Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Abisha Johnson of Knott, Kentucky
On a narrow shelf of land along Caney Creek in Knott County, Kentucky, a hillside campus climbs toward the trees. Students hurry past the Founder’s Shack on their way to class, and visitors read a historical marker that tells how Alice Lloyd and June Buchanan built a work college in this valley. Behind that story stands another figure, one who does not have a statue or a college named in his honor, but whose land and insistence on schooling helped set the whole experiment in motion.
His name was Abisha Johnson. For more than a century his story has moved between courthouse books, family cemeteries, oral tradition, and institutional memory. He appears as a farmer in census schedules, as a “mountain patriarch” in donor literature, and as the “Summonser” in local legend who walked out of Caney Creek to ask a stranger from Boston to teach his children.
This piece follows Abisha from Johnson family roots on Beaver and Caney Creeks to the 1917 land deal that brought Alice Lloyd to Pippa Passes, then into the later lives and memories that still tie his name to the college built on his former farm.
A Johnson name that repeats across the creek
To understand the Abisha who dealt with Alice Lloyd, it helps to see that his was not a one off name. In the Floyd and Knott County records of the nineteenth century, “Abisha” turns up again and again among Johnson men who settled along Otter, Beaver, and Caney Creeks.
FamilySearch and cemetery records point to an older Abisha Johnson, born about 1839, who lived in what was then Floyd County and later became part of Knott County. He died in 1898 and was buried in Jimmy Slone Cemetery above Pippa Passes, a small graveyard that holds many Johnson and Slone kin.
At least one headstone in that cemetery identifies PVT Abisha Johnson, a Confederate veteran of Company E, 13th Kentucky Cavalry, giving him a military rank and linking him to the larger story of Civil War service from the Big Sandy and Upper Kentucky River country. In family reminiscences shared on genealogy forums, his descendants still talk about visiting his grave near Pippa Passes and tracing the connection between mountain farms and cavalry units that rode out of these creeks.
Genealogical compilations deepen the picture. Trees built from census and marriage records show this older Abisha married to Nancy Jane Hammonds, with children including Sarah and Mahala Johnson. Sarah married John C. Slone and Mahala married Hardin Slone, knitting the Johnsons into one of the largest Slone networks on Beaver and Caney.
By the twentieth century, Johnson names appear all through the burial records of J. P. Slone and Jimmy Slone cemeteries. Death certificates from the 1910s and 1920s list fathers named Abisha, with burial at J. P. Slone, reminding us that even when the given name disappears from baby lists, it lingers in the “father” line of younger Johnsons who were adults when the college grew up on Caney.
Into that web of kinship and landholding comes the younger man who would deal directly with Alice Lloyd.
Abisha and Mary Slone on Caney Creek
The Abisha most closely tied to the founding of the Caney Creek Community Center was born in Knott County in 1873. Find a Grave’s memorial for “Abisha Johnson” gives his birth year as 1873 and his death on March 28, 1935, with burial in J. P. Slone Cemetery at Pippa Passes. The dates match the “mountain patriarch” in campus lore, and the cemetery location fits with Johnson and Slone intermarriage on Caney and Beaver Creeks.
A FamilySearch profile for Mary Slone, born in the 1870s and raised in the Beaver and Caney Creek country, lists her marriage on August 28, 1894, to “Abisha Johnson.” It places the couple in Knott County and names children that line up with later cemetery markers and family memories, including Nancy Evaline, Rachel, Hannah Lizzie, and several others who survived into the school’s early years.
Federal census schedules from 1900 and 1910 show Johnson households along Caney Creek and nearby branches, with Abisha and Mary at the center of a large, multigenerational family. Compiled transcripts on volunteer sites like USGenWeb list Johnsons and Slones clustered together along the creek, while genealogies on Yeahpot and related pages trace how daughters and sons married back into Slone, Caudill, and related lines.
By the time Alice Lloyd arrived in Knott County, then, Abisha and Mary were not isolated figures. They were part of an extended kin network that had already tied the Johnson name to land, churches, and cemeteries from Beaver Creek up into the narrow valley that would become Pippa Passes. That network matters because it helps explain why a local farmer approaching an outsider for a school was not acting only for himself but for a whole cluster of related households.
A farmer walks over the ridge
The story of how Abisha and Alice met has been told many times, and the details change slightly with each retelling. The core, though, stays the same.
Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd came to Knott County in 1916, settling first at Ivis, where she and her mother, Ella Geddes, began offering basic medical care, classes, and agricultural advice under the name Ivis Community Center. Within a year she had made herself just visible enough in local newspapers and missionary networks that her work drew attention from both mountain families and outside donors.
During that first winter, according to the Kentucky Historical Society’s ExploreKYHistory entry for Alice Lloyd College, she and her mother were visited by “Abisha Johnson, who lived on nearby Caney Creek with his family of nine.” The marker’s interpretive text explains that he urged her to move deeper into the hills so she could educate his children, offering land and support if she would come.
Alice Lloyd College’s own institutional history, written for prospective students and donors, repeats the same scene. “In 1917, Mrs. Lloyd, accompanied by her mother, moved to Caney Creek at the behest of local resident Abisha Johnson, who offered her land on which to build a school.” A later campus news feature marking the ninety fifth anniversary of the Caney Creek Community Center adds that he wanted Lloyd to teach his children and that he provided both land and a cabin for the work to begin.
Other retellings push the story further toward legend. An evaluation of science education in Knott County prepared for the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative tells readers that “legend has it that a mountain patriarch, Abisha Johnson” walked twelve miles barefoot through sleet and rain to offer the Lloyds a piece of land on Caney Creek. A Kentucky Humanities essay on portraying Alice Lloyd on the Chautauqua circuit describes him as the man who arrived with a vision from God and a promise: if she would educate his “house full” of children, he would build her a shack and give her land.
Kentucky Living, Kentucky Monthly, philanthropy profiles, and even movie scripts all follow the same structure. A Boston writer with fragile health comes to the mountains to recover, begins modest community work, and is then approached by a local farmer, usually identified as Abisha Johnson, who believes she is the answer to his prayers for education on Caney Creek. He offers land in exchange for schooling, and the Caney Creek Community Center is born.
The historical marker at the Founder’s Shack in Pippa Passes pulls those threads together in a single sentence by identifying the “Summonser” in early campus folklore as Abisha himself, the one who “summoned” Mrs. Lloyd to Caney Creek and offered her land for a school.
Deeds, patents, and the question of “donated” land
Institutional histories and magazine features tend to say that Abisha “donated” land to Alice Lloyd. On the ground, the story is more complicated.
Indexes of Kentucky land grants include an entry for an earlier Abisha Johnson as a patentee on Otter Creek in what was then Floyd County, part of a state system that awarded parcels to settlers and veterans. Those grants help explain how Johnson families first gained legal title in the region that later fed into Knott County, though they predate the specific Caney Creek tract Alice Lloyd would use.
For the twentieth century, researchers like P. David Searles, writing in his book A College for Appalachia and in an article for the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, have gone back to the Knott County deed books. Drawing on the records in Hindman and on the Alice Lloyd–Caney Creek Community Center Papers at the University of Kentucky, Searles reconstructs a 1917 transaction in which Abisha and Mary Johnson transferred about fifty acres on Caney Creek to the Caney Creek Community Center.
Later commentators usually summarize that transaction as a gift. A 2021 Alice Lloyd College article about student Evan Caudill, described as Abisha’s great great great nephew, says simply that “in 1917, Abisha Johnson donated land to Mrs. Lloyd so she could teach his children,” and notes that the college today still sits on that land and educates his descendants.
The legal language of the deed, which survives in the Knott County clerk’s office, matters for historians because it shows exactly how ownership moved from the Johnsons to the Caney Creek Community Center and what promises, if any, were written down about schooling for their children. Whether the land was technically sold or given, whether money changed hands or only symbolic consideration, and how the Johnson family thought about the transaction are all questions that sit just under the polished phrase “donated land.”
What is clear is that after 1917 the little institution that would become Alice Lloyd College and the June Buchanan School grew up on a wedge of bottomland and hillside that had been Johnson family ground. The stonework at the entrance, the Founder’s Shack, Cushing Hall, and the classroom buildings that now line Caney Creek Road all occupy a landscape shaped by one family’s decision to tie its future to an outsider’s school.
Family memory on Pippa Passes
If institutional histories center Alice, donor literature centers the school, and state markers center the community, family memory keeps Abisha himself at the front of the picture.
In online genealogy groups like “Kentucky Ancestors,” descendants share a photograph of an older man seated in front of a simple frame building, captioned, “This man sitting is Abisha Johnson of Knott County Kentucky, lived on Pippa passes, he is my great grandfather, he used to own all the land….” The comments thread that follows reads like an informal footnote to every formal history. Relatives trade stories about where exactly his house stood in relation to the present campus, about walking through the cemeteries where he and Mary are buried, and about how the family understood the transfer of land to the school.
Another post in the same circle, this time from a different descendant, shows a photograph from Jimmy Slone Cemetery and notes that “my great great great grandfather Abisha Johnson was in the same regiment,” referring back to the older Confederate veteran whose stone still stands on the hillside above the creek. Together those fragments sketch a multigenerational memory of two Abishas, one a Civil War soldier and one a farmer who dealt with a reformer from Boston.
Closer to the campus itself, the Alice Lloyd College article on Evan Caudill offers a quiet reminder that the family line did not end with that 1917 deed. Evan, a biology major from Pippa Passes, is described as the great great great nephew of Abisha. The piece notes that he graduated from the June Buchanan School, chose to stay for college, and felt a connection to a place that sits on his ancestor’s land.
In that sense, the campus is both a symbol of outside intervention and a family place. Students from across the Appalachian region come and go, but some of the young people walking the brick paths between Cushing Hall and the Perry Campus Center are Johnson and Slone descendants who grew up within sight of the same ridges their ancestor crossed to ask for a teacher.
Legend, critique, and the figure of the “mountain patriarch”
Abisha’s story has never been told only one way. Even in sympathetic accounts, he serves as a kind of hinge between what the college wanted to say about itself and what mountain families wanted to say about their own initiative.
Writers critical of mission schools and settlement work in Appalachia have noticed how the figure of a “mountain patriarch” like Abisha appears in fundraising stories. In the collection Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, for example, one essay uses his approach to Lloyd as an illustration of local desire for schooling within a structure where outside reformers and donors still held most of the power.
The Inverness Research evaluation of Knott County schools, while sympathetic to the college, steps back enough to call the story “legend” and to emphasize how often it is retold in community meetings and teacher workshops. A critical blog essay reproducing early Caney Creek promotional literature notes that Abisha’s name and image were often wrapped in language about “Indian and hillbilly civilization,” part of a racialized narrative that portrayed the mountains as both noble and backward in order to raise money.
None of that erases the basic fact that a local man went to an outsider and asked for a school. Instead it suggests that the story has always carried more than one meaning at once. For the Johnsons and their neighbors, it was a story about wanting education for children and grandchildren and being willing to barter land for it. For Lloyd and her donors, it became proof that “the leaders are here,” ready and waiting for the right kind of schooling. For later critics, it is evidence of how easily mountain initiative could be folded into narratives that emphasized poverty and backwardness in order to attract support.
Abisha stands at the center of those overlapping interpretations.
Following Abisha through the records
For researchers and family historians, tracing Abisha’s life means moving back and forth between public records, institutional archives, and local memory.
Census schedules for Floyd and Knott Counties from 1850 through 1930 show Johnson households climbing the creeks, with recurring names, ages, and occupations that let us track how the family shifted from older farms on Beaver and Otter to the Caney Creek bottom where the college now stands. Vital records and cemetery surveys document births, marriages, and deaths, from the older Confederate veteran in Jimmy Slone Cemetery to the younger Abisha and Mary in J. P. Slone Cemetery and their children buried nearby.
The deed that transferred fifty acres to the Caney Creek Community Center survives in the Knott County courthouse. Land grant indexes in Frankfort tie the Johnson name to earlier patents on Otter Creek. Together those records make it possible to map not just one transaction but the long arc of how a family’s holdings turned into a campus.
Institutional sources add another layer. Alice Lloyd’s unpublished manuscript “History of the Caney Creek Community Center,” held in the Alice Lloyd College archives at McGaw Library, includes her own version of meeting Abisha and moving into the shack he built for her on his land. Newsletters of the Caney Creek Community Center from the 1920s through the 1950s, preserved in donor collections like the Kansas City Browning Society files, show how often his name surfaced in donor stories during the school’s first decades.
Oral histories recorded through the Appalachian Oral History Project and in the Appalachian Oral History Collection at Alice Lloyd College capture Johnson and Slone descendants talking about the founding of the school, the work program, and the sense of pride they took in knowing that a relative had helped bring the college to Caney.
Finally, family photographs and social media posts fill in the human details that formal archives sometimes overlook. A snapshot shared in a Facebook group, a caption about “owning all the land,” or a comment about walking up to Jimmy Slone Cemetery to decorate the graves each Memorial Day are all small but powerful pieces of the larger story.
A farmer at the edge of a campus
Today it is easy to tell the story of Caney Creek by following institutional milestones. Organize the community center in 1917. Open Caney Junior College in 1923. Rename it Alice Lloyd College in 1962. That sequence shows how a small mountain experiment turned into a lasting institution.
Placing Abisha Johnson at the center shifts the angle. It asks us to see the campus as a particular farm along a particular creek, where a man and his wife raised a large family and then chose to tie their land to a project that would outlive them. It reminds us that the story of Pippa Passes is not only about a reformer from Boston or about donors in distant cities, but also about a family with deep roots on Caney Creek.
Standing by the Founder’s Shack today, you can still feel that layering. The shack itself, moved and restored, carries Alice Lloyd’s name. The marker beside it tells the visitor that a man from Caney Creek walked across the ridge to ask for a school and offered land in return. The road outside is lined with buildings that bear the names of presidents, benefactors, and faculty. Somewhere under all of that, in deeds, in headstones, and in family memory, is the figure of Abisha Johnson, the farmer who turned his hillside into the ground floor of a college.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Bureau of the Census. Federal population census schedules, Floyd and Knott Counties, Kentucky, 1850–1930. Microfilm, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC. Digitized images available via FamilySearch and Ancestry. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
“Mary Slone (1874–1945).” FamilySearch Family Tree. Entry for Mary Slone LKQ5-VBC, including marriage to Abisha Johnson, 28 August 1894. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/LKQ5-VBC/mary-slone-1878-1945 FamilySearch
“Abisha Johnson (1839–1926).” WikiTree: The Free Family Tree. Profile Johnson-70275, including Civil War service and burial in Knott County, Kentucky. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Johnson-70275 WikiTree
“PVT Abisha Johnson (1842–1898).” Find a Grave. Memorial 185367278, Jimmy Slone Cemetery, Pippa Passes, Knott County, Kentucky. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/185367278/abisha-johnson Find a Grave
“Civil War Burial Sites – Floyd County.” KyGenWeb, Floyd County, Kentucky. List including “Johnson, Abisha Sr., Co. E 13 Ky. Regt. C.S.A.” and “Johnson, Abisha Jr., Co. E 13 Ky. Regt. C.S.A.” https://kygenweb.net/floyd/records/military/civil-war/civil-war-burials.html KyGenWeb
“13th Kentucky Cavalry Regiment Roster.” Knott County Historical and Genealogical Society pages at RootsWeb. Includes entries for Abisha Johnson Sr. and Jr., Company E. https://www.rootsweb.com/~kykchgs/Knott/Military_History/War_Between_States/Regiments/13th.html rootsweb.com
United States. Adjutant General’s Office. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky: Kentucky Volunteers, Confederate States Army. Frankfort, KY: State Printer, 1860s. Digital edition, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/reportofadjuta00kent (see roster of 13th Kentucky Cavalry, Company E, entries for Abisha Johnson Sr. and Jr.) Internet Archive
“William Hiram Slone 1755 – pafg18.” Yeahpot Genealogy. Slone family page documenting marriage of Rachel Johnson, daughter of Abisha “Bud” Johnson and Mary Slone, to Hardin Slone. https://yeahpot.com/slone/slonewilliamhiram/pafg18.htm Yeahpot
“William Hiram Slone 1755 – pafg05.” Yeahpot Genealogy. Slone family page tracing Sarah Johnson, daughter of Abisha Johnson and Nancy Jane Hammonds, who married John C. Slone. https://yeahpot.com/slone/slonewilliamhiram/pafg05.htm Yeahpot
“William Hiram Slone 1755 – pafg10.” Yeahpot Genealogy. Slone family page listing descendants including Abisha (Bud) Johnson, born 25 April 1876. https://yeahpot.com/slone/slonewilliamhiram/pafg10.htm Yeahpot
“William Akers – pafg32.” Yeahpot Genealogy. Akers family page noting Caleb Johnson, son of Abisha Johnson and Mary Jane Hall, married Delana Akers, 16 October 1881, Floyd County, Kentucky. https://yeahpot.com/akers/akerswilliam/pafg32.htm Yeahpot
“Isom Slone Jr. / Pippa Passe.” Genealogy.com Slone Family Forum. Thread discussing Sarah Johnson, daughter of Abisha and Nancy Hammonds Johnson, and her marriage into the Slone family. https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/slone/484/ Genealogy.com
Ancestry.com. “Abisha ‘Bish’ Johnson.” Ancestry Member Trees and compiled index entries, including Abisha Johnson (born 1874 in Kentucky, died 28 March 1935 in Knott County) and Abisha Johnson (born 28 September 1839 in Kentucky, died 1898 in Knott County). Accessed January 8, 2026. https://www.ancestry.com/1940-census/usa/Mississippi/Anisha-Johnson_4bglgz Ancestry
Johnson, family members. “Visiting great-great grandfather’s grave near Pippa Passas.” Facebook group post, Kentucky Ancestors, including photograph and caption identifying “Abisha Johnson of Knott County Kentucky” and discussing land that became Alice Lloyd College. Posted ca. 2020. https://www.facebook.com/groups/300999108219027/posts/675299124122355/ facebook.com
Kentucky Secretary of State, Land Office. “Kentucky Land Grants Database.” Entries for patents to Abisha Johnson in Floyd County on Otter Creek. https://www.sos.ky.gov/land
Knott County Clerk’s Office. Deed books, ca. 1917. Deed from Abisha and Mary Johnson to Caney Creek Community Center (Alice Lloyd) for approximately 50 acres on Caney Creek, Knott County, Kentucky.
Kentucky Department for Public Health, Office of Vital Statistics. Death certificate of Abisha Johnson, 28 March 1935, Knott County, Kentucky. Indexed in Kentucky state death records, 1911–1961, microfilm and digital images available via FamilySearch and Ancestry.
Caney Creek Community Center and Alice Lloyd College. Caney Creek Community Center newsletters, 1920s–1950s. Selected issues in Alice Lloyd College Archives, McGaw Library, Pippa Passes, Kentucky, and in donor collections such as the Kansas City Browning Society Records.
Kansas City Browning Society Records (K0003). State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center, Kansas City. Includes correspondence with Caney Creek Community Center and Alice Lloyd College, copies of Miracle on Caney Creek, and college newsletters, 1970s–1980s. https://files.shsmo.org/manuscripts/kansas-city/k0003.pdf KSU Digital Commons
Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd. “History of the Caney Creek Community Center.” Typescript, 1955. Alice Lloyd College Archives, McGaw Library and Learning Center, Pippa Passes, Kentucky.
“Appalachian Oral History Project Collection, 1970–1977.” MS0316, Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, Maryland. Finding aid at https://archivesspace.nal.usda.gov/repositories/4/resources/782
Appalachian Oral History Project. Appalachian Oral History Project: Union Catalog. Beltsville, MD: National Agricultural Library, 1977. Google Books edition. https://books.google.com/books?id=SWgsAAAAYAAJ
“Appalachian Oral History Collection.” Appalachian Special Collections, McGaw Library and Learning Center, Alice Lloyd College, Pippa Passes, Kentucky. Collection description at https://lfarchives.weebly.com/appalachian-oral-history-collection.html
Pine Mountain Settlement School. “Scrapbook Before 1929.” Clipping scrapbook containing early press coverage of Caney Creek Community Center and Alice Lloyd’s work, Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, Harlan County, Kentucky.
Beebout, Christopher. “Alice Lloyd College.” ExploreKYHistory. Kentucky Historical Society. Marker 653 entry discussing founding of the college and its origins in a land offer from local resident Abisha Johnson. https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/873 explorekyhistory.ky.gov
Whitner, Jerri. “Providing Opportunities for a Century: The Caney Creek Community Center.” Kentucky Living, April 24, 2017. https://www.kentuckyliving.com/news/providing-opportunities-century-caney-creek-community-center Kentucky Living
Hall, Jennifer, and Ty Reagan. “Alice Lloyd College: 100 Years of Affordable Education in Appalachia.” Kentucky Monthly, August 10, 2023. https://www.kentuckymonthly.com/culture/kentucky-explorer/alice-lloyd-college-100-years-of-affordable-education-in-app/ kentuckymonthly.com
“Alice Lloyd College – Our History.” Alice Lloyd College, Pippa Passes, Kentucky. Official institutional history page describing the move to Caney Creek at the request of local resident Abisha Johnson. https://alc.edu/about-us/our-history/
Dobson, Abi. “Continuing His Walk: Evan Caudill.” Alice Lloyd College News, November 30, 2021. Profile of a descendant of Abisha Johnson that reiterates the family land donation story. https://alc.edu/2021/11/continuing-his-walk-evan-caudill/ Alice Lloyd College
Whitner, Jerri. “Providing Opportunities for One Hundred Years: The Caney Creek Community Center, Inc.” Alice Lloyd College News, March 28, 2017. Campus feature recounting the land offer from Abisha Johnson. https://alc.edu/2017/03/providing-opportunities-for-one-hundred-years-the-caney-creek-community-center-inc/ Alice Lloyd College
“ExploreKYHistory Tour: Kentucky Innovators.” ExploreKYHistory. Includes tour stop for Alice Lloyd College marker 653 and related media. https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/873 or tour index at https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/tours/show/62 explorekyhistory.ky.gov
“Kentucky Historical Marker 653: Alice Lloyd College.” Marker text and images, Kentucky Historical Society, ExploreKYHistory site. https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/files/show/3815
Kentucky Humanities Council. “Alice Lloyd: A Chautauqua Character.” In Kentucky Humanities, Fall 2023 issue. Essay describing Abisha Johnson’s vision and land offer in the context of Lloyd’s life. https://kyhumanities.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Fall2023KentuckyHumanities_website.pdf Kentucky Humanities
Lewis, Helen Matthews, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins, editors. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978. Includes an essay noting that “another old mountain man, Abisha Johnson, went to Hope Cottage and begged for a school on Caney Creek.” https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED329380.pdf ERIC
Dutton, B. W. S. Stay On, Stranger. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954. Popular narrative of Alice Lloyd’s work at Caney Creek, based on visits and interviews, dramatizing the figure of “Bysh” (Abisha) Johnson. Digital copy hosted by Alice Lloyd College at https://www.alc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Stay-On-Stranger.pdf Alice Lloyd College
Davis, Jerry C. Miracle on Caney Creek: June Buchanan Joins Alice Lloyd in a Crusade to Educate Kentucky Mountain Leaders. Louisville: Thoroughbred Press for Caney Creek Community Center, 1982. Publisher and bookseller listing at Appalachian Mountain Books. https://apmtbooks.com/products/miracle-on-caney-creek-by-jerry-c-davis Alice Lloyd College
Searles, P. David. A College for Appalachia: Alice Lloyd on Caney Creek. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813108568/a-college-for-appalachia appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu
Searles, P. David. “Dissension Among the Do-Gooders: The Controversy Between Alice Lloyd and Katherine Pettit.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 93, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 261–286.
“Caney Creek Community Center, Inc.” Journal of the Kentucky–Tennessee American Studies Association, no. 6 (1987). Article on mountain schools noting that “a local mountaineer, Abisha Johnson, donated the land to establish a school on Caney Creek.” https://w1.mtsu.edu/borders/archives/6/bs1987_no.6.pdf MTSU
“Inverness Research Associates: ARSI Knott County Case Study.” Evaluation report for the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative in Knott County, Kentucky, summarizing the founding legend of Alice Lloyd College and referring to “a mountain patriarch, Abisha Johnson.” https://www.inverness-research.org (project reports section)
“Caney Creek ‘Indian and Hillbilly Civilization’ School.” Blog essay on shaybo-therisingtide.blogspot.com, 2011. Reproduces early promotional text from Alice Lloyd College and critiques its racialized language, including the standard narrative of Abisha Johnson’s request for a school. https://shaybo-therisingtide.blogspot.com
Philanthropy News Digest. “Alice Lloyd College.” Nonprofit Spotlight feature describing the college’s origins in land donated by local resident Abisha Johnson. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/features/nonprofit-spotlight/alice-lloyd-college philanthropynewsdigest.org
Author Note: I wanted to bring together the scattered records and family stories about Abisha Johnson in one place. I hope this piece helps you see the land beneath Alice Lloyd College as a Johnson family farm first and a historic campus second.