Letter-1938, May 12

   “In the later years of the war my grandfather was corporal of the home guard for the district about his farm and one of his duties was to certify to the loyalty of persons desiring to remain in the district. A woman whom he knew to have frequently harbored bushwhackers on her place applied to him for such a certificate and his refusal is believed to have been the cause of his assassination. This was always my mother’s view of the cause of his death, and I believe it to be the true one since Colonel R.T. Van Horne told me once that it was his opinion also. Colonel Van Horne was in position to know since he was in charge of the home guards and had visited my grandfather the day he was killed.”

[James Anderson, grandson of Thomas Johnson, to Kirke Mechem, Sec. of Historical Society, May 12, 1938.]