editor journalist lecturer author
Johnson was born on October 7, 1857, in New York City, the son of William Johnson, an architect of English birth who had come to the United States in 1830 and was associated with Richard Upjohn in the construction of Trinity Church; his mother was Althea (Coles) Johnson, a descendant of early New England settlers.
After private education at his parents' home, "Firleigh Hall, " near Summit, New Jersey, and at Pennington Seminary, Johnson entered the University of the City of New York (now New York University) and took his degree with the class of 1879.
In 1879, Johnson joined the New York Daily Witness, and in 1880 went to the New York Tribune. His service with the Tribune lasted till his death and exceeded in length that of any other editorial worker in the paper's history. In 1887 he became day editor, and in 1894, editorial writer, a position which he thereafter held continuously except for three years, 1917-1920, when he was literary editor. He was noted for the encyclopedic range of his writing. Numerous papers by him appeared in the North American Review, of which he was contributing editor for some years beginning in 1914.
When George Harvey founded the North American Review's War Weekly in 1918, later called Harvey's Weekly, Johnson was its principal writer, and a vehement critic of the Wilson administration. Despite his assiduous journalistic work, he devoted much time to other interests. His attachment to New York University found expression in unstinted labors. He was a member of the University council from 1898 till his death, and of its executive committee from 1914 to 1926, serving also on various standing committees. He frequently lectured there and, beginning in 1913, held the post of honorary professor of American foreign relations.
In 1901 he was biographical editor of New York University, in Chamberlain's Universities and Their Sons. For one year, 1923, he was an instructor in the Pulitzer School of Journalism. Johnson was a prolific writer. His first book was History of the Johnstown Flood (1889), of which more than 250, 000 copies were sold in three months. He also produced popular biographies of James G. Blaine, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Henry M. Stanley, none of which he thought was of high importance. He was interested in lexicography, and proudly recalled that he was a collateral descendant of Dr. Samuel Johnson, but published nothing in that field. As products of his belief in expansion overseas, he produced A Century of Expansion (1903) and Four Centuries of the Panama Canal (1906). His most important work was America's Foreign Relations (1916), in two large volumes, which lacked analytical quality but showed independent research. Of his later publications, America and the Great War (1917) was frankly journalistic, but his George Harvey (1929) reflects his intimate friendship with the fellow editor and contains matter of permanent value on American political history.
Johnson died on March 28, 1931, in Summit, New Jersey.
(In 1891 journalist Willis Fletcher Johnson published "Lif...)
(Willis Fletcher Johnson (1857 - March 29, 1931), was an a...)
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(History of the Johnstown flood ... With full accounts als...)
Johnson was a religious man and for many years was a lay preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, though its prohibition policy became highly repugnant to him.
An ardent Republican, Johnson made political speeches in fourteen national campaigns. He was actively interested in civil-service reform, and served as president of the New Jersey State Civil Service Commission from 1908 to 1912. This was his only public office, though during President Taft's administration he made a confidential survey of the United States Assay Office in New York, which resulted in a drastic reorganization.
In 1878 Johnson married Sue Rockhill, of Tuckerton, New Jersey.
