Another beautiful character was my great grandfather James Johnson, a Cherokee Indian that everyone just called "Skillethead." He was born about 1790 somewhere then known as "the Land of the Cherokee." Due to the merciless pressure from frontiersmen, many Cherokee sought refuge north of the Ohio and thereby avoided the later - TRAIL of TEARS. Skillethead made his way to Indiana where he met and married his thirteen-year-old bride, Hester Light. They had nine children and despite the hardships of life, patches of poverty and social prejudices, they both lived long enough to grow quite gray. His daughter-in-law, Rhoda Ellen Dean, married Lawrence Johnson when she was eighteen years old and Lawrence, 32. Like many other men who survived the Civil War, he was never quite the same and they were forced to move quite a bit, trying to find work that he could do despite his physical sufferings and chronic illnesses. He had lost most of his health during the war due to sleeping on the damp, cold, hard ground. Rhoda buried two babies under the age of one, had two that lived and died by the age of 26. Her short life paralleled the turmoil and devastation the war created.

II. SKILLETHEAD JOHNSON, THE CHEROKEE

Cherokees did not come to Indiana as a group, but as "refugees" from the east. The Cherokees under pressure scattered west, into the old northwest, that is Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Skillethead would have been a "refugee" Cherokee. In my mind, there is no question that he was a Cherokee. The family story that came down calls him "a full-blood Cherokee," which is quite specific. By 1807, when the Lights came to Indiana, the Cherokees were in many parts of the country. They were under pressure from other Indians as well as from the American settlers. Some of the Cherokees moved to Indiana. Tribes of Cherokees continued to exist in the east and in the west after removal to Indian Territory. Notice again that Skillethead had left the Virginia/North Carolina area long before the TRAIL of TEARS, which was 1838. Perhaps, Skillethead, as a ten-year-old, came with the Tice Light family when they left South Carolina for Kentucky. Some records suggest that he was born in Tennessee or in Kentucky, so perhaps he met the Lights along the way. At any rate, he married Hester in Harrison County, Indiana, in 1814.

The Johnsons bought 160 acres in Owen County, May 1818. They must have come with Abner. He built a mill on Raccoon Creek. Although the family lived in Owen County in 1820, and bought land in 1826 in Putnam County, where her brother Israel was living, they have not been found in the 1830 census. In December 1835 and June 1836, the Johnsons bought land in Franklin Twp., Owen County. In 1840, they were still living in Owen County, next door to Hester's brother, Hugh. In 1850, her mother, Polly, was living with them.

UNITED STATES CENSUS, 1850:

James Johnson, age 52 b. TN-Occ: Farmer, is residing at Franklin Twp., Owen Co, IN, with his wife Hester Ann, age 50 b. SC, along with children: William, age 25 b. IN-Occ: Farmer; Laurence, age 18 b. IN; Abner L., age 16 b. IN; Eleanor, age 13 b. IN; Martha, age 11 b. IN; and {Hester's mother} Polly Lite, age 80 b. SC.

UNITED STATES CENSUS, 1860:

James Johnson, age 62 b. TN-Occ: Farmer, is residing at Franklin Twp., Owen Co, IN, with his wife Hester Ann, age 60 b. SC, along with children: William R, age 35 b. IN-Occ: Farmer; J. L., age 28 b, IN-Occ: School Teacher; Abner, age 26 b. IN-Occ: School Teacher; Adeline Meadows, age 12 b. IN; John Burton, age 20 b. IN - Occ: Day Labor.

Skillethead wrote his will in 1860, but lived to 1868, as an old man in DeWitt, Missouri, tapping his foot to the music in church, cared for lovingly in the home of his son Lawrence and daughter-in-law Rhoda (Dean).

Thanks to: Stacey Gentry, March 2024