John "Jack" Johnson traveled to several states and searched plantations to bring his separated children home after the Civil War. Jack found and gathered 9 of his 10 children that were enslaved. He couldn't locate one child named Rufus. He never stopped looking for his child till his dying day. His son Henry Johnson continued to search as well after Jack's death.

For over a hundred and fifty years the family gave oral history about Rufus Johnson. Many thought it to be folklore. Many believed. Many were saddened by the story. I was one of the the descendants filled with sorrow and determined to find what happened to Rufus. I have found documentation that one of our family's slaveowners died in 1856 and that Rufus was distributed after the estate was probated in a Greene County, Alabama court. He and other family members were nothing more than a piece of property listed with the mules and horses.

On New Year's Eve, December 31, 1856, Rufus was carried away from the Port of New Orleans to the Port of Galveston on the steamship Atlantic. Rufus was taken with two other slaves to Cuthbert Lewis Price's plantation on Price's Mountain in Anderson County, Palestine, Texas.

On New Year's Day 1857, ten year old Rufus awoke without his family. He never saw them again. He never experienced their love again.

We are searching for the possible descendants of Rufus to unite the family for Jack Johnson.

Rufus : Never Forgotten. Always Loved.