Lucie Johnson Scruggs

Lucie Johnson was the youngest of four children, and was born a slave in Richmond, Virginia, October 14, 1864. She was partly of Native American heritage. Until she was nine years old, she knew few people apart from her mother's slaveowner's grandchildren.[1]

She entered the city's public schools in 1873 aged nine years. Her sister was then in the fourth grammar grade. Scruggs was promoted twice every session, showing an unusual talent for mathematics. When she was fourteen she joined the First Baptist Church of Richmond. She was kept out of school for two winters by illness attributed to "rapid growth" and they decided to try a change of climate. She left Richmond recommended for Shaw University at Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated in May, 1883, and she went to New York City to join her mother.[1]

In October 1883, shortly after the death of her only brother, she went to Chatham, Virginia, to teach. In May 1884, she returned to New York, and she and her sister opened a private school for girls. They managed it for four years and she wrote articles for the Richmond Planet and similar journals. In 1886, she published a grammar designed for beginners, entitled Grammar-Land.[1]

Lucie Johnson met Lawson Andrew Scruggs at Shaw University and they married on February 22, 1888. They were married at St. Mark's Methodist Episcopal Church, New York by Rev. Henry Lyman Morehouse. Soon after, she wrote a drama, Farmer Fox. She and her husband moved to Raleigh where she joined the Blount Street Baptist Church. Scruggs was a member of the Second Baptist Church and the King's Daughters' Missionary Society. She organized and was twice elected president of the Pansy Literary Society.[1]

Scruggs had two children, Leonard and Goldie.[2] She died November 24, 1892, after a brief illness. The following year Lawson Scruggs published a book titled "Women of Distinction" and he included his late wife.[1]