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Articles
1992 - Public Visits Homestead To Pay Their Final Respects To Johnson Descendant by Suzanne Slagle Richey
Originally published in The Greeneville Sun on August 4, 1992
More than a hundred friends, family members and other admirers visited the Andrew Johnson Homestead Monday night to pay respects to the late Margaret Johnson Patterson Bartlett.
Others continued to come by the Homestead today. A National Park Service spokesman said taht at 11:30 that more than 50 persons had visited this morning.
Mrs. Bartlett, the last great-grandchild of President Johnson, died Saturday at 88.
The funeral service will be held at the Homestead.
Because of space limitations, inside seating is expected to be confined to family members and a small number of close friends, but arrangements have been made to accommodate others outside.
Important Role
Mrs. Bartlett, the closest living direct descendant of the 17th U.S. President, was regarded highly in the community for her lifelong effort to protect and promote the name political achievements of her great-grandfather.
In accordance with her wishes, her body lay in state Monday night at the Homestead, where her parents had lived and where she herself was born, reared and married. She also lived there much of her adult life.
Mrs. Bartlett and her mother deserve credit for the establishment of the Andrew Johnson National Historic site, said Jim Small, chief ranger for the Historic Site.
Small was one of several National Park Service staff present at the Homestead Monday night. The family received friends from 7-9 p.m.
Between the years of 1933 and 1935, Small noted, Mrs. Bartlett made five trips to Washington D.C., seeking support of legislation to establish an Andrew Johnson National Monument including the Homestead, the National Cemetery and the Johnson Tailor Shop.
On April 27, 1942, her efforts proved successful with the approval of that legislation, Small said.
He added that she served as an employee of the Historic Site for more than 40 years. She formally retired in 1973 but continued to assist at the Homestead for several more years.
In 1974 she received a 30-year service pin and a special Meritorious Service Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which in part reads, "The National Park Service is blessed with a cadre of devoted historians who love what they are doing...But, in Mrs. Bartlett, we have one more ingredient - that ancestral tie is to the past."
To Honor, And Reminisce
Monday night, many of those who came by the Homestead indicated they came to honor her as a person and as a part of history.
They also came to reminisce.
Park Ranger Everett Chandler, of the National Park Service staff, who has worked at the Homestead since 1962, said he remembers Mrs. Bartlett from the days when she would serve as the personal hostess of the site.
"The one thing I remember her saying more than anything was, "This may be a job to you, but it's family to me," Chandler said.
She gave personal tours to the visitors from across the country and the world for as long as she could, he said. "And she loved to tell the stories of each item and had the whole tour memorized," he added.
Her favorite story, he recalled, concerned a hand-carved cane in what was known as the Andrew Johnson bedroom, to the right of the front door. The cane is decorated with a variety of symbols.
"She loved to tell about the cane and what each of the different symbols mean," Chandler said.
John D. Cartwright, retired Greeneville banker and a longtime friend of Mrs. Bartlett, said he had many fond memories of her coming into his own home.
"She was a very close friend of my late wife, and she was often just stopping by at dinner time," Cartwright said.
"I don't think there is another person I served more dinners to than my own family."
Other friends and family visited, along with work associates and Johnson historians.
Among those who stopped by the Homestead Monday night were Dr. Paul Bergeron, University of Tennessee history professor and editor of the Andrew Johnson papers at UT, and Dr. LeRoy Graf, retired UT history professor and previous editor of the Johnson papers.
Both men, who are Knoxville residents, said they had known Mrs. Bartlett for a number of years and had worked with her several times in preparing Andrew Johnson-related papers which Mrs. Bartlett gave the university for its work.
Arrangements
The funeral will begin at 6 p.m. tonight. The Reverend Garland E. Long Jr., pastor of Christ United Methodist Church, will officiate.
Internment will follow at Monument Hill, the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, alongside her parents and near her Johnson ancestors.
Mrs. Bartlett will be the last person to be buried in the Johnson family enclosure atop Monument Hill, according to Small.
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