STOVEPIPE JOHNSON…

Confederate Brigadier General. Adam Johnson was born on February 8, 1834, in Henderson, Kentucky. 

He was well respected for his bravado, once capturing the town of Newburgh, Indiana from a large Union unit with only twelve men and a length of stovepipe mounted to a wagon. The Union soldiers, fearing the "cannon" surrendered, and Stovepipe Johnson acquired his nickname.

His service was cut short, during a dawn attack on the Union camp at Grubbs Crossroads, Johnson was accidentally shot in the face by his own men; he was then captured and imprisoned at Fort Warren until the end of the War. After the armistice, he was released and returned to Texas, now totally blind, but his drive never diminished. He founded the town of Marble Falls and the Texas Mining Improvement Company; wrote his memoirs The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army and continued his pre-war work with Overland Mail until his death on October 23, 1922. He was honored by having his funeral services held in the Texas Senate chamber and was laid to rest in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

Johnson started working at the age of twelve in a drugstore, leaving his job in 1854 to move to Burnet County, Texas to work as a surveyor. He married Josephine Eastland in January of 1861 and gained a reputation as an expert Indian fighter and stagecoach driver for Butterfield Overland Mail. When the War broke out, he returned to his home state of Kentucky in 1861 and enlisted in Nathan Bedford Forrest's company as a scout; his skill in the military being such that he was given command of the Texas Partisan Rangers and promoted to colonel by June, 1864.