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Page 13 · column 1 of 8 · from the scan, no model involved
bui as ne siooa tor tne hangman's noose to tighten around his neck, James Johnson insisted that his life had been sworn away by prejudice and ill will on the part of his enemies.
Instead of blurting out a last confession to settle his worldly accounts as he waited for the trap to spring, Johnson named the witnesses he accused of lying—names that are ommitted from the record kept by the reporting attorney. But that long ago member of the bar collected the rest of the story for a curious public.
On file at the county Historical Society, its pages now wrinkled and yellowed by age, the little booklet presents the tale of what Judge John Tyler described as the aftermath of “an adulterous and guilty passion which, like a tornado, has blasted in its course the reputation of a deluded female, wrecked her peace and happiness forever, and has spread death, desolation and destruction."
Well-To-Do Fenner
James Johnson came from an honorable and highly thought of family of well-to-do Rappahannock farmers. He was 36 years old at the time of his trial but was described as looking much younger.
Five-foot, ten inches tall with coal black hair and eyes, heavily whiskered and mustached, he had a ruddy complexion “and everything indicative of a sanguine, bilious temperament." The laywer who wrote the account noted that Johnson looked "anything else but the black hearted, remorseless villain which he has proven to be."
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