I'm doing a little digging to try and find out some info on Brit Johnson, Young County, Texas.

All I have so far came from http://www.forttours.com/pages/brit.asp. Killed by Comanches January 24, 1871.

There's mention of him in The Captured, Indian Depredations of Texas, and the brief mentions cited on the above website.

Anybody have any info on this guy or know where I might go to find out more?

Thanks for any help.

The standard reference for any question about early Texas and Texans is T.R. Fehrenbach's book Lone Star.

Britt Johnson is prominently covered in Chapter 29, The Terrible Years, and more particularly on pages 525-528.

In 1864 Britt Johnson lived with his family and with several other white families on Elm Creek near where it joins the Brazos (present day about 15-20 miles northwest of Graham in Young County.) Old Fort Belknap was about 12 or so miles southeast the U.S. Army had abandoned the Fort in 1861 and the only protection of settlers were scattered groups of state guards. Settlers had to provide their own defense from Indians.

Britt Johnson was legally a slave, having been inherited by another Elm Creek resident named Johnson, but the owner did not believe in slavery and had allowed Johnson to live as a free man.

In 1864 Little Buffalo, a Comanche, led a large band of Comanches and Kiowas on a raid into the north Texas communities. Johnson was in Weatherford trading for supplies when the raiders hit his community on Elm Creek. His son was killed along with many other settlers, and Johnson's wife and his other children plus other females were taken prisoner.

Johnson went alone into the land of the Comancheria in the Texas panhandle to retrieve the female captives. He was aided in his quest by other Comanches, some of whom apparently had been residents in the Brazos Reservation some time earlier.

Johnson was able to negotiate the return of his wife and children and some others and brought them back to Elm Creek.

Johnson continued to live in the area and he and two other black men started a freighting business between a new Fort Griffin (near present Albany) and Weatherford. But in 1871 another band of Kiowas attacked their wagons and killed all three men.

Britt Johnson was definitely a hero of early day frontier Texas.


The carpetbagger government in Texas after the Civil War bears responsibility for ignoring the plight of settlers on the Texas frontier (the frontier at that time was any land west of present day I-35.). Governor E.J. Davis considered the depredations of Indians another form of retribution for Texans joining the Confederacy ... and did virtually nothing to protect them. U.S. Grant allowed Texans to oust Governor Davis by votes in 1873, sent the US Army back in to restore order, and by 1875 had defeated the Comanches in Texas for once and for all.

Fossil,

Awesome. Thanks a bunch. Do you know if anything in length has been written about this guy?

I'll pick up Lone Star tomorrow. I should have had a copy a long time ago. Thanks for the pointers.

Frenchy

I have not read a book about Britt Johnson but no doubt his story has been in print for years because it is such a powerful bit of history.

If you live in Waller, I suggest you check first at the Prairie View library. They in turn can query the TAMU collections for you.

If you cannot find a book currently in print, write one. It is a story that needs to be told. In less that three hours you can drive to the old Johnson homestead in Young County and walk the same ground he and his family walked.

The first place I look for Texas stuff is from that little school in Austin:

Handbook of Texas Online

Their entry on Johnson is here and the Elm creek raid is here.

Thanks all. Am in the most tender stages of putting the research together to get this story told. Problem is, I'm a fiction guy. It may be hard for me to stick to the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Thanks for the guidance. It never occurred to me to go over to PVAMU. They're in my back yard.

Of further interest about Brit, a very unusual circumstance in Texas around the time of the Civil War, he was a black man married to a white woman. While technically a slave, he had so much ambition and drive that his master gave him the autonomy to run his own freight business (so long as the master got a cut) and he was away from home working for the Confederate Army in East Texas when the Elm Creek Raid occurred.

Brit was the inspiration for the character of Amos Edwards in Alan LeMay's Novel The Searchers but writing a book in the 1950s LeMay decided having a black hero wasn't a good idea, so Amos became a Confederate colonel returning from the war. Two years later, the novel was converted to the screen by John Ford and the Brit/Amos character became Ethan, who was played by none other than John Wayne.

Another good book from the Texas A&M press to consult on this subject is David Paul Smith's Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas Rangers and Rebels. David is a great and knowledgable guy and until recently was a history teacher at Highland Park HS. If only I could have had a high school teacher like him.

I thought The Searchers was based on Cynthia Ann Parker, not the Johnson family?

Trivia: John Wayne's signature line in that movie (That'll be the Day) was picked up by a group of teenagers in Lubbock who saw the movie together: Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan and Buddy Holley.

Although aspects of the Parker story and other white captives were incorporated into LeMay's novel, Cynthia Ann's immediate family were all killed in Limestone County and no one was explicitly hunting her like Johnson did his family. Sully only stumbled upon her in his Pease River attack so recapturing her was just a side benefit of killing Commanche. Johnson's story more aligns with The Searchers and LeMay's personal papers say he based the story on Johnson.

[This message has been edited by BQ78 (edited 10/3/2007 11:43a).]

Frenchy,

Matt Braun beat you to it. He wrote the novel Black Fox in the early '80's. And there were 3 made-for-TV movies produced in the mid '90s based on his novel.

Black Fox
Black Fox: Good Men and Bad
Black Fox: The Price of Peace

Of course it is not a strictly historical retelling of the story.

[This message has been edited by SandAG (edited 10/3/2007 4:40p).]

Frenchy -
You might also read Tehano by Allen Wier that came out last year. One of the lead characters is a black man named "Muddy" who sounds a lot like Johnson and may have been drawn from his true story. The book itself is a fair to good read and presents some interesting historical ideas, albeit from a fictional view.

what BQ and fossil said - add to it just a little. Johnson's search for his family wasn't just a short time chase, he followed the Comanche bands for I want to say a couple of years, before he was able to ransom his family.

Johnson and his story are one of the key chapters highlighted here in Abilene at Frontier Texas!

Brit is one of the "spirit guides" that tell their stories in the life size projected holographic images. If you haven't been there, and you want to learn about Johnson, you should check that out.

This book was written as a companion piece to the museum and covers Brit's story as well
Frontier Texas ! a Borderland

If you are up here, you're only about an hour from the Elm Creek area where Brit's family was living and about 10 miles east of there is the location where Brit and his buddies fought it out at a water hole.

Elm Creek meanders from the bottom left across the intersection of 380 and 278 up to the top right where it drizzles into the red muddy Clear Fork of the Brazos.

near Salt Creek Prairie there was a water hole or spring about here. (probably where that tank is = called I think Turtle Hole) Look to the east northeast about 2 miles and you'll find the location of the Warren Wagon Train Massacre.






[This message has been edited by TheSheik (edited 10/3/2007 5:54p).]

if you didn't think so, Brit was a badass:
maybe a bad shot, but he was a tough no doubt about it.

from the Handbook article:

quote:

---

On January 24, 1871, about twenty-five Kiowas attacked a wagontrain manned by Johnson and two black teamsters four miles east of Salt Creek in Young County. A group of nearby teamsters from a larger train of wagons reported that Johnson died last in a desperate defense behind the body of his horse. Teamsters who buried the mutilated bodies of Johnson and his men counted 173 rifle and pistol shells in the area where Johnson made his stand. He was buried with his men in a common grave beside the wagon road.

---

Thanks for all the feedback. I may write the book anyway. Who cares if it's been done? It hasn't been done by me. Plus, it sounds like a lot of fun. I mean, you got race relations, cultural differences, inter-racial marriage in Confederate Texas. Come on... Add written by an Aggie and we got a seller, you dig?

Thanks all for the info.