Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1st President of Columbia University

Biography

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• Samuel Johnson, 1696-1772
• Term of Office: 1754-1763

When the vestrymen of New York City's Trinity Church resolved to establish an “Episcopal College” in the City, they turned to Anglican minister Samuel Johnson, a well-known colonial scholar and Yale graduate to lead the effort.

Johnson held the first classes at King's College on July 17, 1754 for eight students in the English charity school adjoining Trinity Church. The sole member of the faculty until 1757, Johnson combined classical studies with the wider study of science. In 1759, owing to personal circumstances and increasingly frequent absences from the City, Johnson began looking for his successor. In 1762 the Governor's of King's College finally selected Myles Cooper as Johnson's successor. A year later, Johnson retired to his home in Stratford, CT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson_(1696-1772)

The Reverend Doctor Samuel Johnson (October 14, 1696 – January 6, 1772) was a clergyman, educator, and philosopher in colonial British North America. He was a major proponent of both Anglicanism and the philosophy of George Berkeley in the colonies, and served as the first president of the Anglican King's College (the predecessor to today's Columbia University).

Life

Born in Guilford, Connecticut, he graduated from the Collegiate School (now Yale University) in 1716. Johnson first became Congregationalist minister of a church in West Haven, but influenced by the writings of John Locke and Isaac Newton, he and a group of other Collegiate School graduates began to express doubt in the legitimacy of their Congregational ordination. As a result, Johnson left the colony in order to seek ordination in the Church of England. Upon his return to Connecticut, he opened the first Anglican church in the colony at Stratford in 1724 and strenuously polemicized, under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, against both the Congregationalists of New England and the new evangelical outburst occasioned by popular preacher George Whitefield and the Great Awakening he unleashed.

He remained in Stratford until 1754, when the vestrymen of the Anglican Trinity Church in New York City considered him the logical choice to serve as after the first president of King's College. Though reluctant to leave his family in Connecticut and fearing the smallpox epidemics he considered endemic of urban life, Johnson ultimately took up the post, assisting in behind-the-scenes maneuverings to ensure the college would be explicitly Anglican, rather than nonsectarian. In the early years of the institution, Johnson was the sole instructor, primarily teaching classics and philosophy. His first class consisted of eight boys he considered "woefully unprepared". Owing to his fear of smallpox, of which his son William had died while in England, Johnson was frequently absent from the city, and increasingly shared his teaching responsibilities. When his wife died of smallpox, Johnson began to seek a means to leave his post, although the Governors of King's College and the Archbishop of Canterbury had already maneuvered to replace him with the Oxford-trained minister Myles Cooper. Johnson left the post in 1763 and returned to his ministry at Stratford, where he died. Cooper penned the inscription which adorns his monument in the town:

If decent dignity, and modest mien,

The cheerful heart, and countenance serene;

If pure religion and unsullied truth,

His age's solace, and his search in youth;

In charity, through all the race he ran,

Still wishing well, and doing good to man;

If learning free from pedantry and pride;

If faith and virtue walking side by side;

If well to mark his being's aim and end,

To shine through life the father and the friend;

If these ambition in thy soul can raise,

Excite thy reverence or demand thy praise,

Reader, ere yet thou quit this earthly scene,

Revere his name, and be what he has been.

Works

Johnson was among the few colonial Americans whose cultural and intellectual achievements garnered notice in Great Britain. He was a friend of and often corresponded with the Irish philosopher George Berkeley, and became the chief promoter of his philosophy of immaterialism in colonial America. In 1731 Johnson published his Elementa Philosophica (eng. Compendium of Logic and Metaphysics), and in 1746 his Ethica (eng. System of Morality). In 1752, Benjamin Franklin printed both in a single, expanded volume, a third edition of which appeared in 1754 with Johnson's corrections and an introduction by Dr. William Smith, provost of the College of Philadelphia. In 1757 a London publisher printed his English and Hebrew Grammar, to which was appended a "Synopsis of all the Parts of Learning".

Veneration

Johnson is honored together with Timothy Cutler and Thomas Bradbury Chandler with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on August 17.

Books on Samuel Johnson

Ellis, Joseph J., The New England Mind in Transition: Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696-1772 (Yale University Press, 1973)

Birth: 1696 Guilford New Haven County Connecticut, USA Death: Jan. 6, 1772 Stratford Fairfield County Connecticut, USA

American clergyman, educator and philosopher. Samuel Johnson was the first rector and teacher of Anglican Church at Stratford, CT. He was born in Guilford, Connecticut, the second child of Samuel Johnson (d. c. 1728), a farmer and proprietor of a fulling mill, and husband of Mary Sage (d.c. 1728). He received his education at what was the Congregational Collegiate School which eventually became Yale College. In 1722, he was ordained an Anglican priest in England and returned to America to establish Christ Episcopal Church in Stratford, Connecticut. He remained rector of that church until 1754 when he became the first president of King's College, an Anglican college in New York. In 1763, he resigned and returned to Stratford. See H. Schneider and C. Schneider, etc. Samuel Johnson...His Career and His Writings. (4 vol., 1929, repr. 1972; study by J. J. Ellis.

He was the father of William Samuel Johnson who was a framer of the Constitution of the United States and a lawyer.

In decent dignity and modest mien, The cheerful heart and countenance serene If pure religion and unsullied truth, His age's solace, and his search in youth, If piety in all the paths he trod Still rising vigorous to his Lord and God; If Charity thro' all the race he ran, Still willing well, and doing good to man; If learning, free from pedantry and pride; If Faith and Virtue, walking side by side; If well to mark his being's aim and end, To shine thro' life a Husband, Father, Friend, If these ambition in thy soul can raise, Excite thy reverence, or demand thy praise, Reader, ere yet thou quit this earthly scene, Revere his name, and be what he has been. Myles Cooper, inscription on Samuel Johnson's memorial table

Family links:

Spouse:

Sarah Hull Beach Johnson (1701 - 1763)

Burial: Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery Stratford Fairfield County Connecticut, USA

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Created by: D. O. Record added: Oct 14, 2005 Find A Grave Memorial# 12001634

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Rev. Samuel Johnson Jr. MD Born 14 Oct 1696 in Guilford, New Haven, Connecticutmap ANCESTORS ancestors Son of Samuel Johnson and Mary (Sage) Johnson Brother of Nathaniel Johnson Husband of Sarah (Hull) Beach — married [date unknown] [location unknown] DESCENDANTS descendants Father of William Samuel Johnson Died 6 Jan 1772 in Stratford, Fairfield, Connecticutmap Profile manager: Stephanie Ledbetter private message [send private message] Profile last modified 21 Aug 2017 | Created 22 Dec 2015 This page has been accessed 252 times.

Categories: Notables.

Notables Samuel Johnson Jr. MD is notable. Join: Notables Project Discuss: NOTABLES Biography Samuel Johnson was born October 14, 1696 as the second son of Samuel Johnson and Mary Sage. Samuel passed away January 6, 1772.[1] Graduated Yale 1714. First President of King's College (later Columbia University).[2] Fact: Burial Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery, Stratford, Fairfield County, Connecticut, USA Sources Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson D.D.: missionary of the Church of England in Connecticut, and first president of King's College, New York (Hurd & Houghton, New York, 1874) Johnson, Rev. George. The Reverend Samuel Johnson, D.D., of Connecticut, The New England Historical & Genealogical Register (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Mass., 1873) Vol. 27, Page 42 Nicholls, Walter (1909) Sergeant Francis Nicholls of Stratford, Connecticut, 1639, and the Descendants of his son, Caleb Nicholls. The Grafton Press, Genealogical Publishers, New York. page 33 Orcutt, Samuel, Rev. (1886) A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Part II Genealogies. Published by the Fairfield County Historical Society. vol. 2, page 1124 Wikipedia Find A Grave, database and images (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12001634 : accessed 22 November 2016), memorial page for Rev Samuel Johnson (1696 - 1772) - Find A Grave Memorial. American Ancestry: Giving Name and Descent, in the Male Line, of ..., Volume 4 edited by Thomas Patrick Hughes, Frank Munsell [2] The American Genealogist, New Haven, Connecticut: D. L. Jacobus, 1954, Vol. 31, pp. 119-121, New England Historic Genealogical Society (Online Database). American Society of Genealogists, The Genealogist, Rockport, Maine: Picton Press, 1981, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 212-213, 218. Roberts, Gary Boyd, Notable Kin, Volume 1, Santa Clarita, California: Carl Boyer, 3rd (1998), 148. Colonial Collegians: Biographies of Those Who Attended American Colleges before the War for Independence (subscription). CD-ROM. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Historical Society : New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2005. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2008.) Vol. Yale page 70 Hollister, Gideon. The History of Connecticut, From the First Settlement of the Colony to the Adoption of the Present Constitution (Case, Tiffany & Co., Hartford, 1857) Vol. 1, Page 512-3 Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Extracts From The Itineraries and Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn., 1916) Page 522-3 ↑ MIDDLETOWN UPPER HOUSES a history of the north society of Middletown, Ct. from 1650 to 1800 with genealogical and biographical chapters on early families. Charles Collard Adams New York: Grafton Press, 1908. THE SAGE FAMILY [transcribed by Coralynn Brown ] ↑ Famous Kin [1]

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