The parents of Martha White Johnson (pictured at left, around 1930) were Joseph White and Mary Ann May, who married in Stokes County, North Carolina on November 18, 1854. According to the census of 1870 in Patrick County, Virginia, Joseph White, a farmer, was born about 1825 in Virginia. He died sometime before the 1880 census, when his wife and three of his children were in Quaker Gap in Stokes County, North Carolina.
Mary was born in April, 1829, in Virginia, the daughter of Pryor May and Sarah Puckett. When the 1900 census was taken, Mary was a widow and lived with her son, John, in Stewarts Creek in Surry County. Throughout their history, the family remained in the area near the borders of Patrick County, Virginia, and Surry and Stokes County, North Carolina.
Joseph and Mary White had at least six children:
1. John W. White was born about 1856 in Virginia and was a laborer, according to the census of 1870 in Patrick County, Virginia. In the 1880 census of the Mayo district in Patrick County, John W. White, age 24, is listed with wife Millie and 1-year-old daughter Roxie. Other children were Samuel J., Vinnie E., Bettie, Minnie, John William, and Lelie.
Vinnie White was born in September of 1887, Bettie, in September 1889, Minnie, June 7, 1892, and Lelie, March 7, 1898.
Roxie White married Floyd Edwards July 7, 1901 in Stewarts Creek, Surry County. They farmed and had at least four children.
Samuel Jackson White was born July 21, 1881, in Virginia. He married Nannie Edwards November 10, 1901, in Stewarts Creek. He was a cabinetmaker, and they had children named Ethel, Ila, and Clyde. Nannie White died June 7, 1968, and Samuel died March 1, 1971. They are buried at Old Hollow Primitive Baptist Church in Toast, N. C.
John William White was born June 4, 1895. He married Mecia Simpson January 27, 1918, in Eldora Township, Surry County. They had daughters named Gladys, Kathleen, Pauline, Jean, and Mary. They farmed, and he did carpentry and mill work. He died July 4, 1973, in Forsyth County, and she died March 3, 1993.
2. Mary or Clara E. White was born about 1857 in Virginia.
3. Sarah White was born circa 1859 in Virginia.
4. Martha F. White was born May 17, 1862, in either Virginia or Stokes County, North Carolina. Martha told her grandchildren that her family had Native American ancestry.
One of the stories repeated by her grandchildren was that when the Indians were hiding from their enemies, they would stop the babies from crying by covering their noses and mouths so they couldn't breathe. If anybody made noise and they were discovered, they'd all be killed. The area where Martha and her ancestors lived was far from the sites of the Cherokee removal, and the Saura and other small tribes who lived in the area are supposed to have been gone by the time white settlers arrived. However, recent research by genealogists seems to have turned up stories of a small Shawnee settlement in the Carroll County, Virginia area in the early 1800's. Remnants of some tribes may still have been around.
Another possible source of Martha's Indian stories may come from her mother's family, the Pucketts, who are said to have Powhatan ancestry. The Powhatans lived in the area of the Jamestown colonies in the 1600's.
Martha married Lindsay Johnson circa 1880. She died May 7, 1933.