Calhoun County AlArchives Photo Person.....Johnson, Cora April 4, 1963
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Shirley Mellon Dewberry dewberry@cableone.net October 2, 2010, 4:33 pm

Source:             Newspaper Article
Name:               Cora Johnson

Date Of Photograph: April 4, 1963
Photo can be seen at:
http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/calhoun/photos/johnson10884gph.jpg
Image file size: 30.0 Kb

Source: The Anniston Star, Anniston, Alabama
Date: Thursday, April 4, 1963

DEATH ENDS STORY OF CORA JOHNSON

By Alan Baughman

	In a lonely little shack on the side of a mountain, four miles from 
the nearest neighbor and three miles from the nearest accessible road, Mrs. 
Cora Johnson, one of the last of the old --- school mountaineers, died 
Tuesday.  That day brought to a close a life that had been lived over 30 years 
in hermitage.

	She lived in a shack in Cleburne County, south of Oxford that was just 
a roof, supported by two logs; one room measuring 14 feet long, seven feet 
wide and four feet high.

	There was no furniture in the cabin – just rocks arranged in a circle 
for a fireplace, rags, a few blackened cooking pots and blankets that were 
crusted to the shape of her body.  She had no lantern, no electricity, no 
water and no real comfort from the cold winds.

					Pine Knots Her Fuel

	For light, she burned pine knots.  For warmth, she burned kindling 
wood stacked in one corner of the shack.  Stalled off in a part of the house 
by two wide planks and a pile of rocks, she kept three dogs, a cat, an untamed 
rabbit, and, for two years, a 4-year-old cow with the body of a 6-month-old 
calf.

	Once a month, she would make the trip to Oxford for supplies and her 
relief check.  Hugh W. Moore, of Moore-King Hardware, remembers her.

	“She would come in here three, maybe four, times a year.  She bought 
tin pails and garden seeds mostly, never asking the price of anything.  She 
and Buck (her husband) were always real helpful to each other; they never 
bought anything too heavy to carry home.  They looked after each other, and 
never asked for anything free.”

					Visits Are Recalled

	Mrs. Roberta Sparks, cashier for the First State Bank of Oxford, also 
remembered her.

	“Once a month she and Buck would come in here to cash their checks.  
They were always very polite and always said something nice.  They turned 
around twice to thank me as they went out.”

	“Cora came to town in a heavy pair of khaki army trousers over which 
she wore a dress of some sort.  She wore this hat; it was an old felt hat that 
used to be purple.”

	Probably the one person other than her husband, Buck Johnson, who knew 
her best was Mrs. M. C. (Mack) Chitwood, who ran Chitwood’s Store near Cheaha 
Acres.  She tells the story of how Cora Johnson carried three kittens across 
the mountains in her tow sack and bought a can of milk to feed them 
because “she just couldn’t bear to see them starve.”

					Good Nature Acclaimed

	“They were both as honest as the day is long, I wouldn’t be afraid to 
leave a hundred-dollar bill on the counter when Cora or Buck were in here.  
And good natured!  Why, you couldn’t find anybody more good-natured than those 
two,” and Mrs. Chitwood.

	Cora and Buck lived on different sides of the mountain until he was 
robbed of $1100 last fall.  There is a trail worn around the mountain between 
their houses.

	“She didn’t care much for medicine.  She used to eat herbs.  One time 
she said the only medicine any good was turpentine and kerosene.  I had a sore 
shoulder once and she said, “Try a paste of turpentine,’ and you know, it 
worked!” Mrs. Chitwood said.

					She Picked Berries

	In earlier days, Cora had to depend on odd jobs for her food.  She cut 
and sold pine kindling, picked blackberries and huckleberries, and sold brush 
booms.  A lady in Cheaha Acres, when she learned of Cora’s death, said “Now 
that she’s gone we won’t have any more brooms.”

	She believed that cats and dogs talked. Legend has it that she could 
charm lizards from under a slab pile to feed them.  It is also told in the 
mountains that she could talk with “haints.”  One man swears that she could 
talk a squirrel into coming down from a tree. 
	
	She carried an old tow sack over her shoulder everywhere she went.  In 
it she placed all her personal belongings, including an old alarm clock.

					Money Kept In Sacks

	Hemphill Whiteside recalls that she kept her money in this sack in the 
envelopes her relief checks came in.  She paid for different items from 
different envelopes, and would wrap each item separately in a burlap sack 
before she put it in the big tow bag.

	Marvin Cobb recalls her strength.

	“She and Buck would carry a 25-pound sack of flour on one shoulder and 
balance it with as much groceries on the other.  They’d take off and climb up 
the mountains with it.  I couldn’t do it.”

	Mrs. Chitwood, who was instrumental in getting Mrs. Johnson on relief, 
tells how her husband, Mack, tried to talk Cora and Buck into coming off the 
mountain.  “No, sir,” she said, “I’m a-gonna stay in them mountains till I 
die,”  She did.

					Hunters Give Aid

	Tuesday, Cora’s husband heard Pop Hanson hunting in the woods.  He 
shouted for help. Mrs. Johnson was dead.  Sheriff Owens of Cleburne County, 
Junior David, Mrs. John Gaines and her son David, and Dryden Funeral home took 
her off her mountain, first by hand, then by jeep, pickup truck, and finally 
by ambulance.  She had been dead nearly six hours when they reached the bottom

	Mrs. Cora Johnson was a hard woman who lived with nature.  She became 
a hermit by choice when her children were taken from her and put in an 
orphanage.  She was intelligent.  Mrs. Chitwood said that she wrote a poem on 
the death of a neighbor that “Shakespeare couldn’t have done better.”
	
	And so we are left with an image of Cora Johnson – that provided by 
Mrs. Chitwood and those few who knew her – of an honest woman with a heart as 
big as her mountain who “went to sleep every night prayin’.”


Additional Comments:
Mountain Home - Under this fallen roof of a collapsed mountain shack lived 
Mrs. Cora Johnson.  She and her husband lived in seclusion in the mountains of 
Clebure County south of Oxford off what was once a Civillan Conservation Corps 
road built in the 30's but no longer passable by car.

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