1829 or 1830 Cannon Hearne and myself entered into partnership, dealing in horses, mules and hogs to the Georgia market. That fall we took 2000 hogs , weighing about 300 pounds gross, costing $2 per 100 pounds, to the Southern market, both of us going on the trip, which was a long one attended with many hardships. We wnet over the Cumberland mountains to Athens and Cleveland, Tenn. From there over the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, by the old Federal road to Athens, Ga. Thence to Madison, Macon; Milledgeville and Augusta. All this trip was made on foot, as there were no railroads in that day, and it took about sixty days to reach the Southern market, as the hogs were very fat and we had to travel slow. Altogether it took about three months to sell out and finish the trip home. Mr. Hearne having a family and comfortable home and being a good farmer, preferred to stay at home rather than undergo the many hardships of another such trip. In all of our business relations they were of the most pleasant kind, and we never had a word of difference in any of our business settlements. Mr. Hearne was a good, kind, fair and honest gentleman, and I can also say a Christian gentleman. I have never known his superior in all these qualities in my long and eventful life, being thrown with more people and of all characters of persons in that time than usually falls to the lot of man. I am now past my four-score and ten, and almost blind, but vigorous otherwise for one of my years, and take a ride out and down into town every pretty day, and enjoy talking with my friends at the hotel on the current events of the day."

Mr. Johnson being one of my father's staunchest friends and so intimately associated with him for ten years before his death, I deem a brief notice of Col. Johnson appropriate here. He was born and reared in Montgomery Co., Ky., his father being a plain and substantial farmer. He obtained a good education for that early day at the log school houses in the country, and before he was grown his parents let him start out for himself at his own request. He hired himself to a neighboring farmer to work on the farm, and very soon began trading in stock, exhibiting remarkably good judgment, so that he did not lack for endorsers and credit. In a few years he was able and did buy the farm of his first employer, but continued on

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Thanks to Catherine Bradford for transcribing this page.