#Home July 27

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My HOME the past 23 years has been in Lumberton NC. It is a HOME with a lot of history thanks to the first owner and his family.

In August of 1998, my family returned to Robeson County after a 6 year absence. We undertook the project of restoring a multi-family structure back to a single family home at 1209 North Elm Street in Lumberton. The photo below depicts what the house looked like when it was built in 1910.

When we purchased the house in 1998 it has changed.

We purchased the HOME from the estate of the late Asa Jackson. It was built in 1910 for Mr. T.L Johnson. We have many reports that the builder was a Mr. Thomas Burney.

According to reports by The Robesonian T.L Johnson and his new bride Jessie Moser of Hickory NC married on December 22, 1909. They took an extended honeymoon to Washington and Baltimore and moved into the house the week of January 24-29, 1910. When the newlyweds arrived back in Lumberton January 6, 1910 they began boarding with Mr. and Mrs. D.B. McNeill of Elm Street while they waited for their 5,000 square foot house to be completed. They would live their from 1910 to 1931.

The home has been good to us. In the past twenty three years we have seen weddings, Christmas parties, marriage proposals, mourned the death of a close friend, fundraisers, birthdays, anniversaries, pig pickings, parades, and countless dinners with family and friends.

We have changed the look of the exterior of the house with two different colors. In 2009 the house needed painting desperately needed a new coat of paint and we changed the color to beige. To our knowledge the house had been white from 1910 to 2009.

In 2020 we took on another painting job of the house along with adding a metal roof over the wrap around porch. We changed the color from beige to charcoal grey with white trim.

Mr. Asa Jackson’s (the previous owner) heirs had sold us a multi-family dwelling that included four one bedroom apartments each with its own kitchen.  We purchased it in September of 1998 and had a dream to restore it to a single family home. We finally moved in on Memorial day Weekend 1999. We had a lot of work to do.

In 9 months, the project went from dream, to nightmare, and finally reality. The moral support from neighbors Kenny and Bonnie Biggs; Pete and Frances Sundy; Carol and Buddy Mozingo; Sherwood and Linda Hinson; and Ron and Colleen Brown kept us going during the entire project.

We would have never moved in without the talents of many craftsmen including: Master Electrician William Townsend and his sons Ben & Chad; the plumbing expertise of Ricky Morgan, Mark McLaughlin, and Dennis Hucks; the installation of central heat/air by Bobby Townsend; the demolition determination of Burnis Smith, Geoff Kenney and Alex Mozingo; and the overall hard work, dedication and attention to detail supplied by Tom Carter.  These Robeson County residents’ special talents have returned the house to much of its original 1910 features. Moving in didn’t mean the house was finished that is something that still takes place every year.

Our research indicates that the house was utilized as apartments for about 35 years (1961-1996). It sat empty on the real estate market for almost two years. We even heard stories about raucous UNC Pembroke fraternity parties during the late 1960’s. Over the years we have had people ring the front doorbell and tell us they lived there or partied inside. Yes Mark Cabral you were one of those visitors wanting to walk down memory lane.

As we went about our remodeling and restoration, we were also able to uncover some interesting local and state history about the original owner Thomas Lester Johnson (and his family) from newspaper accounts, The State Library of North Carolina, the Public Library of Robeson County, Jean Sexton at the UNC Pembroke Library, books, and oral history from his great-nephew David Ramsaur and granddaughter Cynthia Johnson Joyner.

The early part of the twentieth century, specifically the decade of the 1920’s, produced Robeson County’s (NC) most prominent politician, Governor Angus McLean (1925-29).

Yet, during the decade of the 1920’s,T.L. Johnson the man that first owned our HOME, made huge strides in North Carolina politics. Johnson attempted a run at becoming the Governor of North Carolina in 1932.  The move to become Governor would require him to leave Robeson County for fifteen years but, in his absence one brother, Ervin Mosby Johnson, would serve as Lumberton’s Mayor for a period of 21 years (1922-43) and another brother, James Floyd Johnson, would achieve notoriety as President of Fairmont National Bank.

The three brothers left their indelible mark on Robeson County and Lumberton but the most prominent statewide was the older brother, Thomas Lester Johnson, who was born on November 13, 1884 in Buncombe County (NC). His two younger brothers were both born in Buncombe County, James Floyd Johnson born on June 6, 1888 and E. M. Johnson born on September 16, 1889. 

They came from a bloodline that had deep roots in American History.  The Johnson’s great-grandfather, Jackson Johnson, lived in Halifax, VA and reportedly reached the age of 108 years old.  The 1790 census (America’s First) mentions a member of Thomas L. Johnson family, James Johnson from Pittsylvania, VA.  In 1776, James Johnson served as Captain in the Sixth Virginia during the American Revolution  and the following year, he was promoted to Major.  

The Johnson family of the 1700’s and pre-Civil War 1800’s had large land holdings around Pittsylvania County (VA) and Halifax (VA).  Thomas L. Johnson’s father was William Sandy Johnson born on October 6, 1861 in Swansonville, VA (Pittsylvania County) who at the age of 21 (1882) moved to Alexander, NC (Buncombe County) and married Mary E. Martin, daughter of William Irvin and Amanda James Martin. On January 20, 1902 still early in each of the three brother’s lives, their mother passed away and left the raising of the Johnson family (three brothers and three sisters) on the shoulders of their dad. 

T.L sister’s names were Agnes, Lula Mae, and Bessie. He was preoccupied with trying to make ends meet and did not encourage them to get an education. In December 18, 1908 William Sandy Johnson died and T. L Johnson became the driving emotional, spiritual and financial influence on his siblings’ lives and he made sure all were college educated. Shortly after his father death he moved all of his siblings to Robeson County where they finished their public schooling. In 1910 when the house was finished all the Johnson brothers and sisters moved in with their older brother T.L and his wife Jessie. In addition to his siblings T.L. and Jessie had two children Thomas Lester Johnson Jr. and Christine Johnson. Thomas Johnson Jr. died in November of 1998 at the age of 87 in Asheville, NC. Thomas L. Jr. had a daughter named Cynthia Johnson Joyner who lives in Hilton Head, SC with her husband.

Thomas L. Johnson attended Haywood High School (Clyde, NC) and graduated from Mars Hill College. He left Mars Hill and attended the Law School at Wake Forest graduating in 1908.  He moved to Lumberton and set up a law practice with DP Shaw over the First National Bank Building (corner of 5th and Elm Street).

He would remain in Lumberton for the next 23 years accomplishing much in the courtroom, community and in politics. His legal experiences included representing the defendant Joseph Kemp in the 1923 sensational murder trial in Superior Court of the “State versus Kemp”. In that case Kemp was acquitted after being brought to trial for a murder he was have alleged to have committed in 1883.

Thomas L. Johnson became settled into the community and became active in the Lumberton Kiwanis Club along with the School Board. He served as Chairman of the Robeson County Board of Education for 15 years, was a Trustee at NC State, a member of the General Board of Baptist State Convention and was a charter member of Kiwanis when it was founded in 1924.

In 1924, Lumberton and Robeson County was the center of the North Carolina political talk as Lumberton’s own Angus McLean was running for Governor.  Another Lumbertonian also cast his hat into the ring for state office in 1924.  The race was State Senator and the candidate was Thomas L. Johnson.  He defeated his opponent by the count of 4,760 to 478.  He choose not to run in 1927 so he could finish a term as a Judge but ran and won again in 1929 and became President Pro-Tem of the State Senate.

Senator Johnson had the honor of introducing Governor elect Angus McLean at his inauguration in January, 1925.  He was the author of the Johnson Banking Act in 1925 and many Law Reviews including Yale Law Journal considered it the most dramatic banking act of the decade. 

In 1926, at the end of his first term, he was appointed “Emergency Judge of the Superior Court” by Lumberton neighbor, good friend and Governor of North Carolina, Angus McLean.  After his emergency status had expired, he ran again for State Senate in 1928 was elected and served as State Senator until January 1931.  In the Fall of 1931, he sold the house at 1209 Elm Street and moved to Asheville, NC to run for Governor in the 1932 election.  His campaign never was successful and he lived in Asheville until 1944 when he returned to Lumberton living first at the corner of 19^th and Elm while his house was being built at 1701 Walnut Street.  He lived there until his death in 1956. That HOME is depicted below.

Even though Thomas Johnson achieved much in state politics, his brother E. M. “Mosby” Johnson served Lumberton exceptionally well. As mentioned earlier, he had a 21 year tenure as Lumberton’s Mayor and practiced law in the firm of Johnson, Johnson and McLeod during the 1920’s. Later in his career he was in practice with I. Murchison Biggs and John Wishart Campbell. E. M. Johnson died May 10, 1976 at the age of 86.

His time as Mayor saw a new Carolina Civic Center, Post Office (Musslewhite Law Offices), and Armory (Bill Sapp Recreation Center) become part of the Lumberton infrastructure.

His grandson David Johnson Ramsaur has carried on the Johnson family tradition by being an attorney in Lumberton law firm of Ramseur and McLean.  David’s mom, Lois Johnson Ramsaur, used to live on 1607 N. Elm Street in the house her dad had built in 1939 while he was Mayor of Lumberton. That HOME was also built by Mr. Thomas Burney (same builder as T.L.’s house at 1209 Elm Street). Today David and his wife live in that house.

James Floyd Johnson tinkered as a school teacher until 1916 (age 28) and then went into banking first at the Bank of McDonald and then onto Fairmont National Bank where he started as a cashier and rose to the rank of President until his death in 1956. Family members have said that J.F. Johnson’s brother T.L. Johnson died the day of his funeral. 

J.F. Johnson also had farming interests in Robeson County. Records indicated that James F. Johnson married Augusta Waldrop in 1914 in Asheville, NC and had at least three children: Kathleen born in 1916; James H. born in 1921; and William A. Born in 1923.  He also had two children from a second marriage Jenny and Kenneth. Jenny Johnson Smith was a Robeson County Extension agent until she recently retired. J.F son James H. has his Ph.D. in music and has recently published a historical review of the state song “The Old North State” for the State of North Carolina. James H. lives in Roanoke, Va. James F. Johnson was considered a citizen committed to the betterment of the Town of Fairmont and was very active in civic matters.

That is a little slice of history of the family that built our HOME.