Edward Crosby Johnson II was born in Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1898, to Samuel Johnson, a partner in the dry-goods firm C.F. Hovey and Co. and Josephine Johnson (née Forbush).[1] Johnson came from a family of New England Puritan ancestry.[2] He graduated from Milton Academy in 1916,[3] and enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve as a second class radioman during World War I from August 1917 to July 1918.[4] He graduated from Harvard College in 1920 and Harvard Law School in 1924.[3][5][4]
After receiving a law degree, Johnson became an associate at Boston law firm Ropes, Gray, Boyden & Perkins[6] and also became involved in stock market research.[7] Diana B. Henriques wrote in 1995: "...those who knew Ed Johnson sensed...an openness to the new and the exotic. Most of all, there was a very un-Bostonian passion for the quick, rude, sharp-witted world of Wall Street."[6]
He served as the president of the Fidelity Fund, incorporated on May 1, 1930, as well as the vice president and treasurer of the fund's board of directors.[8][9] From 1946, he served as the founding chairman of Fidelity Management and Research.[7] By 1958, Johnson managed over $400 million combined with $357 million in the Fidelity Fund and $59 million in his new Puritan Fund.[10] Beginning in 1969, Johnson chaired the board of Fidelity Management and Research.[11]
He died in Cataumet, Massachusetts, of Alzheimer's disease in 1984, and his funeral was held at Milton's Universalist First Parish Church.[7]