Clifton Johnson

Clifton Johnson (January 25, 1865 – January 22, 1940) was an American author, illustrator, and photographer. He published some 125 books in many genres including travel books, children's stories, and biographies, many with his own illustrations and photographs.

Early life and marriage

Clifton Johnson was born on January 25, 1865, in the village of Hockanum in Hadley, Massachusetts. He was the oldest child of Chester Lorenzo Johnson and Jeanette (née Reynolds) and had three siblings: two brothers, Charles (b. 1867) and Henry R. (b. 1868), and one sister, Jeanette L., known as Nettie (b.1872). He attended a local, one room schoolhouse, and then, the Hopkins Academy in Hadley. He dropped out at age 15 and spent five years working at the Bridgman & Lyman bookstore in Northampton before moving to New York City to study at the Art Students League of New York.

The Johnson family farm was located on the shore of the Connecticut River and, as a boy, Johnson enjoyed all that the river offered; boating, fishing, bathing, and skating in winter. Along with other boys, he enjoyed freeing logs that were caught in the river's curving shores after they were sent down-current from Canadian forests. During his early life, he barely traveled outside of Hockanum which "was hardly big enough to deserve the name ‘village,’" and he only traveled as far as Holyoke or Northampton to peddle berries. He was a self-described "hoodlum" and along with his friends "[w]e just delighted to steal apples, watermelons, and everything else." As a student, he disliked mathematics and classics preferring history and natural science, especially botany for which he had a great passion and allowed him to be outdoors.