Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

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is shown by two circumstances : first, that the records of Yale College
refer to a call to the ministry at Newark which was given to Rev. Samuel
Johnson in 1716, about the time when he became a Tutor in the College
—when New Jersey was a province remote from Connecticut, and Yale
College had no continental reputation ; and, secondly, that (as we learn
from the late Dr. Woolsey Johnson of New York*) Rev. Stephen Johnson
of Lyme, a great grandson of Thomas of Newark, is known to have been
a correspondent of Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson of Stratford, as well as of
his son Dr. William Samuel Johnson, second President of King's (or
Columbia) College—this correspondence being the more significant because
the writers differed so widely from each other, both in their religious and
political views, that only ties of blood would seem likely to have brought
them into correspondence. To this may be added the farther consideration
that Rev. Stephen Johnson was younger by a generation than Rev. Dr.
Samuel. We hoped to print one or more of the letters of this correspon-
dence; but, though Rev. Dr. Beardsley remembers having seen one of them,
at least, among the papers of the Johnsons of Stratford, a diligent search
by him, recently, has failed to bring any of them to light.
We are not informed of the precise year, or years, of the emigration
of the three brothers of the first generation. Rev. Dr. Beardsley only
states that Robert "with his wife Adaline and four sons, Robert, Thomas,
John and William, came from Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire •,""' with
which accords the circumstance that his residence and principal landed
property seems to have been in "the Yorkshire Quarter" of the rising
town of New Haven (now represented by York street of the present
city). From the fact that both he and his brother John entertained the
idea of removing to the Bay Plantation, which John carried into effect,
there is little doubt that both of them first touched the soil of the New
World in Massachusetts.
In a letter to Mrs. E. E. Salisbury, March 26, 1874.
" Beardsley's Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D.D., ut supra, pp. 1-2.
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