SKETCH OF SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON. 117 



SKETCH OF SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON. 



PROF. SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON is eminent for the 

 services which, he has rendered to scientific agriculture as an 

 experimenter, a contributor to its literature, and a teacher ; and 

 for his agency, always active and earnest, in securing the intro- 

 duction of whatever could advance its standards or add to the 

 prosperity of the farming interest. A descendant of Robert John- 

 son, one of the founders of the town of New Haven, he was born 

 in Kingsboro, Fulton County, New York, July 3, 1830. When he 

 was four years old the family removed to Deer River, Lewis 

 County, in the "Black River country " He was taught in the 

 common school and in Lowville Academy, where he studied Latin, 

 Greek, French, algebra, physics, botany, and chemistry. His 

 home, says the American Agriculturist, was upon a large, pro- 

 ductive, and well-managed farm, where he became familiar with 

 a wide range of agricultural practice. He taught in the common 

 schools during the winters of 1846-'47 and 1847-'48, and during 

 1848-'49 was teacher of natural science in the Flushing Institute, 

 Long Island. In 1850 he entered the Yale Scientific School, where 

 he spent eighteen months under Profs. John P. Norton and B. 

 Silliman, Jr., studying agricultural chemistry. He served during 

 the winter of 1851-52 as instructor in the natural sciences in the 

 New York State Normal School at Albany. Having spent the 

 succeeding winter in work in the laboratory at New Haven, he 

 went to Germany in January, 1853, where he spent two years in 

 study at Leipsic and Munich, under Erdmann, Liebig, von Kobell, 

 and Pettenkofer. Thence he went to England, visiting the Paris 

 Exposition on the way, and spent the summer of 1855 in study 

 under Frankland. 



In September, 1855, he became Chief Assistant in Chemistry in 

 the Scientific School of Yale College, and took charge of the labo- 

 ratory. The next year he was appointed Professor of Analytical 

 Chemistry in that school, and in 1857 he took charge also, succeed- 

 ing Prof. John A. Porter, of the chair of Agricultural Chemistry. 

 In 1875 he became Professor of Theoretical and Agricultural 

 Chemistry ; and, in addition to the performance of these several 

 duties, he has taught organic chemistry since 1870. 



With the establishment of the State Board of Agriculture of 

 Connecticut in 1866, Prof. Johnson was constituted one of its 

 members. On expiration of his term of service, two years after- 

 ward, he was appointed chemist to the board, and has served in 

 that capacity ever since. He began to advocate the establish- 

 ment of a State Agricultural Experiment Station as early as 1873. 

 The act of the Legislature organizing the station was passed in 



