Rev. Nathan S. Johnson

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Nathan S. Johnson came into this world in Virginia, in the year 1802, and by the time he was a young man he was growing up near Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Now, some folks spend their boyhood years figuring out what they want to be. Nathan, it seems, didn't take long. By 1824, he was licensed to preach.

That's a calling with weight to it, and Nathan carried it seriously. He went to work as a Methodist missionary to the Cherokee Indians and others in the Tennessee Conference, riding out to serve people most preachers never saw. Then came 1851, and Nathan Johnson made a decision.

He packed up his wife Sarah, gathered his five children, and brought the whole family to Texas. East Texas, specifically. And for the next seven years, he rode the circuit in the East Texas Methodist Conference.

Marshall, Jefferson, Clarksville, San Augustine. Town after town, mile after mile. That is not a comfortable life.

That is a life of purpose, put into motion on horseback, season after season. In the last years of his life, Nathan settled into the pastorship of the Daingerfield Methodist Church, right here in this part of the state. He died in 1860, of pneumonia.

A man born in Virginia, shaped in Tennessee, and given fully to Texas. The marker stands for that.

What the marker says

Born in Virginia in 1802, Nathan Johnson spent his boyhood years near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In 1824 he was licensed to preach and served as a Methodist missionary to the Cherokee Indians and others in the Tennessee Conference. Johnson brought his wife, Sarah, and five children to Texas in 1851. For the next seven years he rode the circuit in the East Texas Methodist Conference, serving towns such as Marshall, Jefferson, Clarksville, and San Augustine. During the last years of his life, Johnson served as pastor of the Daingerfield Methodist Church. He died of pneumonia in 1860.