Senator William Samuel Johnson
American, 1727 - 1819
BiographyWilliam Samuel Johnson was born on 7 October 1727 in Stratford, Connecticut, the son of the Reverend Samuel Johnson and Charity Floyd Nicoll. He graduated from Yale in 1744 and married Anne Beach on 5 November 1749. They had seven children. Johnson studied for the ministry, but began to practice law in 1747. In 1765 and 1767 he represented Stratford in the General Assembly. In 1765 he was sent as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress in New York. In 1766 he was chosen to the Upper House or Governor's Council and that October was appointed one of the Judges of Superior Court of the Colony. He retired from the Governor's Council and resumed practice of the law. From 1784-1787, he served as a member of the Continental Congress, and in 1787 he was head of the Connecticut delegation to the Convention of a Federal Constiution. He resumed his place in the Upper House of the Connecticut Assembly from 1787 to 1789. From 1789-91 he served as first Senator from the State to the Congress of the United States. He served as President of Columbia University in New York City, from 1787 to 1800. His wife Anne died in New York on 24 April 1796, aged 67. On 11 December 1800 William married for a second time to Mary Brewster Beach of Kent, Connecticut, the widow of a kinsman of his late wife Ann. Mary died in April 1827, and William Samuel Johnson died in Stratford on the 14 November 1819.
Person TypeIndividual
American, 1743 - 1804
American, 1754 - 1825