Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 06.djvu/131

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

JOHNSON


JOHNSON


Hip


%'olumes of Bryant and Gay's " History of the United States.*' He becanieeditor of " The Annual 'Cyclopaedia" in 1883, and was managing editor of •' Appleton's CyclopaHlia of American Biography," 1886-88; became editor of the query department

of the Book Buyer in 1888, and was associ- ate editor of the " Standard Diction- ary," 1892-94. He was one of the charter members of the So- ciety of the Genesee and was its president in 1899; a member of the American Histor- ical association; sec- retary of the Authors club; was president of the New York Association of Phi Beta Kappa, 1897-98; president of the Quill club, 1899-1900, and was a founder and president of the University Ex- tension society. Rochester university conferred upon him the degree of Ph.D. in 1888 and the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1893. He edited: i?f^?eC/ass/es (16 vols., 1874-75, and 3 vols., 1880); Works of the British Poets from Chaucer to 3Ior-

ns(3vols., 1876); Famous Single and Fugitive

Poems (1877, enlarged ed., 1890); Play-Day Poems (1878); Fifty Perfect Poems, with Charles A. Dana (1882); Liber Scriptorum, with J. D. Cham- plin and G. C. Eggleston (1893); Authorized His- tory of the World's Columbian Exposition (4 vols., 1898); The World's Great Books (50 vols., 1898 et seq. ) He is the author of: Phaeton Rogers (1881); A History of the French War, ending in ■the Conquest of Canada (1882); A History of the War of 1S12-15 betiveen the United States and Great Britain (1882); Idler and Poet ( 1883); A Short History of the War of Secession (1888, en- larged and illustrated edition, entitled Camp-fire and Battlefield 1894); The End of a Rainboio (1892); Tliree Decades (1895); The Hero of Manila (1899); The I'iliisjiering Gallery (1900) Morning Lights and Evening Shadous (1902); The Alphabet of Rhetoric (1903); Frankfort Boys (1003). and contributions to magazines.

JOHNSON, Samuel, educator, was born in Guilford, Conn., Oct. 14, 1696: son of Samuel, grandson of William, and great-grandson of Rob- ert Jolinson, of England. He was instructed by his grandfather ur.til 1702, when his instructor died, and he studied Latin under Mr. Eliot, 1707, .and Latin. Greek and Hebrew under Mr. James, 1708-10. He then entered the collegiate school of Connecticut (Yale-college), then at Saybrook. 4ind was graduated A.P... 1714. He became a



tutor at Guilford in 1714, and after the general court placed the school at New Haven in Octo- ber, 1716, he was a tutor there, 1716-19. He re- ceived his A.M. degree at the first commence- ment at New Haven, Sept. 12, 1717. He was set ai)art to the minis- try, March 20, 1720, and .stationed at West Haven. Tlirough the influence of Mr.Pigot, a minister of the es- tablished clmrcli with a mission at Strat- ford, whom he met in 1722, Mr. John- son, with President Cutler and Daniel Browne, a tutor at Yale, decided to con- nect themselves with the church, and on Oct. 17, 1722, Presi- dent Cutler and Tutor Browne resigned, and with Mr. Johnson, decided to go to England to receive holy orders. They were ordained by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Green, bishop of Norwich, dea- cons and then priests in St. Martin's church. Mr. Browne died of smallpox soon after. Ex-Presi- dent Cutler was given the degree of D.D., and Mr. Johnson that of A.M. by Oxford in May, 1723, and by Cambridge in June of the same year. They reached Boston in October, and Mr. John- son took charge of Mr. Pigot's mission at Strat- ford, Conn., Nov. 4, 1723, the latter going to Providence, R.I. This mission included the neighboring towns of Fairfield, Norwalk, New- town, Ripton and West Haven. He was the only Episcopal clergyman in the colony. He was mar- ried, Sept. 26, 1725, to Mrs. Charity NicoU, daugh- ter of Col. Richard Floj-d, and widow of Benja- min Nicoll, of Long Island. In February, 1729, the arrival of Dr. George Berkeley, dean of Derry, Ireland, greatly strengthened "Ms. John- son in his work, and he commended to the dean the claims of Yale college for assistance, which resulted in the Berkeley librar}' and his farm in Rhode Island becoming the property of Yale. In 1736 there were seven hundred Episcopal fam- ilies in the colony, and, besides the church at Stratford, Henry Caner was rector at Fairfield. John Beach at Newtown and Samuel Seabury at New London. On July 8, 1744, Mr. Johnson oc- cupied a new and much larger church edifice at Stratford, and about this time churches were built at Norwalk, Stamford, Reading, Darby, West Haven, Ripton and Guilford. In 1752 he declined the presidency of the proposed Publick Academy of Philadelphia, afterward the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania. In 1754 the trustees of the