Samuel Johnson (American educator)
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The Reverend Samuel Johnson |
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| 1st President of King's College |
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In office 1754–1763 |
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| Preceded by | Office created |
| Succeeded by | Myles Cooper |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
October 14, 1696 Guilford, Connecticut Colony |
| Died | January 6, 1772 (aged 75) Stratford, Connecticut Colony |
| Spouse(s) |
Charity Floyd Nicoll (m. 1725; her death 1758) Sarah Beach (m. 1761; her death 1763) |
| Children |
William Samuel Johnson William "Billy" Johnson |
| Parents | Samuel Johnson Sr. |
| Alma mater | Yale College |
Samuel Johnson (October 14, 1696 – January 6, 1772) was a clergyman, educator, linguist, encyclopedist, historian, and philosopher in colonial America. He was a major proponent of both Anglicanism and the philosophies of William Wollaston and George Berkeley in the colonies, founded and served as the first president of the Anglican King's College (the predecessor to today's Columbia University), and was a key figure of the American Enlightenment.
Johnson was born in Guilford, Connecticut, the son of a fulling miller, Samuel Johnson Sr., and great-grandson of Robert Johnson, a founder of New Haven Colony, Connecticut. But it was his grandfather William Johnson, a state assemblyman, village clerk, grammar school teacher, mapmaker, militia leader, judge, and church deacon who most influenced him. His grandfather taught him English at age four, and Hebrew at five; he would take young Samuel Johnson around the town on visits to his friends, and proudly have the young boy recite great passages of memorized scripture.
After studying Latin with local ministers and schoolmasters in Guilford, Clinton and Middleton, including Jared Eliot, Johnson left Guilford at age 13 to attend the Collegiate School at Saybrook (now Yale University) in 1710. There he studied the orthodox Puritan theology of Johannes Wolleb (Wollebius) and William Ames. He graduated in 1714 with a bachelor's degree, and in 1717 was awarded a master's degree.
Johnson began teaching grammar school in Guilford in 1713, even while a student a Yale. He would continue to teach children and adults all this life, spending nearly 60 years as a teacher.
In 1714, he began to write a short work titled Synopsis Philosophiae Naturalis summing up what the Puritan Mind knew of natural philosophy. Leaving this attempt incomplete, he began working instead for his master's thesis by writing in Latin a more ambitious "encyclopedia of all knowledge", titled Technologia Sive Technometria or Ars Encyclopaidia, Manualis Ceu Philosophia; Systema Liber Artis. It was a systematic exploration of all knowledge available to Johnson based on the methods of the Reformation logician Petrus Ramus. His work on this logical exploration of the Puritan New England Mind would eventually result in 1271 hierarchically arranged thesis. It has been called by Norman Fiering “the best surviving American example of student application of Ramist method to the whole body of human knowledge”.
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