Biography of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1696-1772), American clergyman and educator, was the first Anglican minister in Connecticut and first president of King's College, later Columbia University.

Samuel Johnson was born in Guilford, Conn., on Oct. 14, 1696. His father was a deacon. A precocious student, Samuel acquired a fondness for Hebrew at the age of 6. He was unable to enter grammar school until the age of 11, but at 14 he was admitted to the Collegiate School (now Yale) at Saybrook, Conn. Even before graduating in 1714, he began teaching school at Guilford. When Yale moved to New Haven in 1716, he was made a tutor. For the first 2 years he taught the three lower classes alone, introducing students to the works of two prominent Englishmen--philosopher John Locke and scientist and philosopher lsaac Newton.

However, Johnson's relations with his students were unhappy. A student contingent presented a petition complaining of the "Public Expositions & Disputations & Managements of the Tutors"; Johnson was singled out as the worst. Although the Yale Corporation found him guiltless, he tendered his resignation in September 1719 and accepted a call to the pulpit of neighboring West Haven.

Johnson continued to use the growing resources of the Yale library, which had recently acquired the latest English works, including several volumes of liberal Anglican theology. He read and discussed these works with his classmate Daniel Browne and with Yale's new president, Timothy Cutler, and the three developed doubts concerning the validity of the "Congregational Way." In September 1722 the three men announced their misgivings at commencement, launching the "Great Apostasy." Soon after, they sailed to England, where they obtained Anglican ordination. A year later Johnson returned to Stratford, Conn., as the first Anglican minister to the colony and remained the only one for 3 years. On Sept. 23, 1725, he married Charity Nicoll, a widow, and became guardian of her two sons.

The work of propagating and defending the Anglican persuasion in New England consumed 30 years of Johnson's life. As the acknowledged intellectual and ecclesiastical leader of the movement, he was asked to become the head of the new King's College in New York City in 1753. In 1754 he moved his family to New York and began a decade as president of the college.

In a colonial culture of rampant denominationalism, King's College was chartered as a nonsectarian institution with a mixed board of trustees. The only Anglican requirements were that the president always be of the Church of England and that the daily prayers be conducted from the Book of Common Prayer. On Sundays the students attended the church of their choice.

The enrollment was small--only eight boys graduated in the first class of 1758--and the fees were the highest in the Colonies. The boys' median age at entrance was 15, and the attrition rate was high. But this was fertile ground for Johnson. As he advertised in the New York Gazette in 1754, "the chief thing that is aimed at in this college is to teach and engage the children to know God in Jesus Christ, and to love and serve Him in all sobriety, godliness, and righteousness of life, with a perfect heart, and a willing mind."

Johnson taught the first-year class himself so that he might "carry them through the New Testament in its Greek original, and not only make them understand the words but the things, explaining all difficult passages, and giving them a clear understanding of the whole scheme of Christianity." And he ensured that his graduates would have a greater understanding of the "New Philosophy" than he had by devoting three-fourths of the sophomore and junior class curriculum to mathematics and science.

Unfortunately Johnson's personality and probably his well-known disparagement of colonial culture robbed him of success. "He did not figure greatly as a president," wrote President Ezra Stiles of Yale, "but it does not seem to have been for want of Learning. Dr. Johnson was an excellent Classical Scholar--he had few equals in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He was good at the Sciences, easy and communicative, was eminent in Moral Philosophy," as he demonstrated in his book Elementa philosophica (1752). Nevertheless, Stiles concluded, "Some Geniuses, with half the Observation and Reading of Dr. Johnson, would make ten times greater Men."

When Johnson's second wife died of smallpox in 1763--a previous outbreak had carried off his first wife, son, and stepdaughter--he lost the heart to continue and retired to his parish in Stratford. He died on Jan. 6, 1772.

Further Reading

• Herbert and Carol Schneider edited Samuel Johnson, President of King's College: His Career and Writings (4 vols., 1929). Johnson's work as president of King's College is recounted in Horace Coon, Columbia: Colossus on the Hudson (1947). His importance as a philosopher is ably discussed in Robert Clifton Whittemore, Makers of the American Mind (1964).
• Carroll, Peter N., The other Samuel Johnson: a psychohistory of early New England, Rutherford N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978.