Ashley Sydney Johnson was a Protestant minister who founded Johnson University in Tennessee.
Education
At age seventeen, he enrolled at the University of Tennessee for one year then and attended Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio where he received an Master of Arts Johnson received an Doctor of Laws from Christian University (now, Culver-Stockton) Missouri.
Career
Ashley South. Johnson born in East Tennessee on June 22, 1857 and by age sixteen was a school teacher. In October 1877 after studying the New Testament, Johnson preached his first sermon and decided to dedicate his life to the Gospel ministry. Johnson married Emma Elizabeth Strawn in Dunnville in Ontario, Canada on December 31, 1884, and they moved to South Carolina to be evangelists, starting churches and encouraging the growth of existent churches.
In South Carolina, Johnson founded a popular correspondence Bible school.
The school was originally known as the School of the Evangelists. In 1891, Emma gave birth to a stillborn child and almost died herself during childbirth, and she was unable to have further children.
Ashley Johnson went on to write numerous books and articles Johnson died during an operation in Baltimore, Maryland on January 14, 1925 and was buried on the Heights on the college campus.
Emma Johnson died of cancer two years later and was buried next to her husband.
After Johnson"s death, the Board of Trustees, renamed the school as Johnson Bible College.