street (be on the lookout for an old railroad depot where vendors offer carriage rides). Street parking is available for free, but you may have to drive around looking for an open spot and may not be able to get near the house (I parked two blocks away). I had a hard time finding the place because I was looking for a typical house, and the Johnson House resembles a business structure more than it does a home. As is common in downtown areas even today, the top floor of the building was Johnson’s living quarters and the bottom floor was a business area. Johnson rented the space to a dance studio.

The house is open daily from 9 AM to 12 PM and from 1 PM to 5 PM on Mondays through Saturdays, and from 12 PM to 5 PM on Sundays. Hours can always change, so before making travel plans be sure to visit the Natchez National Historical Park’s Operating Hours and Seasons web page for the latest schedule.

The large, brick building is actually two different homes, a duplex so to speak. The home on the right belonged to Johnson, and the home on the left belonged to his neighbor, Ronald McCallum. Today the National Park Service owns both homes plus a building in the back that served as a kitchen and slave quarters, a building known as a “dependency.” The McCallum house is used as Johnson House Visitor Center, which consists of a Ranger-staffed information desk, a souvenir and book store, and park offices. Johnson’s house has a museum dedicated to his life on the bottom floor. The top floor, where he and his family lived, is open for self-guided tours and is furnished with many of the Johnson family’s original pieces. Unfortunately, when I visited the top floor was closed due to renovations and I was only able to visit the extremely interesting museum.

Visitor Center is in the McCallum House, the left half of the building

Who was William Johnson?

Exhibit in the museum on the bottom floor of the Johnson House

Who was William Johnson? He certainly is not a household name. In fact, during his life he was just another person living in Natchez. He only became a significant historical figure one hundred years after his death by murder in 1851.

William Johnson was born a slave in 1809. His father, also William Johnson (I will refer to him as Johnson Sr.), was his white slave master, and his mother, Amy, was one of the slaves. Johnson Sr. also had a daughter named Adelia with Amy. However, from historical records it is believed that Johnson Jr. (as I will refer to the William under discussion) did not live the life of a slave, but as a member of the Johnson family. It seems that Johnson Sr. raised him as he would a legitimate white son. One of the perks of being raised “white” was that Johnson Jr. learned to read and write, though in secret for it was illegal to teach blacks—and mixed raced individuals were considered black—to read and write.

Johnson Sr. freed Amy from slavery in 1814. To do so, he traveled to Louisiana where the laws to grant freedom to slaves were much more lenient than in Mississippi. Paperwork was filed, and as long as no white person objected, freedom was granted shortly thereafter. In Mississippi, any attempts to free a slave had to be approved by the Territorial Assembly (Mississippi was not a state until 1817) and only slaves that had done some heroic act for either the Master or the State would be considered.

While it was easy to free an adult slave in Louisiana, laws did not permit minors to be freed. In 1818, Johnson Sr. sent Adelia to Pennsylvania where she could be freed regardless of her age. In 1820 he filed a petition in Mississippi to free the 11-year-old Johnson Jr. Surprisingly, the governor approved the petition.

Adelia went on to marry James Miller, a free black man and barber by profession. He trained the now grown Johnson Jr. as a barber, and in 1830 Johnson opened a barbershop of his own in Natchez. Johnson would go on to own three shops, a bathhouse, and a farm. In all his businesses he profited from owing slaves. Any free man could own slaves, regardless of previous status. Johnson not only wanted to make money, he wanted to rise up in class, and the only way to do that was to own property, both land and slaves. While he could never be an equal in white society, he certainly could be accepted and respected. At the time of his death he owned fifteen slaves, eight whom he had inherited from his mother, who also owned slaves. Johnson Sr. had bought a house for her, and she went on to become a successful retailer.

Free blacks owning slaves was nothing new. Records show that in 1850, 12% of free blacks in Mississippi owned slaves. Seventy percent of these slave owners were of mixed race, or “mulatto” as they were commonly called back then (a term still in use today). Free blacks purchased slaves either as a way to buy back family members, though laws prohibited them from ever freeing them, or for profit. Johnson’s motive was profit, for no member of his family was a slave.

The owning of slaves is not why there is a William Johnson House today. What Johnson is known for, all of this coming long after his death, is a diary he kept for sixteen years starting in 1835 and continuing until he was murdered in 1851. The fact that a black man, who was not even supposed to read and write, documented sixteen years in a diary is in itself worth mentioning. Nevertheless, the importance of the diary, and why William Johnson is known today, is that his book is considered among the finest written accounts of daily life in a small, antebellum town, and the only one written by a free black man. You might could say that Johnson is the black Anne Frank, though he is certainly not as well known.

Information panel in the Johnson House museum

The odd thing about the diary is that Johnson never writes his thoughts about slavery. He rarely mentions his own slaves and never questions owning them. There is nothing about his early life. In fact, rarely does he mention his feelings towards any subject matter. The diary is simply a detailed account of what happened in his life. Of course, this gets many people speculating as to why the mention of slavery is absent from his writings, and there are many theories. Some say this is due to Southern laws passed in the 1830s that prohibited talking about or writing anything that could stir up discontent among slaves. Maybe Johnson just wanted to avoid trouble. Some feel that Johnson never thought of himself as a slave, and since owning slaves was just part of his life, the subject wasn’t given much thought. I have my own theory, though I am sure it is not unique. The diary actually began as an accounting of his business, and it was only over time that it developed into a typical diary. Perhaps Johnson never considered the a diary as a place for personal thoughts on life, but simply for the accounting of daily events, such as the weather report that he included with most entries.

Johnson never saw the abolition of slavery. He was gunned down ten years before the Civil War began. On June 21, 1851, while walking home, Baylor Winn fired upon Johnson and three youths, one being Johnson’s son. He and one of the boys were hit. The other boys rushed into Natchez to get help. When the doctor arrived, Johnson was still alive and able to mutter the name of the man who shot him. He died soon after. Winn was arrested without incident. He and Johnson had been arguing over a land border.

Like Johnson, Winn was of mixed race. However, when the trial began he argued that he was not black, but a mix of white and American Indian. This was important because a black man could not testify against a non-black. If Winn was found to not to be black, there would be no witnesses to testify against him. An official document from Virginia confirmed that Winn was a mulatto, but for some reason it was ruled inadmissible in court. As a result, Winn went free.

Johnson’s diary was packed away and forgotten about until it was rediscovered in the attic of his house 75 years later. Louisiana State University purchased the book in 1935 and published it in 1951, one hundred years after Johnson’s death.

William Johnson House

While most people prefer a visit to the Melrose Mansion to see the inside of the regally decorated home, I found the trip to the William Johnson House to be the more interesting, despite the fact that the living quarters of the home were closed for renovation. The upper floor is open to visitors for self-guided tours. Many of the furnishings you will see in the rooms belonged to Johnson and his family. Johnson had eleven children, nine who lived to adulthood. Three of them never left home and kept ownership of the house, passing it on to their children. His descendants owned the house until selling it to the Preservation Society of Ellicott Hill in 1976. The Preservation Society donated the house to the National Park Service in 1990.

The current building was constructed in 1840 after a previous one had been destroyed in a fire that swept through downtown Natchez. Johnson married Ann Battles, the daughter of a freed slave, and she had owned the previous house and land, thus Johnson’s connection to the property. Neither were home when the fire struck. Johnson’s neighbor, Ronald McCallum, began rebuilding immediately only to have a tornado come through and damage the new place. The Johnsons rebuilt their home, the current house, shortly after the tornado struck, and it was finished in early 1841. He supposedly built it from bricks he collected from a hotel across the street that was demolished by the tornado.

At the time, most houses had a kitchen in a separate building, which was known as a “dependency.” This was because fires burned in the kitchen, which not only brought extra heat to a building, but also was a potential fire hazard. Slave owners built two floor dependencies with a kitchen downstairs and slave quarters upstairs. Johnson built a dependency in addition to his home, but it is not the building standing today. His dependency was perpendicular to the house, while the new one is parallel. The original dependency was damaged in a fire long after Johnson’s death. At that time some of his children were living in the house, and they built a new dependency in 1897. Of course this came well after the Civil War, so the upstairs rooms were used for family members, not slaves as was the case when Johnson was alive. The building is not open to the public, mainly because it has nothing to do with William Johnson.

As mentioned, I was not able to visit the living quarters, but did spend time in the museum. The exhibits are set up as a group of panels, each a chapter in Johnson’s life. The panels slide back and forth—read one then slide it out of the way to reveal what is underneath. The information is very interesting and I didn’t skip a word. Artifacts pertinent to Johnson’s life are included in each group of panels. The only complaint I have is that the sliding panels are not numbered, so within any given case of panels, it’s hard to tell which one should be read first.

Exhibits on Johnson’s life

Information is presented on sliding panels

Each exhibit case hold artifacts found on the property or relating to events in Johnson’s life-slide the panels to see them

Johnson’s life is discussed in detail and put into context as a free, black businessman in a white world. His ownership of slaves is covered, as are the details of his death. Other exhibits touch on his family after his death, the construction of his house, and the legacy of his diary. There is also an interactive model of his and McCallum’s houses. Touch the house in the right spot to start an audio commentary. If it wasn’t for this model, I wouldn’t have even known there was another building behind the home.

Interactive model of the Johnson and McCallum homes

It takes about an hour to read through all of the exhibits. While most people would have no plans to do this, the information is interesting enough that you may find yourself reading it all. Though I don’t know how long it would take to see the upstairs, it’s not a large house (three rooms) so I can’t imagine it taking any more than a half hour—more like fifteen minutes or so. Thus, allow 1 to 1.5 hours for your visit to the William Johnson House.

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