Johnsonville South Carolina History

Thomas Rothmahler Grier (1817-1883) and his wife, Margaret Ann Johnson Grier (1823-1891). Portrait restored from 2 tintypes by Josh Dukes Thomas Rothmahler Grier was a Johnsonville area magistrate and was known as "The Squire." He owned a plantation near Lynches River given by Margaret Johnson's father William J. Johnson, who founded Johnsonville through running Witherspoon's Ferry and applying for a Post Office to be established in 1843. Grier served as the second Postmaster of Johnsonville in 1845 after John L. Gerard. Elizabeth Covan Grier Duke (1800-1873) Mother of Thomas R. Grier The Johnson plantation was a part of the original grant to John James. William Johnson, Sr. had bought a part of the grant from the heirs of John James. He also purchased a portion of the land granted to the Witherspoons. It was part of the Witherspoon grant that was given to Margaret Johnson Grier. Margaret was the daughter of Captain William J. Johnson (1787-1851) and Sarah Crosby John...

Elizabeth Coven Grier  (1800-1873) Restored from a tintype portrait by Josh Dukes Elizabeth Covan (1800-1873)—known in her family as “Betsy”—was the only child of Mary Tillman and a Frenchman identified in family records as Mr. Covan. Her early life was shaped by both loss and continuity. Her father died when she was very young, and after her mother remarried, Elizabeth was largely raised by her grandmother at Petersfield Plantation. It was there that she spent her formative years. Family lore preserves a story about her parents’ courtship. At a Halloween gathering before her marriage, her mother Mary Tillman is said to have seen in a mirror the image of a dark-haired young man leaning on an open trunk. Months later, while traveling north with her mother, she reportedly encountered both the trunk and the man in a store. The two later met again at a ball and were soon married. From that union came Elizabeth, their only child. Elizabeth herself was born on a wet and stormy night. O...

John James Altman (1846-1905) John James Altman (1846-1905) was the son of William Samuel Altman and Rachel Goud. As a young man he served in the Civil War in Company B, 3rd Palmetto Battalion, Lt. Artillery, and also in Abner's Battery of Sharpshooters. In 1891, he became the first Postmaster of the Vox Community. The name Vox was coined by Altman from the Latin phrase vox populi , meaning "voice of the people." The Vox Post Office entered service on August 25, 1891. The old post office building was located on Vox Highway at the intersection of Vox Highway and Durant Cemetery Road. Greg Parker recounted the following as told to him by Drucilla McCrea, granddaughter of Druscilla Thompson, wife of John Altman: "The post office was at Vox Highway and Durant Cemetery Road. It was also a general store. Pa John had the upstairs above the post office fashioned into a general store. The house on Vox Highway before Whispering Pines Road on the right was also Pa John Altma...

In the hollow of a Lynches River tributary just outside Johnsonville, where sandy hillsides rise to meet fertile tobacco fields, an old homestead took shape with roots that ran deep. Here, on what’s now called Arles Lane, Thomas Franklin Hanna (1873–1958) and his wife Nekoda Laharp Altman Hanna (1878–1955) built their home—a modest farmer’s cabin above that hollow which they simply called “the branch.” The couple carved their initials into one of the timber beams beneath the porch.  Some of the bricks used as the foundation were rumored to have once served as ballast for ships arriving from across the Atlantic. The land itself was part of the original grant to Hugh Hanna, Thomas’s great-grandfather and the first of the Hanna family to settle in the Johnsonville area after marching south with General Greene during the Revolution.   Prior to their arrival, this plot of land was familiar to a group of the native Catawba people. Even today, Hanna descendants still find discarded a...

Looney's Bridge as it may have looked in the 1880s.  Image created by Josh Dukes In a quiet hollow not far from Johnsonville, SC a stretch of weathered road crosses Mill Creek on a simple bridge where there once stood a rickety wooden span. Both bridges are remembered as Looney’s Bridge—a place where a ghost story tied to a teenage right-of-passage and a forgotten local tragedy mix like the dark waters of the creek. The original bridge here spanned Mill Creek just off the current footprint of Gaster Road near Johnson Cemetery.  "There is a clay hill on the back side of the old McCall property and the original roadbed is still there," remembers Benjie McCall.   The McCall family owned the surrounding farm from 1970 to 2015, with the opposite bank once part of the Ned Huggins hog farm. More than a century earlier, George Samuel Briley Huggins'  homeplace was near this place, as were those of Springs, Huggins, and Timmons families who lived within a mile of one ano...