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Articles
1992 - Margaret Johnson Patterson Bartlett Passes Away by John M. Jones, Jr.
Margaret Bartlett Dies at Age 88
Was Closest Living Descendant of President Andrew Johnson
By John M. Jones Jr. - Editor, The Greeneville Sun
Originally published in The Greeneville Sun on August 3, 1992
Margaret Johnson Patterson Bartlett, the closest surviving descendant of President Andrew Johnson and a key figure in the establishment of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, died early Saturday afternoon.
She would have been 89 next month.
In accordance with her wishes, funeral services will be held at the last home of her great-grandfather, where she was born, reared and married, and where she lived much of her adult life.
The funeral is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday. The Reverend Garland E. Long Jr., pastor of Christ United Methodist Church, will officiate.
Interment will follow atop Monument Hill alongside her parents and in the shadow of her Johnson ancestors.
Ralph M. Phinney, 97, Mrs. Bartlett's closest surviving relative and her legal guardian, said her death was a peaceful one and was not unexpected.
Since 1969 she had been the only surviving great-grandchild of Johnson, the 17th President of the United States.
Her death also marks the end of a period of 166 years when at least one member of the Johnson family either actually lived in Greeneville or at least owned a residence here.
That unbroken period of years linking the Johnson family with Greeneville had begun in September 1826, when an 18-year-old Andrew Johnson came into town with his mother and stepfather, found there was a need for another tailor, and decided to settle down.
Coincidence of Dates
Mrs. Bartlett had been in declining health for several years, and had been much weaker in recent days. Since April 1983 she had been a resident of Life Care Center of Greeneville (formerly Life Care East) nursing home.
She was hospitalized in September 1991 after suffering a major stroke but recovered sufficiently to be returned to the nursing home.
According to Phinney, a cousin, her breathing stopped about 1 p.m. Saturday. Efforts to restore her breathing were made first at the nursing home and then at Takoma Adventist Hospital, but without success.
Her death came one day after the 117th anniversary of President Johnson's death on July 31, 1875. She will be buried at the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery 117 years and a day after his own burial there.
Interviews with current and former National Historic Site staff indicate that her funeral will probably be the first to be conducted at the Homestead, although the president and a few other family members have lain in state there following their deaths.
The most recent of these was another Johnson great-granddaughter, the late Mrs. Martha Belle Landstreet Willingham, of Richmond, Virginia, who died in 1969.
Arrangements
According to Jim Small, chief ranger for the National Historic Site, Mrs. Bartlett will be the last person buried in the family enclosure at the cemetery, where President Johnson himself is interred.
At about 5 p.m. Monday, her body will be taken to the Homestead, on South Main Street, to lie in state until the funeral. Family members will receive friends there from 7-9 p.m.
Those wishing to pay their respects may also do so at the Homestead from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesday, although no family members are expected to be present.
The Homestead was closed to regular visitor traffic at noon Monday in preparation for the funeral. The home will reopen to the general public at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Doughty-Stevens Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements.
Was Great-Grandmother
An only child, Mrs. Bartlett was born September 29, 1903, to Andrew Johnson Patterson, grandson of the president, and Martha Ellen (Mattie) Barkley.
Her father's parents were Martha Johnson Patterson, a daughter of the president, and her husband, U.S. Senator David T. Patterson.
Mrs. Bartlett was married at the Johnson Homestead on June 15, 1949, to the late Rev. Dr. William Thaw Bartlett, of Maryville, a Presbyterian minister and a widower.
The Rev. Dr. Bartlett, a son of a former president of Maryville College, died in 1954. They had no children.
Her lifelong residence was in Greeneville in the Johnson Homestead, interspersed with frequent periods of time spent in the Bartlett home in Maryville.
After her husband's death she lived in the Johnson Homestead full time until 1956, when its restoration began. She worked closely with Henry A. Judd, restoration architect, between 1956 and 1958, the years of restoration.
In 1968 she built a replica of the Johnson Homestead at 107 W. McKee Street, about a block away from the Homestead. The brick residence was built as a memorial to the Johnson, Patterson and Bartlett families.
It was her last home, although for health reasons she lived there a total of less than a year, broken into periods of a few months each interspersed between periods of hospitalization.
She was graduated from Tusculum College in 1924 and later took special courses at the University of Tennessee and the University of Southern California.
She was one of two organizers of the Girl Scouts in Greene County and was herself a Girl Scout leader.
She taught home economics at Greeneville High School and later taught in Johnson City schools before becoming a member of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.
Honored for Services
As hostess at the Andrew Johnson Homestead from 1942 until her retirement in 1974, her role was unique as a direct descendant of the president who welcomed visitors, and who had been born in and lived in the historic home.
Her father had himself been a grandchild in the White House when his mother, Martha, served as First Lady because of the illness of her own mother, Eliza McCardle Johnson, during President Johnson's Administration from 1865 through 1869.
She formally retired September 30, 1973, after having started on April 3, 1942. But she continued as a retiree to serve at the Homestead until October 9, 1976.
In 1974, Mrs. Bartlett was a guest in Washington at the U.S. Department of the Interior and was honored with a Meritorious Service Award by then-Secretary of the Interior Rogers C.B. Morton.
The citation honored her services with the National Park Service. She also received an award noting her 30 years of service with the NPS.
The citation accompanying the Meritorious Service Award stated in part:
"The Department of the Interior and, indeed, the visitors to the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, are fortunate that Margaret Johnson Patterson Bartlett is still actively receiving visitors daily at the Johnson Homestead. . .
"Nowhere in the National Park Service is there a person like Mrs. Bartlett. Not only is she unique as a direct descendant of a President, she was born in the Johnson Homestead, as was her father, Andrew Johnson Patterson, from whom she received the priceless heritage of the illustrious political career and intimate homelife of her great-grandfather.
"The National Park Service is blessed with a cadre of devoted historians who love what they are doing and live what they are interpreting for the public.
"But, in Mrs. Bartlett, we have one more ingredient - that ancestral tie to the past, a tie to history that is cherished by her and treasured by us, the perpetuation of which gains a live reality through the ever-devoted bond between Mrs. Bartlett and her father and mother.
"To add to the authenticity of the restored Andrew Johnson Homestead, she loaned items of a personal nature, as well as items of furnishings associated with Andrew Johnson. . .
"In recognition of her many years of personal interpretation of the life of Andrew Johnson and for her efforts in helping to make the restored home authentic, Mrs. Bartlett is granted her 30-year Service Pin, and the Meritorious Service Award of the U.S. Department of the Interior."
Strong Convictions
Personally, she was known as a woman of steadfast opinion who was not to be swayed on matters about which she held convictions.
Those close to her knew that her lifelong goal, gained from the teachings and example of both of her parents, was the recognition, preservation and perpetuation of the name and career of her great-grandfather.
She played a major role, along with her mother, in the decision of the National Park Service to make the local Andrew Johnson properties a National Historic Site.
In 1906, an Act of Congress had authorized the Secretary of War to make Monument Hill, where Andrew Johnson was buried, a national cemetery.
On July 29, 1921, Andrew Johnson Patterson, her father, deeded the Johnson Tailor Shop to the State of Tennessee for $5,000. He died in 1932.
In 1933, she and her mother began working toward seeing the local Johnson properties made into a national monument under the administration of the National Park Service.
Between 1933 and 1935 she made five trips to Washington, D.C., seeking support for the passage of an act to establish such a memorial to her great-grandfather.
An Act of Congress on August 29, 1935, declared that national monument status would be granted when the title to the Homestead and the Tailor Shop had been vested in the federal government.
The Homestead had been President Johnson's Greeneville home from 1851 until the time of his death.
With the 1935 legislation passed, the task of Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Bartlett became getting sufficient funds appropriated by Congress to buy the the Tailor shop and the Homestead.
For the next seven years, the two women made repeated trips to Washington, D.C., to enlist the support of congressmen for an appropriation for this purpose.
In 1941, with the help of then-Governor Prentice Cooper, the federal government was given the Tailor shop by the State of Tennessee and in 1942 the federal government bought the Homestead from the family for $44,000.
A Presidential Proclamation on April 27, 1942, established the Andrew Johnson National Monument, consisting of the National Cemetery, the Tailor Shop, and the Homestead.
In a story published in The Greeneville Sun on August 31, 1985, Mrs. Bartlett was quoted as recalling that the late First District Representative B. Carroll Reece, a Republican and a warm admirer of President Johnson, and the late U.S. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar, a Democrat from Tennessee, took primary congressional leadership roles in the lengthy and difficult effort to see the Johnson National Monument established.
In 1963 the monument was renamed the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site. An earlier Johnson home, located across College Street from the Tailor Shop, was acquired by the Park Service in 1964.
In the 1950s major work was done on the properties to restore them to their condition at the time of their use by the former President. Restoration of the Homestead was completed in 1958.
Lobbied FDR
Mrs. Bartlett had been a guest in the White House during the administrations of both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
She was also the guest of honor over the years at many other occasions honoring her great-grandfather.
Concerning the meeting with President Roosevelt, she recalled in later years that she was one of eight guests who took tea with the President and Mrs. Roosevelt at about 5 p.m. on a day in 1936. As she described the occasion, she said that "...the President was announced and brought into our midst in his wheelchair.
"Each two persons shared a tea table. The President was seated with me for a time; then seats were exchanged...Mrs. Roosevelt poured tea from a lovely tea service...
"My real reason for seeing the President was to ask for his support of our Andrew Johnson Bill. He assured me of his support. I felt that I had accomplished my mission..."
Gave Memorabilia
As the sole heir of virtually all of the remaining Andrew Johnson physical legacy of documents, personal property, etc., Mrs. Bartlett made donations for custodial care and museum exhibition in several institutions, according to family sources.
The institutions include Tusculum College, the Tennessee State Museum at Nashville, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the Smithsonian Institution, the Nathanael Greene Museum, and the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.
Materials contributed by her provided the basis for an Andrew Johnson Library and Museum to be established on the Tusculum campus.
Among presidential heirlooms in her possession, she inherited a pair of black onyx earrings and a matching pendant necklace given to her grandmother, Martha Johnson Patterson, by President and Mrs. James K. Polk.
Civic Role
During World War II she organized several rural food canning projects under the Tennessee Emergency Relief Organization as a food conservation effort during that period of national emergency.
Among her local civic activities, she was a member of the Nolachuckey Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and an honorary member of the Tuesday Book Club, the Andrew Johnson Club and the Andrew Johnson Memorial Association.
She was the first life member of the Greene County Heritage Trust and was a lifelong member of Christ United Methodist Church.
While she was known for her frugality, she was a liberal donor to charity and made numerous personal and institutional gifts.
Survivors
Her surviving relatives include, on her mother's side, three Greene Countians: Phinney, and cousins Helen Gillespie Jeffers and Louise Gillespie Seaver.
Other surviving cousins on her mother's side include Mrs. William A. Nelson, M.D., Mrs. Margaret Nelson Ailor, and Jeanne Barkley, all of Knoxville; Charles Grady Nelson, of Newport, and Betty Nelson Yarborough, of Birmingham, Alabama.
Of the Johnson descendants, survivors include Mrs. Martha Belle Willingham Colt, of Bedford, New Hampshire, a great-great-granddaughter of of the former president.
Mrs. Colt, now in her early 80s, was reared in Richmond, Virginia, but spent some summers in Greeneville with family members.
She is a daughter of the late Mrs. Willingham, who lived for several years in the Homestead as a girl. Mrs. Willingham, a first cousin of Mrs. Bartlett, is buried in the national cemetery here.
Elizabeth Landstreet WIllingham Crump, a second daughter of Mrs. WIllingham, died in 1965, leaving a son and grandchildren. Mrs. Crump had lived in Richmond.
Surviving great-great-grandchildren of the president include Corinne Patterson Colt Null, of Bedford, New Hampshire; Thomas Clyde Colt III, of Montvale, New York, and Taylor Nicholas Crump, of Richmond.
Great-great-great-great-grandchildren of Johnson are Emily Corinne Null, 9, of Bedford, New Hampshire; and Taylor Nicholas Crump Jr. and Kevin Crump Holder.
There are three great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren, all of Richmond.
Pallbearers
Active pallbearers for the funeral and internet wiwll be Paul Metcalfe, Harry Roberts, Bobby Kirk, Richard Doughty, Hugh Lawing, Gregg Jones, Anthony Bewley, Sam Doak, Hovie Gregg and Nayland Clark.
Honorary pallbearers will be John Cartwright, Dr. James McKinney, Dr. Robert Knott, John M. Jones, Tom Austin, Dr. LeRoy Graf, Dr. Paul Bergeron, the Reverend Douglas Mayo, and Herbert Silvers.
Those wishing to make memorial gifts may make them either to the Andrew Johnson Memorial Association, Tusculum College, Greeneville, TN 37743, or to Christ United Methodist Church.
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