The Homestead Grounds

The Homestead Grounds. Andrew Johnson National Historic Site. , There are no written records describing the Homestead grounds as Andrew Johnson knew them from 1869 until 1875. The earliest descriptions of the landscape during that period come from the oral accounts of Andrew Johnson’s descendants twenty-five years after his death., A reporter for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper describes the Homestead grounds in 1865 before the Johnsons moved back in as follows: “As you pass along the pavement on Main Street, by looking into the lot you see several young apple trees, and in the spaces between them are potatoes growing. In the rear of the kitchen stands a small aspen shade-tree, and down there in the lower end of the lot is a grape vine, trained upon a trellis forming a pleasant bower. Scattered over the lot are a number of rose, currant, and gooseberry bushes. At the lower end of the lot and just outside stand two large weeping willows, and under their shade is a very beautiful spring . . . . ”, Accordingly to family tradition, the weeping willow trees referred to in the 1865 article were planted by Andrew Johnson in the early 1850s. The trees originated from a cutting given to Johnson by Captain William Francis Lynch, U.S. Navy. Captain Lynch acquired the cutting from a willow tree near the grave of Napoleon, on the Island of St. Helena. The weeping willow trees that you see today are all descendants of those planted by Andrew Johnson.