Author: Johnson, John
Biography:
JOHNSON, John (c. 1763-1804: ODNB)
In 1740, as part of his mission to Georgia, the Methodist leader George Whitefield established the Bethesda Orphanage near Savannah. He entrusted it to Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, upon his death thirty years later. But the orphanage was mismanaged and neglected. The State requested it for a university. In 1790, the Countess despatched a trusted minister-missionary to America to reclaim it. He was John Johnson, born near Norwich, trained for the ministry in the Countess's College at Trevecca, and in 1783 ordained at her chapel in Spa Fields--one of the first six students to be ordained in the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. He had preached first in Wigan and then in Tyldesley, near Manchester, before being sent abroad. Details of his birth, parentage, and marriage are not reliably recorded, but when he left for Georgia he was accompanied by his wife. The Countess however died in 1791 and the State moved to take over the property through the courts. Johnson and his wife were forcibly removed in January 1792, at which point he protested with his poem The Rape of Bethesda--in vain. The Johnsons returned to Tyldesley and then to a final posting, from 1798, at St George's Church, Manchester. William Roby preached Johnson's funeral sermon, with a personal memoir. (ODNB 20 June 2019; John Thomas Scott, "The Final Effort to Fulfil George Whitefield's Bequest . . ." Georgia Historical Quarterly 89:4 [2005] 433-61)