Elijah Johnson (agent)
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Elijah Johnson (c. 1789[A] – April 3, 1849) was an African American who was one of the first colonial agents of the American Colonization Society in what later became Liberia. He was probably born in New Jersey and received some limited schooling in New Jersey and New York. He served as a soldier in the War of 1812 and studied for the Methodist ministry. In 1835 he led a company of 120 armed volunteers from Monrovia on a punitive expedition to engage King Joe as a result of the Port Cresson massacre.[1][2][3][4] His son Hilary R. W. Johnson was elected in 1884 as President of Liberia, the first to have been born in the country.
Elijah Johnson was of mixed-race ancestry and was born about 1790 probably in New York.[citation needed] He had two children out of wedlock, Lewis Johnson (1810 – 1838) and Charles Johnson (born 1812). He later married and had one daughter, Elizabeth (born 1818), with his wife Mary Johnson.[5] After immigrating to the colony of Liberia in 1820, his wife died of fever or malaria. He married again and had several children with his second wife, Rachel Wright. Two of his children, Sarah (b. about 1811), and Elijah Johnson, Junior (born about 1812), were left in an orphanage in Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1816. Their mother was not identified, but their father was recorded as Elijah Johnson. He is known to have moved to Pennsylvania from New York, prior to the War of 1812, in which he served. After the War, he studied at a Methodist school and was ordained as a minister of the Methodist church in northern New York.