text: When Johnson passed away in 1850, his estate was divided between his brothers. His surviving daughter was left with nothing, being an illegitimate child in the eyes of the law. Even though Julia Chinn was educated and literate, and her common law husband often spent half of any given year away from his plantation while she managed it, it appears that no letters between the two survive. In fact, what would have been Richard Mentor Johnson’s archive of letters and other documents that might serve as a memory of the man appears to have been destroyed. Professor Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, who is currently working on a book about Julia Chinn, hypothesizes Johnson’s brothers purposefully destroyed these items, in order to suit their financial needs as well as to scrub their family ties to a Black woman and her children. And just like that, the story of a vice president and his Black family was largely buried in the annals of American history.