Last bedroom of the 17th President of the United States.

Andrew Johnson Died Here

Elizabethton, Tennessee

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States, visited his daughter, had a stroke in her house, and died on July 31, 1875. The house subsequently suffered a series of calamities that destroyed more than half of it, but not the part where Johnson died.

The house as it looked when Dr. Schumaier bought it. He still has the sign.

The reduced-size house was sold in 1925 and again in 1959 to private owners who wanted it preserved. They were able to buy the house cheap because no one else cared, including the federal government and Johnson's descendants. In 2004 the house was sold again, this time to Dr. Dan Schumaier, who told us, again, that "no one really wanted it."

Dan moved the house into his back yard and engineered its complete restoration; it looks better now than it did when Johnson was alive. The furniture inside is not Johnson's, but it is from the same time period, and Dan's careful research has placed the replacement death bed probably in the same spot as the original. Dan said that a Confederate re-enactor once tried to spend a night in the house, but was too spooked to make it to sunrise.

Dan, who is an audiologist, told us that he was able to buy Johnson's ear trumpet at a local estate sale for $24. He also said that he had, "the last thing Andrew Johnson saw in his life." When we asked what that was, Dan pointed to the ceiling of the death room.

Dr. Dan Schumaier and the restored Andrew Johnson Death House.