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St. Elmo's founder, Col. A. M. Johnson, was a Hall County, Georgia native, the son of Col. Ephraim Malone Johnson of Gainsville. In Chattanooga, prior to the Civil War, A. M. Johnson was superintendent of the Wills Valley Railroad, completed at the time from the city to Trenton, Georgia.
During the war, just before the Battle of Chickamauga, he was ordered south to the Macon & Brunswick Railroad, and  later
St. Elmo’s begin-nings occurred just af-ter the close of military occupation when in 1866 a partial division was made in the vast James A. Whiteside es-tate,  leaving Col. John-
A farm and summer home was developed alongside the Lookout Mountain Turnpike, then the only road from Chattanooga to the top of the mountain.  The in-herited land tract at the mountain’s foot was subsequently added upon and subdivided into one-acre house lots.
Notwithstanding the Johnsons’ success and prominence, they were not without tragedy and 
The cottage next door at 4301 Alabama Avenue, home of son James Whiteside Johnson, is this work’s primary subject matter, however.  It also was the scene of both successes and losses.
This study brings forward in-sights and images of the family and the suburb’s his-tory.  The area im-mediately north of the Johnsons' subdivision, long known     as      the
Some of the study’s insights were long ago shared with the writer by Mrs. Penelope Allen, daughter of James Whiteside Johnson.  Anyone well researched in Tennessee history or genealogy would be acquainted with the name of Mrs. Allen.  She led in   the   collection   and   preservation of early Tennessee state records dur-
It was her home that is this subject-matter; her shared know-ledge that helps enlight-en it, and her collection of photographs helping to  il-lustrate it.



Col.
A. M.
Johnson


Wills Valley
Railroad
Mrs.
John-
son's
1876
picnic
party at Umbrel-
la Rock, Lookout Point,
then
owned
by the White-
side
estate
The
Johnsons'
St. Elmo
mansion,
"Thankful
Place"
St. Elmo, 1893
Mrs. Nell
Johnson Allen
Mrs. Allen traveling
with
husband
and
friends
Tennessee River Valley
at Chattanooga
from
Lookout Point.
Oil on canvas
by Charles Rousse,
1895.
Johnson family collection

THIS is a history of a house in the Chattanooga, Ten-nessee historic district, St. Elmo.  Of wider interest, it is a visual and textual study of some of the house’s connec-tions, through the residing family, to the city’s and to the suburb’s early development.  As pointed out in the
worked on the Atlanta & West Point line.  In 1865 he ran the Wills Valley locomotive back to Chattanooga and, finding his home obliterated, drove it to Trenton where he, his wife, children, and others camped in box cars, as they had frequently done during the conflict.
son’s wife, Thankful Whiteside Johnson, tracts of land on the eastern slopes and foot of Lookout Mountain.
loss.  One  of   their   first grievous losses in St. Elmo was the illness and untimely death of Mrs. Johnson in 1890, just three years after the completion of the chateauesque mansion, “Thankful Place,” that had been built for her.  The last loss at that landmark residence was its destruction by fire in 1956.

“Crossroads” before the Civil War, was in the 1860s and ‘70s called “Way House.”  Here is shown why, and why Col. Johnson complained of its less than “savory” elements at the time he came to develop his farm, “Eastside.”
The Johnsons invested in and worked for the suc-cess of the neighborhood – Chattanooga’s first suburb – donating land, money, and time to the building of its first churches, district hall, and school.  St. Elmo, with its new roads, water works, electric car line, and “pretty residences,” enjoyed city-wide prestige by the early 1890s.
ing the 1930s and ‘40s, and was Tennessee state historian in the National Association of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a board member in the Tennessee Historical Society, the Tennessee Historical Commission, the Hamilton County Historical Com-mission, and the Chattanooga Area Historical Society..
Much of the Allen and Johnson collections of the family, the house, the mansion, and the suburb has never, or rarely, been published.  A section of pictures records some of Mrs. Allen’s many southern travels and historically related work between 1911 and the mid-1930s. 
Johnson House of St. Elmo
in memory of
WILLIAM JOSEPH BURNETTE
1918 - 2007
“Introduction,”  the house may now be a relatively modest, somewhat needy dwelling, “but it does have connections – connections to mansions – connections to founders and to leaders.”

St. Elmo‘s precursor, Eastside, was bound at the foot of Lookout Mountain between present-day Old Mountain Road and Ochs High-way, and subsequently extended to W. 41st Street, then W. 45th Street.  Col. Johnson’s subdivision finally extended from north of W. 40th Street south to W. 47th Street, and from the foot of Lookout Mountain east to Hawkins Ridge running parallel with the mountain. It was the center of the Twentieth District,
formed in 1891, bound from the Old Mountain Road south to the Georgia Stateline. 
Johnson House features an analysis of the local places mentioned in the antebellum romance, St. Elmo, where novelist Augusta Evans set her 1850s opening scenes.  The famous story that opened at the foot of Lookout Mountain in today’s suburb of the same name continued in Georgia; the latter setting was apparently inspired by Barnsley Manor at Woodlands, near Adairsville.
The Cherokee crossroads, the Forest Hill Cemetery, the formation of the Twentieth District are viewed.  Also included are little known details as, for example, the summer cottage yet in existence that Col. Johnson built and lived in until the family’s mansion was completed in 1887.  It was at that residential cottage that he renamed the Eastside subdivision, St. Elmo.
This is an illustrated history, laid out with artistry, that presents – by focusing on the house of one of the old suburb’s leading families – a warm look at that family and at an early St. Elmo.
Formal tableware once in the Johnsons' St. Elmo Thankful Place.  Plate, 10 & 1/2 inches di-ameter, hard paste porcelain, turquoise scalloped edge, gold leaf, wild roses and grass motif, unmarked, circa 1860.  Most probably descended from either the Whiteside or the Johnson estate.    Johnson family collection      
Stained glass window from the Johnsons' Thankful Place dining room, donated to the building of Thank-ful Me-morial Episcopal Church
Johnson family at St. Elmo, 1893
Back row, standing, left to right, James Whiteside Johnson, Anna Johnson Betts, Jack S. Betts, Ephriam Foster Johnson, Douglas Everett, Robert N. Philips, (front, seated with children) Sue Cleage Johnson, Raymond Johnson, Penelope Johnson, Thankful Johnson, Col. A. M. Johnson, Minnie Everett (on his knee), Thankful Everett, Malone Everett, Fannie Johnson Everett, and Helen Johnson Philips.