President Andrew Johnson Museum
Tusculum, Tennessee
As with several other attractions devoted to the 17th President of the United States, the President Andrew Johnson Museum was the inspiration of Margaret Johnson Patterson Bartlett, Johnson's great-granddaughter and last surviving direct descendent. She had wanted Johnson's library to go to the National Park Service, but they declined the offer -- so instead Margaret gave it to her alma mater, Tusculum College. When she died, more Johnson artifacts found their way to the College, which opened its own President Andrew Johnson Museum in 1994.
Although small, the museum had what we thought was the best selection of eclectic Johnsonabilia of any Johnson attraction, ranging from his humble ironing board to a fancy coffee-and-cigar dispenser shaped like a train that had belonged to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. When Davis fled at the end of the Civil War the train was sent as a gift to President Lincoln, who died before it arrived. Johnson, no fan of the Confederacy, accepted the train as his own, and took it with him when he left the White House.
The Andrew Johnson Presidential Library, predating any other official presidential library, is displayed in a closet.
History professor Peter Noll, who oversees the museum, told us that its collection includes what is probably the real Andrew Johnson Death Bed -- there are several other claimants -- but that the museum doesn't have enough room to exhibit it.