Johnston County

Photographs can bring history to life and help us to make connections between the past and our daily

lives. With Johnston County, authors Todd Johnson and Durwood Barbour have created a work that truly

teaches us and guides us from the past of this area into the new millennium. In this exciting new work, every one of the county’s seventeen townships has been covered, with rare images dating primarily from the turn of the century to 1945. Mostly candid shots of people who have influenced Johnston’s social, cultural, and economic development, these images bring us to a time when the pace of life was slower. Other, more well-known citizens we meet include film star Ava Gardner and Lunsford Richardson, inventor of Vick’s VapoRub. Also featured in this book are images of important events, like the highly publicized, catastrophic munitions truck explosion near Selma in 1942.