Person

George Washington Johnson (Provisional Governor of Kentucky)

b. 1811-05-27 d. 1862-04-08

First governor of the provisional Confederate government of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Georgetown, Kentucky, native. Son of William Johnson and Betsy Payne Johnson. Married to Ann Viley Johnson on August 20, 1833. Father of Eliza Woolfolk Johnson, Willa Viley Johnson, Madison Conyers Johnson, Martha Lydia Johnson, Junius Ward Johnson, Warren Viley Johnson, Henry Viley Johnson, and Euclid Lane Johnson. Educated at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Practiced law in Georgetown, Kentucky. Planter in Scott County, Kentucky, and Helena, Arkansas. Member of the Democratic Party. Member of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from Scott County from 1838 to 1840. Owned fourteen enslaved persons in Scott County in 1850. Owned twenty-six enslaved persons in Scott County in 1860. Member of the Southern Rights Party. First provisional Confederate governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from November 20, 1861, to April 8, 1862. Served as an aide to Confederate General John C. Breckinridge. Served in the 4th Kentucky Infantry Regiment (C.S.A.) as a private from April 6, 1862 to April 8, 1862. Died on April 8, 1862 from wounds sustained at the Battle of Shiloh.

Details

Sex
Male
Race
White

Bibliography

Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Scott County, p. 612.

Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Scott County, District No. 1, pp. 228A-B.

Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky: Confederate Kentucky Volunteers War 1861-65, vol. 1 (Frankfort: Legislature of Kentucky, 1915), 168-69.

Lowell H. Harrison, "Johnson, George, W." in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, John E. Kleber, ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 473.

Lowell H. Harrison, “George W. Johnson (1861-1862)” in Lowell H. Harrison, Ed., Kentucky’s Governors (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 82-84.

Jon L. Wakelyn, Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971, 255.

Citation

Johnson, George Washington. Accessed via the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, https://discovery.civilwargovernors.org/document/S32199720 (January 24, 2026).

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