Author: Johnson, Benjamin
Biography:
JOHNSON, Benjamin (1759/60-1843: ancestry.com)
The poet’s parentage, exact date of birth, and education are uncertain or unknown. Obituaries state that in the year of his death, 1843, he was age 83. There is no indication that he attended university. Besides his ordination as deacon by Bishop Beilby Porteus at Chester, Cheshire, in 1783, he first enters the record on 6 Apr. 1788 as officiant at a marriage in Doncaster church, Yorkshire. On 9 July 1791 at St James the Less, Tatham, Lancashire, he married Catherine Holden (b 1767), a daughter of the perpetual curate of Tatham, his employer, the Rev. George Holden, LLD (d 1793). Johnson was at the time Holden’s assistant curate. There were three boys and one girl by the marriage. Over the course of an almost 60-year career, he held a plurality of livings, several concurrently. He was curate of Fradswell, chapel of ease, Colwich, Weston upon Trent (from 1812), and stipendiary curate at Folksworth (from 1819). He was stipendiary curate at Great Gidding, Huntingdonshire (from 1821), and, in the same place, vicar (from 1822), in the presentation of William Wentworth, Earl Fitzwilliam. His final appointment was as stipendiary curate at Caldecote, which is also in Huntingdonshire (from 1827). At the time of his publication of Original Poems (1798), he was assistant teacher at Doncaster Grammar School, Yorkshire. In 1805, he was elected master of the charity school in Nottingham. He obtained subscriptions from almost every fourth family in Doncaster and the surrounding towns. Other than his patron, the local grandee Earl Fitzwilliam, to whom he dedicated Original Poems, the only immediately recognizable name among his 450 subscribers is Edward Cartwright, a son of the inventor of the power loom. There was a single, discouraging, review of his poems, in the Monthly Mirror. Some were “nearly contemptible,” others “indifferent,” a few “not far removed from excellence.” Locals nicknamed him “the bard of Butter Cross.” In an introduction to his poems, he refreshingly confesses that his motives in publishing include “Vanity” and “Want of Money.” Johnson died 13 Jan. 1843 at Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. A stained-glass window in St Thomas à Becket church, Tilshead, is dedicated to his memory. It was presented by Jospeh Holden Johnson, his grandson, the church’s vicar. (ancestry.com 13 Nov. 2023; Monthly Mirror, 7 [1799], 168-69; GM 98 [1805], 769; W. Pitt, Topographical History of Staffordshire [1817], 308; GM n.s. 19 [1843], 327; J. E. Jackson, History and Description of St. George's Church at Doncaster [1855], lxxviii; C. H. Hatfield, Historical Notices of Doncaster [1870], 38; N&Q 158 [1925], 196) JC
Other Names:
- the Rev. B. Johnson
- the Rev. Benj. Johnson