Johnson was born in September of 1598 in Canterbury, Enland, the son of William and Susan (Porredge) Johnson. His father was clerk of St. George's parish, Canterbury, where Edward was baptized September 16 or 17, 1598. The son was brought up to the trade of a joiner.
Johnson emigrated to Boston in 1630. He was licensed to trade with the Indians, admitted freeman in May 1631, and shortly after went back to England, returning with his family in 1636, in the midst of the Antinomian controversy, and settling in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Johnson was somewhat unsettled by hearing that his venerated leaders were "under a covenant of Works, " but after hearing a sermon of Thomas Shepard in Cambridge, his perplexities vanished and he became a defender of the standing order.
One of the founders of Woburn in 1640, Johnson for thirty-two years was active in the affairs of that town as proprietor, clerk, selectman, militia captain, and deputy (1634-1672, excepting 1647-1648) to the General Court, which also employed him in the surveying of bounds, the inspection of arms and munitions, as commissioner to apprehend Samuel Gorton, and (with Richard Bellingham and Nathaniel Ward) on a committee "for perfecting the lawes. "
Johnson's title to fame, however, rests upon his authorship of the history of New England which he began to write about May 1650, and called The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England. Written with the avowed purpose to overwhelm the enemies of Massachusetts by evidence of divinely ordained success, and to hearten friends by stories of marvelous providences, Johnson's work is not an authority to be wholly relied upon in controversial matters, or for the events of the years when he was absent. But he gives many homely facts, such as the founding of new towns, the housing, food, and occupations of the people, which were ignored by more intellectual chroniclers like Bradford and Winthrop. Both the prose and the doggerel verse of The Wonder-Working Providence breathe "the very spirit and aroma of New England thought"; for Johnson was a representative man, a follower rather than a leader, one hundred percent. loyal to the faith and the policy of the Puritan commonwealth.
Johnson died on April 23, 1672, in Woburn, Massachusetts.
Johnson is remembered as the first general historian of New England, as the author of the earliest printed history of New England which he called the "Wonder-Working Providence. " He was also the first military officer commissioned in his adopted town, and its first town clerk. He was also the explorer of undiscovered wilds in New England. He represented his town twenty-eight years in the general court, and for a short time was speaker.
Johnson married Susan Munnter about 1618. The couple had seven children.
