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Biography of Samuel JohnsonName: Samuel JohnsonBirth Date: 1696 Death Date: 1772 Place of Birth: N/A Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: educator, clergyman 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 …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…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. |