LYJO, part 2

In addition to the visitor center, Johnson City is also the location of LBJ's boyhood home.
A nicely designed house built in 1900 by the local county sheriff and purchased by the Johnson's in 1913 when Lyndon was 5 years old.

 The house actually looks much nicer than it did during the family's time there since it now gets regular coats of fresh paint.

 Four porches and numerous doors and windows were 1900's air conditioning on 120 degree, Texas afternoons.

I take visitors on tours of the house while giving them some insight into the parents and small-town, hill-country environment that shaped the man who became our 36th President.

The Johnson family first came to this area in the 1800's. Lyndon's grandfather, Sam Ealy Johnson, came here in his mid-twenties with two brothers to raise cattle, drive them north on the Chisholm Trail to Kansas, and sell them. Grandpa Sam fought in the Civil War and then returned to Texas where he married Eliza Bunton. Their first home is a short walk from the visitor center.

 

 

Somewhere around 1880, Eliza heard hoof beats coming across the grassland. Sam was not there and Eliza knew that bands of indian warriors had attacked and killed neighboring settlers. She grabbed her small daughter and crawled under the cabin. Mother and child stayed there all day and night until the war party left, taking only the horses from the barn and food.