Lycurgus Johnson

Lycurgus Johnson (1818–1876) was an American cotton planter and large slaveholder in the Arkansas Delta during the antebellum years.

[1][2] His father Joel Johnson was also from Scott County and part of a powerful and influential family there.

Like many other planters, his father acquired property in the Deep South, in his case, along the shores of Lake Chicot in the Arkansas Delta.

[1] Lycurgus's paternal grandfather, Robert Johnson, was a surveyor in Kentucky, which had put him in a good position to identify property to claim under land grants.

[1] Another uncle, Benjamin Johnson, was appointed as a United States federal judge in Arkansas.

He was part of a wave of migration by planters to the Deep South, following Indian Removal and opening of lands for European-American acquisition.

[1][2] They brought with them, or purchased through the domestic slave trade a total of nearly one million enslaved African Americans, resulting in dramatic demographic changes in the territory.

[2] One of his daughters, Mary, married Isaac Worthington, from a planter family with property in Washington County, Mississippi.

[1] The big house and five acres have been preserved as Lakeport Plantation, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[2] During the war, he held fundraisers for the Confederate States Army at Lakeport Plantation, some of which were attended by the Worthington planter family.