In the 1830s, William Johnson moved his family to a new plantation four miles further up the Mississippi River, in Pointe à la Hache, Louisiana.

By 1820, Captain William Johnson had also begun purchasing property on the West side of Manhattan and had gone into the distillery and sugar refining business in New York.

[7] The Johnson & Lazarus distillery at 16th Street was the subject of a famous muckraking exposé by Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1858.

[8] Distilleries in 19th century New York had to dispose of the tons of organic waste they generated, and their solution was to feed the still hot mash to hundreds of sick old cows and then sell the milk.

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper staked out Johnson's mansion at 21st and Broadway, and reported that in the midst of the investigation, Tuomey was observed making late night visits.

The Board of Health exonerated the distillers, but public outcry led to the passage of the first food safety laws in the form of milk regulations in 1862.

[9] In 1863 Johnson took a leading part in the "Conservative Unionists", a group of businessmen with interests in the South who wanted occupied Louisiana let back into the Union with her 1852 constitution intact.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which handed down a decision in 1876 against Johnson, pointing out that his holdings were in conquered territory during a time of war, and that it would be very hard to engage in warfare if the enemy could sue for damages.

"Johnson v. Dow" became a hot topic of debate during the heated Tilden-Hayes Presidential election of 1876, as the country tried to figure out the confusing nature of the status of the defeated Confederate states.

After the inspectors had left, the overseer is said to have "harangued the Negroes, boasted of his unlimited power over them," and "used seditious and insulting language" towards the Union.

[12] This report presents a very different picture from the one that appeared in Johnson's New York Times obituary and in the official history of the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank, which claimed that he had freed his slaves prior to the Emancipation Proclamation.

[13] In 1874 Johnson retired from business in New York and moved to New Orleans, where he had a new Italianate mansion built in the Garden District at 2343 Prytania Street.

The family also had an estate in East Islip, on the South Shore of Long Island, NY, which is where Johnson died on November 3, 1892.

[15] Since 1997 the site of the Johnson & Lazarus distillery at 16th Street and Ninth Avenue, later the factory of National Biscuit Company, has been home to Chelsea Market.