During the Civil War, a horse thief named Johnson had been part of a horse theft gang in South Carolina. When he decided to flee the state, he took refuge in Bulloch County, Georgia. Some believe the man was trying to escape his past, with hopes of starting anew.
Johnson ran, but soon, his victims tracked the man down, tied him to a persimmon tree, and hanged him.
According to “Civil War Ghosts of Central Georgia and Savannah,” on page 24, the tree stood where the Smith-Tillman Mortuary once stood in the 1970s.
The tree survived for years, but people decided not to eat the fruit from it. Many residents reported that on some nights, you could see Johnson’s body swaying from one of the limbs.
Written By John G. Clark Jr.