Author: Johnson, Lucinda
Biography:
JOHNSON, Lucinda (fl 1819)
The poet is either Dinah Lucinda Johnson (1770/71-1844) or her niece, Dinah Lucinda Johnson (1799-1845). The two women lived together in the 1830s and 1840s in a property called Leake Cottage, in Chapel Allerton, Yorkshire. The elder Dinah Lucinda inherited the cottage from her sister-in-law Lucinda Wilson (1766-1832). She died there at age 73, on 17 Aug. 1844. The younger Dinah Lucinda Johnson also died at Leake Cottage, unmarried on 15 Dec. 1845. Born 20 Dec. 1799, she was baptised 18 Apr 1800 at St Peter, Leeds. Her father, merchant John Johnson of Leeds, married his first cousin, Mary Johnson, at St Peter on 21 Dec. 1794. The marriage was witnessed by Ann Copperthwaite, a relevant detail because Lucinda Wilson and Ann were cousins. Beginning early in the eighteenth-century, several generations of West Yorkshire Johnsons, Copperthwaites, Wilsons, and other related families the Howsons and the Taylors, intermarried. They were well-established merchants, shoemakers, and cloth manufacturers. Most were Wesleyan Methodists, but they tended to marry and to baptize their children in the Church of England. (In the late 1810s and early 1820s, Lucinda Wilson and the elder and younger Dinah Lucinda were active in the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. The younger Dinah Lucinda was buried in the grounds of a Wesleyan Methodist chapel at Hunslet, several miles from Leake Cottage.) Judging from Lucinda and Elizabeth Johnson’s poetry, the Johnsons educated their boys and their girls to a high standard. The “Miss Wilson” referenced on the title page of A Tribute to the Memory of Mrs. Elizh. Johnson, late of Chapel-Town, near Leeds. Respectfully Dedicated to Miss Wilson, evidently a relative of Lucinda Wilson, may have been Mary Wilson of Chapel Allerton, born 3 Mar 1801 to John Wilson, or Ann Wilson, born 14 June 1801 to Edward Wilson, also of Chapel Allerton. Elements of Lucinda Johnson’s 1819 A Tribute and Elizabeth Johnson’s (q.v.) 1815 Poems demonstrate a close relationship between Elizabeth Johnson, the elder and younger Dinah Lucinda Johnson, and Sarah (Johnson) Slack, the wife of John Slack, minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel at Stokesley. Elizabeth Johnson’s book was published at Stokesley; the Preface to Lucinda Johnson’s book is dated “Stokesley, Oct. 16, 1815;” and Lucinda Johnson’s residence, Chapel Allerton, is a single mile from Elizabeth Johnson’s residence at Chapel Town. (ancestry.com 17 Nov. 2023; PROB 11/1803; E. Baines, History, Directory and Gazeteer [sic], of the County of York [1822], 1:480, 481; Pigot’s Directory [1834]; Leeds Intelligencer, 10 July 1841; Leeds Mercury, 17 Aug 1844; Leeds Times, 13 Dec 1845; R. J. Morris, Men, Women, and Property in England, 1780-1870 [2005], 244) JC