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 had known very little of any association or companionship outside of the grandchildren of the family whose slave her mother formerly was and with whom she lived until 1873.

She entered the public schools of the city at the age of nine years. The first year's work was very thoroughly done with assistance of her sister, a few years her senior, who was then in the fourth grammar grade. Scruggs was promoted twice every session, always showing an unusual talent for mathematics. She became a Christian when she was fourteen years of age and joined the First Baptist Church of Richmond. Having been kept out of school a part of two winters by illness attributed to too rapid growth, it was thought expedient to try a change of climate. Consequently, after having been in the high school only one session, she left Richmond highly recommended for Shaw University at Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated from this institution in May, 1883, and went to New York City, where her mother then resided.

In October 1883, shortly after the death of her only brother, she went to Chatham, Virginia, to teach school. In May 1884, she returned to her home in New York, and she and her sister opened a private school for girls, which they managed for four years. It was during these four years that she wrote many articles for the Richmond Planet and other journals. In 1886, she published a grammar designed for beginners, entitled Grammar-Land.

Lucie Johnson met Lawson Andrew Scruggs during their student days at Shaw University. They married on the evening of February 22, 1888, at St. Mark's Methodist Episcopal Church, New York, by Rev. Henry Lyman Morehouse. Soon after her marriage, she wrote a drama, Farmer Fox. She and her husband moved to Raleigh where she joined the Blount Street Baptist Church of that city. 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.

Scruggs had two children, Leonard and Goldie. She died November 24, 1892, after a brief but severe illness.