The Clarion Ledger has a story about Robert Johnson’s birthplace in Hazelhurst. Local officials claim to have discovered it:
His birthplace, however, has been verified. The seminal bluesman came into the world in 1911 in a well-crafted home built by his stepfather in Hazlehurst.
Now, 71 years after his death, local officials want to restore the home in hopes of drawing Johnson fans and their tourism dollars to Copiah County, about 100 miles from the Delta region that most bluesmen called home. …
Johnson’s birthplace was verified in a letter from his half-sister years ago, said Janet Schriver, executive director of the Copiah County Office of Cultural Affairs.
The 1,500-square-foot home ow owned by the county has fallen into disrepair, but it still bears evidence of craftsmanship. Johnson’s stepfather, Charles Dodds, was a furniture maker and a prosperous landowner. The house had a double-parlor, a long front porch and a pump that allowed water to flow into the kitchen.
…A restored Johnson birthplace would offer his latter-day fans something rare: a tangible relic linked to the long-dead musician. Few personal artifacts from Johnson’s life remain. Only two photos of Johnson are known to exist, one known as the “studio portrait” made for Johnson by Hooks Brothers Studios in Memphis and the other referred to as “the dime store portrait” taken by Johnson.
Robert Johnson’s stepfather’s house was in the Damascus Community just north of Hazelhurst. About 10 years ago, I was doing an article for Living Blues magazine about Johnson, based largely on material from the estate trial. The material was remarkable because it involved interviews with people who knew Johnson and his mother, and involved recollections that provided important details about his life (e.g. a cousin describing him playing the piano, which is signficiant because Johnson’s guitar plaing is clearly influenced by the left-hand lines in blues piano playing).
While I was doing the work, I spent a lot of time studying the Damascus Community. It’s fascinating because it was developed in the 1890s as a community marketed for black smallholders– the guy who owned it and sold off lots sold “contracts for a deed” to residents, and gave the local black Baptist church a lot to build their church. Johnson’s stepfather, Charles Dodds, bought in the neighborhood, and his in-laws lived down the street.
He was prosperous, for the day and for a black man. Somewhere along the way, before 1910, something bad happened– he lost his house, and you can see in tax and other records things go wrong for him. There are rumors of disputes with a white neighbor just west of Damascus Community, but all that can be seen in the remaining documentary record is that he’d lost his property by roughly 1910. And his wife (but not Dodds) shows up on the 1910 census in another part of town. Johnson– whose father was not the man married to his mother– was born at that time, probably (as noted in the Clarion Ledger story) about 1911.
So based on property and other records, I’m pretty certain that Dodds’s house is not Robert Johnson’s birthplace, and can document my conclusions.
Another interesting detail: The place where that house was located was taken by eminent domain when I-55 was run near Hazelhurst. It was located basically on the bank along the northbound on-ramp for the Hazelhust exit of I-55; when that highway was run through, someone moved the house west of I-55.
If anyone wants more details about all this, I’ve got the basic documents. I’ve only been able to publish some of this research so far. I’m going to forward this post to some of my friends who are blues scholars to see if they have comments.
Hey! Great to find your blog! I’ll be spending time (or is that wasting time?) reading a LOT of it. I found the “Birthplace of RJ” piece interesting. I’ve had just about ENUF of RJ, personally. (Although my current SO, Tlingit Native from Sitka, AK, had never heard of Johnson — he’s into classical music — but was fascinated by “terraplane Blues” & “32-20″ being he’s an old vehicle fan and a former hunter.
I’m pondering starting a blog, too — Primarily to post old LB articles that I wrote; the stuff I wrote for the Anchorage Daily News entertainment section; old photos (if I can get prints from Jim O’Neal), etc.
Stay in touch! Regards, Atomic Mama
When were you writing for the Anchorage Daily News? I read it daily in 1990 while living there a few months before going to sea.
Robert Johnson Home; Robert Johnson House, Copiah County Office of Cultural Affairs
As the Director of the Copiah County Office of Cultural Affairs, I was careful to go through all evidence that supports the claim that this is where Robert Johnson was born. I went through the usual courthouserecords and studied the Damascus area. My PhD is in Humanities from the University of Texas. I performed the necessary research before I made the claim that this is Robert Johnson’s birthplace. The evidence indicates that Julia was living in the house with several of her children at the last census before Robert’s birth. The deciding factor, for me and others, was a letter from Johnson’s half-sister. In this letter, there are descriptions of the area where the house was located and little known facts about Dodd’s contribution to the building of the house that assure the authenticity of this as the birthplace. This letter, along with the other supporting courthouse documents is a solid enough body of evidence to have had the house placed on the “Endangered List” for historical places by Mississippi in 2004 and the authenticity of this as the home is supported by the Mississippi Development Authority as the house where Robert Johnson was born.
Robert Johnson was probably born in 1911. In the “last census before his birth”– 1910– his mother was living somewhere else. In 1900, she was living in the house in Damascus Community.
In 1910, when the census workers found her living somewhere else, she did not have a baby named Robert.
If the letter is all that you have– I’d like to see what it actually says– I’d discount it, because I think it clear that both Johnson’s mother and her husband were gone from the area in 1910 and he was born thereafter. This was a period when his family was severely disrupted, and apparently, his half-sibblings not all in one place. Documents I’ve seen suggest they had the house in 1908-09, and lost it by 1910, the year before he was born. What small children would remember about 1910 and 1911 when writing about it in the 1970s or 1980s does not seem as reliable as contemporaneous documents.