Isaac Johnson (colonist)

The Reverend Isaac Johnson (1601 – 30 September 1630), a 17th-century English clergyman, was one of the Puritan founders of Massachusetts and the colony's First Magistrate.

Family background

Baptized at St John's Church, Stamford, in Lincolnshire, the eldest son of Abraham Johnson, he grew up at Fineshade, near North Luffenham in Rutland. His grandfather was Archdeacon Robert Johnson, who founded Oakham and Uppingham Schools in Rutland.

After being educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (matriculating 1614, graduating B.A. 1617 and proceeding M.A. 1621) where a relative, Laurence Chaderton, was the first Master, he was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1620. Johnson was then, on 27 May 1621, ordained a priest in the Church of England by Thomas Dove, Bishop of Peterborough.

Archdeacon Johnson settled upon his grandson the manor of Clipsham, Rutland, after his marriage in 1623 to Lady Arbella Clinton, second daughter of Thomas Clinton, 3rd Earl of Lincoln, whose brother, the 4th Earl, was a leading proponent of the Puritan colonisation of America.

Life

Johnson was the main shareholder of the Massachusetts Bay Company and one of the twelve signatories to the Cambridge Agreement on 29 August 1629. In 1630 he sailed with the Winthrop Fleet to America, arriving at Salem on 12 June. He was then one of the four founding patrons of the First Church at Charlestown on 30 July 1630 and provided the land for King's Chapel Burying Ground.

William Blaxton, a contemporary at Emmanuel College, invited Johnson to Shawmut (now Boston), a move for which Blaxton offered to provide the finance. At a Charlestown meeting shortly before he died, Johnson renamed the settlement, previously known as Shawmut or Trimountain (on account of three contiguous hills which appear in a range when viewed from Charlestown), after Boston, Lincolnshire in England where he lived with his wife before emigrating and his friend, John Cotton, was vicar of St Botolph's Church, Boston.

He died at Charlestown on 30 September 1630, the richest man in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The ''Eagle'', a ship in the Winthrop Fleet, was renamed ''Arbella'' after his wife, Arbella Johnson, who predeceased him at Salem by one month. Hubbard says “Among others that were at that time visited with mortal sickness, the Lady Arabella, wife of Mr. Isaac Johnson, was one who, possibly, had not taken the counsel of our Savior to sit down and count the cost, before she began to build. For, coming from a paradise of plenty and pleasure, which she enjoyed in the family of a noble earldom, into a wilderness of wants, it proved too strong a temptation for her; so that the virtues of her mind were not able to stem the tide of those many adversities of her outward condition, which she, soon after her arrival, saw herself surrounded with. For, within a short time after, she ended her days at Salem, where she first landed; leaving her husband, a worthy gentleman of note for piety and wisdom, a sorrowful mourner, and so overwhelmed with grief, that about a month after, viz. September 30, 1630, death carried him after her into another world, to the extreme loss of the whole plantation.”

See also

* New England Colonies

References

*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Isaac

1601 births
1630 deaths
People from North Luffenham
Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
17th-century English Anglican priests
17th-century New England Puritan ministers
English emigrants to Massachusetts Bay Colony
People from colonial Massachusetts