Location: US 158/258 (East Main Street) in Murfreesboro
County: Hertford
Original Date Cast: 2014
“F. Roy Johnson is a hunter of sorts, a man after rare game. His prey is often elusive as a fox, and the terrain he covers can be delicate. He stalks the folk tales and memories of another time.” So began a feature story in the September 1, 1981, issue of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. The subject was Frank Roy Johnson, a native of Bladen County who moved to Murfreesboro in 1940. He was a 1932 graduate of Duke University, where he worked on the student newspaper and met his future wife, Margaret Hamlin.
His newspaper career began in 1934 in Surry. Six years later he moved his equipment to Murfreesboro where he founded the Daily Roanoke-Chowan News and the Northeastern Carolina News. He merged the two titles in 1947 and, in 1962, sold his paper to his competition, the Parker Brothers Company of Ahoskie.
The sale freed Johnson to concentrate on his primary interest, the history and folklore of northeastern North Carolina. With a young Thomas Parramore, he published “The Roanoke-Chowan Story” as an 18-installment feature in his paper. Under the auspices of the Johnson Publishing Company, he published twenty-two books on topics that included Indians, the Gatling gun, folk tales, legends and myths, the Roanoke colonies, Nat Turner, peanuts, riverboating, and witches and demons.
He prided himself on being a mechanical master and never purchasing any new equipment, but rather recycling outdated machines cast aside by the local community college. As a one-man operation, he personally set the type and bound every one of his copies by hand. He also reprinted works by Captain John Smith, Thomas Harriott, John Brickell, and Sallie Southall Cotton. He co-authored several books with Frank Stephenson.
Stephenson counts Johnson as his mentor, as did Parramore, longtime professor at Meredith College. Johnson worked with the Division of Archives and History to microfilm twenty-three reels of his newspapers. His estate, settled up by Stephenson, deposited his notes, research materials, and correspondence in the State Archives. In 1976 Johnson received the Brown-Hudson Folklore from the North Carolina Folklore Society. He died on October 17, 1988.
References:
F. Roy Johnson Collection, North Carolina State Archives
Carolina Comments (January 1989), p. 11