Homesite and Burial Place of General Joseph Burton Johnson

The 'General' was a Texas State Troops rank. The Handbook of Texas says Johnson was stationed at Galveston during the Civil War and does not appear to have seen combat. By 1860 he owned twenty-eight enslaved people, fourteen of them under twelve. After the war he gave land for a Grange hall and for an African American cemetery, and in 1873 he was chosen first master of the Texas State Grange. He died on January 18, 1874, and was buried in the family plot on his property six miles north of Fairfield, not in a public cemetery.

What the plaque says

Homesite and Burial Place of General Joseph Burton Johnson (April 7, 1816 - January 18, 1874) Planter, soldier, civic leader. Born in Georgia. Commissioned a captain in U. S. Army in Florida in 1837; a major, 1846. Came to Freestone County in 1854. For headquarters on his 10,550-acre plantation, built (1860) at this site a 12-room stone mansion. Served as brigadier general of Texas State Troops in Civil War. A county commissioner; first master of Texas State Grange; a Royal Arch Mason. Made gifts to worthy causes and to minorities. He married Patience Ponder; had 5 children. Descendants include lawyers, merchants, doctors, law officers, printers, teachers. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 13 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 24 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 25 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Caney Baptist Church — 4.1 mi
• First Methodist Church Bell — 5.7 mi
• Site of Law Office, General John Gregg — 5.8 mi
• Freestone County — 5.9 mi