[7][8][9][10] A person named John W. Gragg Sr. wrote a will, dated February 8, 1842, which was proven November 1842 in Lincoln County, Tennessee.

[12] On November 29, 1842, Andrew Johnson bought his first slave, a boy named Sam, for US$541 (equivalent to about $17,080 in 2023), from Elim Carter.

[14] On January 2, 1843, Andrew Johnson bought Dolly, "aged about nineteen years", from John W. Gragg for US$500 (equivalent to about $16,350 in 2023).

"[17] The bill of sale for Dolly is held in the collection of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and reads as follows:[2][c] I, John W. Gragg ... have this day sold and do hereby convey to Andrew Johnson his heirs and assigns for the sum of Five Hundred Dollars to me paid a Negro Girl Slave named Dolly: aged about Nineteen years, I warrant the Title to Said Slave to the Said Andrew Johnson his heirs and assigns against the lawful claims of all persons, and I also warrant her to be sound healthy sensible and Slave for life ...Historian Brenda Wineapple wrote of the transaction: Dolly recalled that she'd been for sale at auction when it was she who spotted Johnson.

[1] In March 1846, when she was between 16 and 21 years old, Dolly Johnson became a mother herself with the birth of her daughter Lucy Elizabeth, called Liz or Lizzie.

[24] The father of Liz and Florence was never named in any known historical document, and the paternity of Dolly Johnson's children remains officially unknown.

The four-year-old and two-year-old female mulatto children listed are believed to be Liz and Florence, and the 20-year-old male would be Sam.

[14] In 1851, Andrew Johnson bought an eight-room, three-floor brick house in Greeneville, Tennessee, which would be his home base for the remainder of his life, and where Dolly would have worked.

[30] According to Jesse J. Holland in The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House, this child received two Johnson family names.

[34] In June and July 1860, census workers assembled the slave schedules for Greene County, Tennessee.

[36] The apparent quality of Dolly's gown may reflect that Andrew Johnson, a tailor by profession, was "always impeccably dressed"[37] and widely known for the "remarkably neat appearance of his apparel".

In 1863, according to University of Virginia history professor Elizabeth R. Varon:[40]Fearing that emancipation by federal edict would alienate Tennessee's slaveholding Unionists, Johnson urged that the state be exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, so he could promote the issue from the inside: in August 1863, Johnson freed his own slaves, seeking to set an example for his fellow Tennesseans.

[29][20] The exact number of people enslaved by Johnson during his lifetime remains "surprisingly difficult to determine".

[14] Most of the family moved to Washington, D.C., when Andrew Johnson became president following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, although Dolly and William, aged seven, reportedly remained in East Tennessee.

[45] Of this era, Sarah Stover, older sister of Andrew Johnson Stover, wrote in her diary later in life, "my mind wanders back to the days when we children used to have a black mama as well as our own dear mama, but thank God the race is free.

[14] In an 1866 meeting with Frederick Douglass and other African-American leaders about the place of the freedmen in Johnson's version of Reconstruction, "Johnson made insensitive statements regarding slavery as a practice, telling the group: 'I might say, however, that practically, so far as my connection with slaves has gone, I have been their slave instead of their being mine.

[1] Her work was listed as keeping house, and while she was illiterate, her daughter Florence could read and write, and her son William was attending school.

[17] A contemporary neurologist credited William with astute observation skills and his clinically valuable description of Johnson experiencing "one of the earliest known cases" of the medical condition asomatognosia.

"[17] By 1880, 21-year-old William had moved out of his mother's house, and at the time of the decennial federal census was living with the family of his older sister Liz Johnson Forby.

[53] Dolly's 14-year-old grandson, Tillman Forby, is dually enumerated in his parents' household and as a domestic servant in the home of Andrew Johnson's granddaughter, Lillie Stover Maloney.

The article appeared on December 2, 1886, in the New York Mail and was reprinted 14 days later in the Iowa State Register.

A single room, 14 ft (4.3 m) by 20 ft (6.1 m) feet, scarcely a step from the sidewalk, on a by-street, old and dilapidated, a muddy branch near, a shackling fence without a gate, two planks nailed from post to post across the opening near the ground ... a low doorway passed, the writer stood within the walls, upon a rough, pieced-up floor of wide plank, badly worn and wearing many other marks of age.

Two small windows, with glass panes and solid board shutters hanging from the outside, lighted the room, which is furnished with two beds, some chairs, and sundry household articles, the property of the present occupant, Aunt Dolly Johnson, a former slave of the late President.

The house was given to her by her late mistress, Mrs. Johnson, who died subsequently to her husband, and is occupied by herself and her family as a home.

She will kindly give each tourist a splinter from some portion of the house where old master wielded his needle, thimble and shears, while his mind roamed in greater fields.

It is her delight to talk of him and his family in the olden days, and show a large photograph which hangs upon her walls.