In the midst of the Civil War, three generations of the Johnson family came together for a family photograph, outside Richmond, Virginia. The front was moving closer; shortly after the picture was taken, elders, women, and children of the family fled south, back to Georgia. Tom Johnson, the man standing toward the right side of the group, with a beard and hat and holding his wife's hand, stayed behind, to defend the city. He fell in battle a scant few days after the picture was taken, and his body made the journey south, by train. Stories are told of how Tom's wife (and mother of two young children) was returning home on that same train, in another car, and never knew. Only when she returned home did she receive the news. She, and her husband, are both buried in a small family cemetery beside the railroad tracks, a few miles south of Palmetto. Tom's brother, the seated gentleman on the far right in the picture, died before the war was over, in the only major battle fought in Florida, at Olustee. He, too, is buried in this small unkempt graveyard, where several stones are weathered almost smooth, and other graves are marked only by lumps of granite barely protruding from under the cover of oak leaves.
We took our time on this, our last Palmetto Civil War history stop in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Wandering among the stones, we glimpsed other stories. The graveyard also holds the remains of Hannah Penn, who died in the late 1700s. She was a descendant of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania; a branch of the family came south, to the Palmetto-Newnan area, eventually marrying into the Johnson family. A displaced Pennsylvanian myself, I paused togratefully recognize the others before me who have uprooted themselves from the Keystone State, to make a new home in the wilds of Georgia.
In the midst of the Civil War, three generations of the Johnson family came together for a family photograph, outside Richmond, Virginia. The front was moving closer; shortly after the picture was taken, elders, women, and children of the family fled south, back to Georgia. Tom Johnson, the man standing toward the right side of the group, with a beard and hat and holding his wife's hand, stayed behind, to defend the city. He fell in battle a scant few days after the picture was taken, and his body made the journey south, by train. Stories are told of how Tom's wife (and mother of two young children) was returning home on that same train, in another car, and never knew. Only when she returned home did she receive the news. She, and her husband, are both buried in a small family cemetery beside the railroad tracks, a few miles south of Palmetto. Tom's brother, the seated gentleman on the far right in the picture, died before the war was over, in the only major battle fought in Florida, at Olustee. He, too, is buried in this small unkempt graveyard, where several stones are weathered almost smooth, and other graves are marked only by lumps of granite barely protruding from under the cover of oak leaves. 
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