“The ABCs of Newtown” is a series tying each letter of the alphabet to something in Newtown. This week we continue our look at the man considered Newtown’s first town historian.

To recap last week: Ezra Levan Johnson was born November 11, 1832, the second child of Charles Johnson and Julia Merritt Johnson.

A descendant of many of the town’s early families, it seems only fitting that the great-great-great-grandson of 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 would become rooted himself in preserving many of Newtown’s early historic records.

Johnson was a lifelong resident of Newtown. His family’s homestead was on the western side of today’s South Main Street, just south of that road’s intersection with Elm Drive. He became a farmer, and a teacher, and spent ten years teaching in Newtown, in the South Center and Pootatuck districts. The South Center schoolhouse was to the immediate north of his home.

He married fellow Newtown native Jane Camp on October 10, 1858. The couple produced four sons, and adopted a daughter.

In 1856 Johnson was elected to the Board of School Visitors, the equivalent of today’s Board of Education. He served continuously on the board for 58 years, until his death.

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 publication 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.”

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.

He was raised in the Congregational church, even serving as superintendent of its Sunday school, but became a communicant of Trinity Episcopal Church shortly before his 40th birthday. He was confirmed in that church in August 1871 and immediately took an active role in that parish. He was a Vestryman, then a Junior Warden, and then a Senior Warden, a post he held until his death.

(Johnson’s youngest son, Frederick Foote Johnson, is the only citizen of Newtown to reach the level of bishop in the Episcopal church. Frederick was consecrated on November 2, 1905, in his home church. Although he had been elected to become assistant Bishop to Bishop Hare of South Dakota, the consecration was celebrated at Trinity Episcopal Church, with six regional bishops and more than 100 clergy among those in attendance.)

It was Johnson who suggested the town honor its bicentennial in 1905. Johnson and fellow members of the Bicentennial Committee — local businessmen and ministers, all members of The Men’s Literary and Social Club of Newtown Street — 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 Dan Cruson — who served as Newtown Town Historian from 1994 until his death in 2021 — pointed out in Legendary Locals of Newtown, “this decision would also guide the celebration date of the tercentennial in 2005.”

Ezra Johnson was also, by all accounts, a kind and faithful, patient and unselfish, and very intelligent man.

A Town Historian Emerges

According to Cruson, it was a souvenir booklet that included a brief history of Newtown, used for Johnson’s public address for the town’s bicentennial, that catapulted him into his position as historian.

Speaking to The Newtown Bee in 2014, Cruson said that booklet “was the first comprehensive sketch of Newtown history, and the research for that got him interested in Newtown history.” After that, Johnson’s research began getting published on the front page of The Newtown Bee.

“He was what we call an antiquarian historian,” meaning Johnson tended to publish antique documents in full, Cruson also said eight years ago.

Many early unofficial town historians were resource people, Cruson said in 2019. They were people who kept track of names, numbers, locations, and records. Reporters could often call on them for background information, he said.

Many of them did have talent, and had written down some of their work, according to Cruson. Not only had Johnson been among the first to do that, said Cruson, he was also “a gifted writer.”

Cruson said after Johnson delivered his bicentennial oration, he was approached by people who heard the lecture but wanted to return to it, to read it at their leisure.

“It wasn’t written down,” Cruson said. “There were just notes. And so he agreed to turn out a more complete history.”

The resulting 140-page offering was published as a bicentennial souvenir.

“That kind of established him,” Cruson continued. “He got to the point where he really liked dealing with this history. He had access, because his family saved everything. They were one of those who didn’t throw anything at all away.”

Johnson’s work began to be published in The Newtown Bee, and he “was on the forefront of history” with those papers. He began copying tax lists, or biographical sketches of local ministers, and getting them in front of the newspaper’s readers.

“The fact remains that a lot of these were buried in town records and people had trouble reading the old handwriting,” said Cruson. “Some of it was faded. Some of it was damaged. A little more than 100 years ago he managed to transcribe all of that and so it is available in his notes, and it is also available in what he published in The Newtown Bee. So he preserved primary documents, material that would be available for the first time from his research in town records. He preserved the town records. That is another reason why he deserves to be called the first historian of Newtown.”

Cruson called Johnson “a fascinating character and entirely devoted to the community.”

Johnson’s work as a local historian “stands forth pre-eminently,” The Newtown Bee wrote in his obituary. Ahead of and during the town’s bicentennial celebrations in 1905, Johnson was chairman of the executive committee and also served as historian of the day.

“The citizens of Newtown are indebted to Mr Johnson for his painstaking work in his local historical writing, which appeared from time to time in the columns of The Bee,” the newspaper shared. “To the editor and business manager of The Bee, he has always been a sympathetic and helpful friend, and it is with sorrow we are compelled to note the passing on of Mr Johnson. To a large degree it may be truthfully said, his outlook on life was unselfish, and in this lies the great secret of his success.”

Johnson had for years been planning to publish a book on the history of Newtown. Much of his work was published as contributed columns in The Newtown Bee.

‘Newtown’s History And Historian’

Three years after his death, Jane Johnson published Newtown’s History and Historian, consisting of the collected articles and additional written research her late husband had worked on. It was the first published history of Newtown.

In her Foreword, Jane wrote that it had been “the fond desire and stated purpose of the late Ezra Levan Johnson to publish and preserve the early history of his native town and in this labor of unrequited love he gave unstintedly of time, travel and research.”

Further into the Foreword Mrs Johnson also noted: “It is but the plain truth that no man was so well equipped for the task which Mr Johnson set for himself with such unflagging zeal, both in his own knowledge of Newtown’s past and in his painstaking search into local records, as well as those of the Colony, State and Nation.”

It sold for $10, which was about the weekly wage of a skilled laborer at that time.

While the cost may have been unwieldy for most during that era, Cruson nevertheless called the collection invaluable, “a great source of information that would otherwise be hard to get hold of.”

As mentioned earlier, Johnson was additionally a member of the longstanding and storied Men’s Club (formally The Men’s Literary and Social Club of Newtown Street), joining shortly after its organization in 1894. He served a term as its president.

Although many families and residents in town have been memorialized with a road name, Johnson is not (yet) among them. Johnson Drive in Sandy Hook was named for the builder Henry Johnson, whose constructions include several of the homes on the road named for him.

The Johnsons traveled extensively later in life. Their youngest son, Frederick Foote Johnson, became the bishop of South Dakota. The couple visited him there a few times. Later, following Frederick’s retirement to California, they also visited him there.

Death

Johnson’s health began to fail in November 1914. His decline was rapid, according to his obituary.

He died Sunday, December 27, “about 1.30 p.m.,” the newspaper noted. He was 82 years old.

“For some days previous to his death it was seen that the end was not far distant, but he passed peacefully away, as one laying down to sleep,” it was also said.

The week after Johnson’s death, tributes to him took up easily two-thirds of the front page of the January 1, 1915 issue of The Newtown Bee.

The newspaper that week not only called Johnson the town’s historian but also “its most widely known and best beloved citizen.”

His funeral was conducted Wednesday, December 30, from Trinity church, “and was one of the largest attended funerals held in recent years,” according to The Bee. Reverend James Hardin George, rector of Trinity, officiated. Johnson’s four sons served as pallbearers.

He is buried in Newtown Village Cemetery. Jane Eliza Camp Johnson, who lived another eight years, is buried next to him.

In a special editorial for the newspaper, retired Publisher Reuben H. Smith wrote that week that “it was a happy Providence that turned his patient industry, his unrequited toil, his faithful research to the early, musty records of his native town. Who is left that carries in memory so much of Newtown’s history, and who knows the intimate family details of Newtowners scattered far and near in our modern widening world? Who has the ardent zeal to carry on his valuable labors with a zest and perseverance that invested even his columns of names and quotations from documents painfully and carefully searched out, with an aroma and halo all their own. He was Newtown’s first and most devoted historian, and a prophet too little honored by those for whom he toiled so unselfishly.”

Smith credited Johnson for staying mentally sharp, “so active his mind, so unspoiled a native greatness of soul, so general his interest in to-day and the fresh innocence of childhood. His fellow citizens recognized this unfailing buoyancy by keeping him on the School Board, in spite of four score years, and the church of his adoption was glad to honor him in an official way.”

A “large and commanding” man, according to Smith, Johnson’s “qualities of mind and heart matched his frame.”

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.