The ABCs Of Newtown: J Is For (Ezra) Johnson, Part One
“The ABCs of Newtown” is a series tying each letter of the alphabet to something in Newtown. This week we begin looking at the man considered Newtown’s first town historian.
By all public accounts, Ezra Levan Johnson was a kind and faithful, patient and unselfish, and very intelligent man. A resident of Newtown his entire life, Johnson was ahead of his time in suggesting others “pay it forward.”
Retired Newtown Bee Editor Reuben Hazen Smith, in a special editorial the week after Johnson’s death, shared the following:
“How kindly and unostentatiously, how unselfishly he gave, whether it was a glad word and a welcome smile to a child that he had met, perhaps, in visiting the Newtown schools, or some relief in distress, gem set in memory like a diamond in its kingly crown! I remember once saying how poorly I felt myself able to repay some helpful act and his reply, ‘Pass it on to someone else.’”
While the position of Town Historian did not officially exist until the Legislative Council created the appointed post in 1994, Johnson was considered by many to be the first to earn that honorary title. He was among the earliest residents to collect and then share volumes of information about his hometown.
Early Life
Ezra Levan Johnson was born November 11, 1832, the second child of Charles Johnson and Julia Merritt Johnson. He had one older sister, Adaline. He was born in a house that stood just south of the intersection of Main Street and Elm Drive. Part of the Johnson homestead still remains, at 86 South Main Street.
Johnson was a descendant of many of the town’s early families. His great-great-great-grandfather, Ebenezer Johnson, was one of the witnesses of the deed given by the indigenous people in 1705 to the three men who purchased the land that became Newtown.
He received his early education in Newtown, then took a course at the State Normal School in New Britain, and at Medina Academy, Medina, N.Y. At age 17 he began teaching in the Stony Hill district of Bethel. He also taught for one year near the Connecticut shoreline in Clinton.
Johnson spent the next ten years teaching in Newtown, in the South Center and Pootatuck districts.
The South Center schoolhouse was to the immediate north of his home. Constructed in 1889, the building continued as a one-room schoolhouse until 1922. It was sold in 1927 to Wilton Lackaye Jr and eventually moved from its original location — where The Newtown Yoga Center now stands — to 10 Riverside Road, currently home of Apex Glass.
“So thoroughly were his services appreciated that the older boys and girls from other districts in town came to his school to have the benefit of his instruction,” The Newtown Bee reported in Johnson’s obituary.
Johnson was elected in 1856 to the Board of School Visitors — today called the Board of Education. In that capacity he would visit schools, quiz the teachers, and look at registers.
“That would be their evaluation,” Dan Cruson, who formally served as Newtown Town Historian from the time of his appointment in 1994 until his death in 2021, said in 2019. Speaking to Newtown Historical Society that year for an oral history project, Cruson further explained that visits by members of the board of school were essentially evaluations that would determine the future of an educator.
“That would decide whether they would be rehired as a teacher in that district. So he became one of the major characters in Newtown’s educational structure,” he explained.
Johnson served continuously on the Board of School Visitors until his death, a period of 58 years, “a record unparalleled in this state of Connecticut,” The Bee noted in January 1915. “Up to the last his interest and sympathy in the work of the public schools continued unabated.
His attitude toward all the teachers was helpful, rather than critical,” the paper also mentioned. Johnson even continued visiting schools until just a few months before his death.
His obituary mentions customary visits in September 1914 “on the Dodgingtown, Hopewell, Pootatuck and Half Way River schools and the primary department of the Sandy Hook school, over which Mr Johnson had immediate supervision.”
A dedication in The Bridgeport Farmer credited Johnson with being “one of the fathers of free education in this State, as a pioneer in the movement to secure instruction by trainer teachers.” The Bridgeport paper also described him as “a rugged, honest, intellectual man of the Lincoln type, advanced in his views, fearless in expression of his opinions and determined in any public effort that he understood.”
The Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County, Connecticut (J.H. Beers & Co., 1899) went a step further, saying “his name is ever foremost among those favoring and advocating measures calculated for the elevation of mankind.”
Family Life
Johnson married Jane Eliza Camp (born April 6, 1837), a fellow Newtown native, on October 10, 1858. Jane’s family also had a long local lineage. Hers was the seventh generation of Camps to live in town since the arrival of Lieutenant Samuel Camp in 1707.
At the time of their marriage, Ezra was 25 and Jane was 21. Jane was also, for some years, a teacher in various Newtown districts.
They lived in a big farmhouse on South Main Street, south of Elm Drive. Between land holdings and a mill that served the community, the family, according to Cruson, and the Johnson homestead dominated the South Center section of town.
Johnson was “a very prominent farmer,” Cruson said during an oral history project interview for Newtown Historical Society in 2019. He was also very principled, very serious, and occasionally dour and very stern.
The Johnsons had four sons: William Camp Johnson, Charles Beach Johnson, Levan Merritt Johnson, and Frederick Foote Johnson. They also adopted a daughter, Dora Northrop.
In 1858 Johnson also began farming his family’s land, raising corn, wheat, and other crops normally grown in the area. By the time the family’s homestead underwent extensive renovations in 1876, Johnson was a prominent farmer and theirs became the first home in town to have plumbing.
Johnson was, according to the 1899 Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County, a staunch Republican. He also served at least one term as a local selectman.
Religious Roots
Johnson was first an active member of the Congregational church, even serving as superintendent of its Sunday school. He was also superintendent of a district Sunday school in the Huntingtown district for many years.
Shortly before his 40th birthday, however, he became a communicant of Trinity church. He was confirmed in that church in August 1871, and immediately took an active role within the parish.
He was chosen a Vestryman in April 1873, a Junior Warden at Easter 1904, and Senior Warden during the annual parish meeting in 1913. He remained Trinity’s Senior Warden until his death.
He served frequently as a delegate from the church to its conventions, his voice often heard in deliberations. Johnson’s knowledge of the town and its history assisted Trinity when it began planning its 175th anniversary of the ministry of the Reverend John Beach.
Beach — who left his position as minister of Newtown Congregational Church in 1732, causing great turmoil locally — had sailed to Britain, was ordained by the Anglican church, and returned that same year to Newtown, where he conducted his first service as rector of what became Trinity parish.
Johnson’s knowledge of tradition located the spot where Beach’s historic first service was held. The place is now marked by a memorial boulder on the northern corner of Main Street and Glover Avenue.
Johnson was also the person, according to an August 11, 1905 article in The Newtown Bee, who suggested the town honor its bicentennial that year. Johnson was named chair of a Bicentennial Committee in March, and the group met weekly for months.
For the bicentennial of the land purchase that established Newtown, Johnson and the Bicentennial Committee — local businessmen and ministers — decided that the true birth of Newtown was its purchase date, 1705, rather than 1711, when the town was formally incorporated by the general assembly. As Cruson pointed out in his Legendary Locals of Newtown, “this decision would also guide the celebration date of the tercentennial in 2005.”
Johnson was joined by fellow members of The Men’s Literary and Social Club of Newtown Street in crafting the bicentennial celebration.
“The club’s membership consisted of the leading men in town, so the job of formulating a celebration of the bicentennial logically fell to them,” Cruson wrote in 2013. “These men were the movers and shakers — the legendary locals — in 1900 Newtown.”
Among those joining Johnson on that formative committee were Reverend Otis W. Barker, minister of Newtown Congregational Church; Robert H. Beers, proprietor of The R.H. Beers Store; Reverend James H. George, minister of Trinity Episcopal Church; Michael J. Houlihan, town clerk and Grand Central Hotel proprietor; Patrick H. McCarthy, district school teacher and Newtown Post Office postmaster; and Allison P. Smith, editor of The Newtown Bee.
Next week: Part 2: A town historian emerges.
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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.