Qualla: Governor Joseph Johnson House

Governor Joseph Johnson House: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Joseph Johnson is the only governor of Virginia who ever came from west of the Alleghenies. The fact is not common knowledge even in West Virginia, but in the geography of nineteenth-century Virginia politics it was extraordinary. The Tidewater and Piedmont gentry had dominated Virginia government since the colony's founding, and they did not consider the rough mountain country to the west to be a serious source of statewide leaders. Johnson - born in New York in 1785, raised in Bridgeport in then-Virginia, a self-educated lawyer and longtime member of the Virginia General Assembly - broke that pattern. He served as governor from 1852 to 1856. His house on a half-acre lot in Bridgeport, built in 1818 when he was a junior assemblyman and remodeled in the Italianate style around 1840, still stands at the intersection of Johnson Avenue and Oakdale Avenue - both streets named for the house and its inhabitant.

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Governor Joseph Johnson House: The Frontier Politician

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Joseph Johnson's biography reads like a textbook example of upward mobility on the early American frontier. He was born in Orange County, New York, in 1785, and his family moved to what is now Harrison County, Virginia, in 1801, when he was about fifteen years old. He grew up on ...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Governor Joseph Johnson House: Building Oakdale

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Johnson built the house in 1818, when he was 33 and serving in the General Assembly. The original structure was a two-story frame residence with clapboard siding, a central corbelled chimney, and a cut-stone foundation laid by master stonemasons of the period. It was a substantia...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Governor Joseph Johnson House: The Italianate Remodel

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Around 1840 - when Johnson was in his mid-fifties and at the height of his congressional career - he had the house remodeled in the Italianate style that had become fashionable in American architecture by mid-century. The remodel added a middle-of-bay rear chimney, updated window...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Governor Joseph Johnson House: Governor of Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Johnson's election as governor in 1852 was the result of a decade of slow political change in Virginia. The Virginia Constitution of 1851 had broadened the franchise and reapportioned the legislature to give the western counties more representation than they had previously held. ...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Governor Joseph Johnson House: What Remains

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. The Governor Joseph Johnson House - Oakdale - was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It still stands on its original half-acre lot in Bridgeport, bordered now by streets that record its history: Johnson Avenue on the north, Oakdale Avenue on the west, Mapl...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0