Samuel Johnson
Who was Samuel Johnson?
President of Columbia University (1696-1772)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Samuel Johnson (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Samuel Johnson was born on October 14, 1696, in Guilford, Connecticut, and became one of the key intellectual figures in colonial America. He was a clergyman, educator, linguist, encyclopedist, and philosopher, playing a major role in the religious and academic life of the early American colonies. His career spanned decades when colonial society experienced big changes, and his work in philosophy, theology, and education left a lasting impact on American intellectual history.
Johnson studied at Yale College, graduating in 1714. Initially a Congregationalist minister, a 1722 trip to England changed his life. There, he was ordained as an Anglican priest, a shift that directed the rest of his career. He became a leading supporter of Anglicanism in the colonies during a time of strong skepticism and opposition from the dominant Puritan and Congregationalist groups in New England. His turn to Anglicanism was not just institutional but also deeply philosophical, connecting with Enlightenment ideas and moving away from Calvinist determinism.
As a philosopher, Johnson was one of the first American supporters of the idealist philosophy of George Berkeley, the Irish bishop who believed that material objects exist only as perceptions in the mind. Johnson directly exchanged letters with Berkeley during Berkeley's time in Rhode Island in the late 1720s, marking one of the significant intellectual discussions of the period. Johnson also drew from the moral philosophy of William Wollaston, blending these European ideas into the American colonial scene. His own philosophical works, including Elementa Philosophica published in 1752, was the first philosophy textbook printed in America.
Johnson's most notable institutional achievement was the founding of King's College in New York City in 1754, under a royal charter. He served as its first president until 1763, influencing its curriculum and identity. The college's explicit Anglican orientation stirred controversy in the religiously mixed colonial New York. After the American Revolutionary War, the institution was renamed Columbia University, and it still exists today as a leading research university. Johnson returned to Stratford, Connecticut, after he retired and lived there until his death on January 6, 1772.
Before Fame
Samuel Johnson grew up in Guilford, Connecticut, in an area heavily influenced by Puritan and Congregationalist traditions. From a young age, he showed exceptional intellectual ability and entered Yale College, finishing his studies in 1714 when he was just seventeen. At that time, Yale was fairly new, founded in 1701, and its library had a collection that introduced Johnson and his classmates to the latest European thinkers, including John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon.
After graduating, Johnson spent several years as a tutor at Yale and worked as a Congregationalist minister. However, he became increasingly unhappy with the religious beliefs he was raised with. In 1722, he traveled to England for Anglican ordination, marking a clear departure from his Congregationalist roots and paving the way for his future as a philosopher and educator with broader goals. When he returned to Stratford as an Anglican missionary, he found himself in a religious minority, which required him to be intellectually sharp and persuasive—traits that would define his public career.
Key Achievements
- Founded King's College in New York City in 1754, which later became Columbia University, and served as its first president
- Authored Elementa Philosophica in 1752, the first philosophy textbook published in colonial America
- Introduced and championed the idealist philosophy of George Berkeley to American intellectual audiences through correspondence and publication
- Played a leading role in the expansion of Anglicanism in New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies during the eighteenth century
- Helped shape the academic curriculum of early American higher education by integrating Enlightenment philosophy with classical and theological learning
Did You Know?
- 01.Johnson's Elementa Philosophica, published in 1752, is widely regarded as the first philosophy textbook to be printed in the American colonies.
- 02.He carried on a direct personal correspondence with the philosopher George Berkeley while Berkeley was living in Newport, Rhode Island, between 1729 and 1731, making Johnson one of Berkeley's most significant American interlocutors.
- 03.Despite founding King's College in New York City with an explicitly Anglican identity, Johnson had to navigate fierce opposition from Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed factions in colonial New York who resented Anglican dominance.
- 04.Johnson returned to serve briefly as acting president of King's College a second time in the 1760s after his initial retirement, demonstrating his continued attachment to the institution he had built.
- 05.He was born in the same year that the College of William and Mary, then the only other institution of higher education in the American colonies besides Harvard, received its formal charter of instruction.