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This tract of virgin timberland was mapped and carved into huge estates between Tidewater Virginia and the Blue Ridge with help from a young surveyor named George Washington. Part of this Fairfax Proprietary, as it was known then, is Rappahannock County and Johnson will trace many of the local deeds on record today back to Lord Fairfax.
Born and raised in Rappahannock, Johnson's forebearers formerly held title to Red Oak Mountain in Woodville. His family married into the Wood family who owned the Sperryville farm where Ned and his wife Elisabeth now reside. A graduate of Virginia Military Institute with a degree in civil engineering, Johnson worked for the Pennsylvania railroad as a right-of-way engineer before returning to the county in 1936 to farm. Committed to the future of agriculture in Rappahannock, Johnson founded the Rappahannock Apple Growers Cooperative and helped start both the cold storage cooperative and old Sperryville apple juice plant. In addition to raising apples and serving as a director of the Shenandoah Apple Processing Cooperative in Winchester, Johnson breeds registered black Angus cattle. His 750 acre Sperryville farm comprises the county’s first, and to date only, agricultural and forestal district. The public is invited to attend the Historical Society’s program which will
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