According to his grandchildren, Swedish immigrant Andrew Johnson studied architecture at Uppsala University, where he won a design competition that enabled him to travel to New York in 1865. He then headed to Chicago, where Illinois Central Railroad officials hired him to build depots farther south. Their line eventually ran through Sardis, where Johnson settled in 1870, bringing a Swedish work crew with him. He designed many houses in the area and the long-gone 1873 Sardis courthouse, and he developed a personal idiom that both reflected his training in Sweden and conformed to prevailing American tastes. For example, the two-story, L-front Ballentine-Seay House’s robust shouldered window hood molds and lintels are his distinctive take on these American features. Equally inventive are the corner blocks at the windowsills, crowns over the double windows, the diamond-shaped vent in the front gable, the bracket consoles beneath the eaves, and the imbrication at the porch’s low entrance pediment.