Biographical Note

Born January 25, 1865, Clifton was the oldest of Chester and Jeanette Johnson’s four children. He and his siblings Henry, Charles, and Jeanette (Nettie) grew up on a farm in Hockanum, a small village of Hadley, Massachusetts along the Connecticut River where Johnsons had lived since the late 1700s. This rural upbringing was the cornerstone of Clifton’s creativity. His photographs and many of his articles, books, and illustrations focused on the everyday lives of country folk. 

Clifton’s education started at the village’s one-room schoolhouse. Later, he became a student at Hopkins Academy in Hadley. His time there was short, as he dropped out at 15 to work at Bridgman and Childs book and stationery store in Northampton to help pay off the family mortgage. He had to board in town since he could not take the ferry every day but it made him extremely homesick at first. 
While living in Northampton, Johnson began writing and illustrating for local periodicals in the Springfield and Northampton areas. Praised and encouraged for his work, he moved to New York City in the fall of 1887 to hone his artistic talent at the Art Students League. In 1888, he purchased his first camera and started taking photographs to aid his drawing. In 1892, he published his first book, The New England Country. He began to split his time between Hadley and New York City, attending literary and art functions, and continuing to write and illustrate for local publications. With his literary career well in hand, Johnson decided to settle down.

On May 25, 1896 he married Anna McQueston (1876-1954), a Hockanum resident and the teacher at the village’s one-room schoolhouse they had attended as children. After a honeymoon to Scotland and England (that doubled as a work trip for Clifton), they moved into his childhood homestead. They had six children, Margaret, Arthur, Roger, Irving, Oliver (who died in infancy), and Katharine. 

Though settled in Hadley, Johnson continued his career as a photographer, illustrator, writer, and self-styled folklorist. He was almost exclusively interested in documenting the rural, countryside inhabitants of small towns and farmlands. He wrote a series of travel books, the Highways and Byways of America series, with coverage of 48 states; he wrote and illustrated a series of volumes on counties in western Massachusetts; and he published four volumes on travel in England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, each illustrated with his photographs or drawings. He also wrote a biography of his friend John Burroughs and another of inventor Hudson Maxim.  

By the early 1900s, Johnson was involved in children’s literature and education. He wrote several volumes on the history of rural schoolhouses and early American schooling, including Old-Time Schools and School-Books (1904, reprinted numerous times, most recently in 2014), as well as a number of children’s stories which he also illustrated or edited. During the course of his research on children and education, he gathered a very large collection of schoolbooks from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. By the end of his life, he had amassed an important collection of juvenile books and schoolbooks, now housed at the Jones Library.
Clifton helped his brother Henry start Johnson’s Bookstore (at the time named Henry R. Johnson’s Blank Books) in Springfield, Massachusetts. Clifton provided financial backing and designed the store’s logo featuring a shallop, a boat operated by the early settlers on the Connecticut River. Henry’s propensity to collect old farm equipment led to the two brothers opening a farm museum in 1930. Dr. James Huntington of Boston donated a barn form his family’s estate that the brothers, against the advice of architects, moved in one piece over winter and spring to its new location behind the Hadley Town Hall.

Johnson was very active with clubs and organizations in Hadley, MA. He participated in the Hadley Men’s Club with the blind poet Clarence Hawkes and was the administrative head of the Hadley Free Library for several years. He was also an elected Democratic delegate of Hadley for several years. He wrote a history of the local schoolhouse (The Country School, 1895), a history of Hadley (Historic Hadley: quarter millennial souvenir, 1659-1909, 1909), a 3-volume history of Hampden County, 1636-1936 (1936), and made numerous donations to the First Congregational Church. 

Johnson continued to write and photograph through the mid-1930s, with his last book, Sailing for Gold, published in 1938. He died on January 22, 1940 in a Brattleboro, VT hospital.

Arthur Johnson was in the U.S. Navy during World War II, sweeping for mines in the Atlantic. Roger and Arthur bought Johnson’s Bookstore in 1922 becoming the first members of the second generation to own the store.

Irving became a professional sailor, met his wife Electa “Exy” Search on board the Wanderbird, and the two married in 1932 and circumnavigated the globe seven times on two vessels, both named Yankee. During World War II Irving joined the U.S. Navy and was commissioned as a Lieutenant Commander. He advised the Pacific Fleet on the conditions of the South Seas which he knew well. He finished the war as the commanding officer of the USS Sumner. After the war, Irving and Exy kept exploring the world until the 1960s and documented their voyages in books, articles, and National Geographic videos. In 2003, the Los Angeles Maritime Institute honored Irving and Exy by naming twin brigantines in their honor.