The Roeliff Jansen Historical Society
PRESERVING THE HISTORY AND HERITAGE OF THE ROE JAN COMMUNITY
Dr. Wesley Johnson of Hillsdale:
A Gentleman of Talent and Liberal Education
Research and text by
RJHS Board Member Ron Otteson
Wesley Johnson was born in 1813, the son of Quincy and Abigail Johnson of Hillsdale. Family lore linked the Hillsdale Johnsons to the original Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Today, the Johnson family home is still on Old Town Road, right where it forks to the west off Route 22.
Young Wesley matriculated at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical College in 1836 where he studied with Dr. Jacob Green, a prominent academic and early contributor to scientific research in America.
In August 1837, immediately after receiving his medical degree, Dr. Johnson traveled to Africa to begin work in a small seaside settlement of former American slaves located about 70 miles south of Monrovia, the present-day capital of Liberia. This tiny community called Bassa Cove was part of the wider African colonization project that had complex links to the northern American anti-slavery movement and Methodist Episcopal churches. The earliest advocates of this controversial national project included well-known figures of the early American republic, such as Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, and Bushrod Washington. The fragile Bassa Cove settlement was being funded jointly by the New York and Pennsylvania Colonization Societies which had grown increasingly concerned about the high rate of mortality in the community. And so Dr. Johnson was employed as a physician to care for the population there. He worked closely with Thomas Buchanan, cousin of the U.S. President, who was then governor of the larger Monrovia colony up the coast.
Within a year, young Wesley Johnson of Hillsdale was unexpectedly appointed the governor of Bassa Cove and in command of the small militia responsible for protecting the settlers from attacks by the surrounding native population. After the murder of the leader of another colony, Dr. Johnson
was injured in the ensuing battle involving a notorious slave trader named Captain Theodore Canot. (A copy of an original 1854 edition of Captain Canot’s life story, along with an 1841 letter written by Dr. Johnson from Africa to his mother Abigail, has been donated to the RJHS by Ron and Yukiko Otteson.)
After recovering from his injuries, Dr. Johnson took on a new role to establish a high school for the colony. The curriculum was designed to develop a cadre of leaders and administrators for the settler community. There were lessons on mathematics, bookkeeping, surveying, and navigation.
The school was being sponsored by a benevolent society named the Ladies' Liberia School Association of Philadelphia. This group shared some of the goals of the national African colonization movement but was concerned primarily with the education of the children of the former slaves. An allocation of $3,000 was made to Dr. Johnson for the construction of a two-story brick building on Factory Island located about two miles up the St. John River from the coast. An 1845 report later commended Dr. Johnson’s accomplishments:
He watched with increasing care over the erection of the building, organized the school and proved by experience that the plan was practicable, and promised the best results. … He had in the school about twenty-five scholars, who were received on their paying 75 cents per week for their board, in labor, cash, lumber, or provisions.
Source: Annual Report of the American Colonization Society, January 21, 1845 (pg. 6)
But Dr. Johnson’s work on the school was tragically cut short by poor health in 1844. Tropical illness had already damaged his spleen. He was able to make the long journey home to Hillsdale where he soon succumbed to his illness at the age of 31. His grave can be found today next to his father and mother in Hillsdale’s Old Town Cemetery just off Route 22.
Today, our twenty-first century technology allows us to easily discover a poignant postscript to Wesley Johnson’s life and his role in American and African history. Genealogy records show that his younger brother, John Quincy, had married Sarah Latting in March just a few months before Wesley’s final return home to Hillsdale. These records show that on February 6, 1845 Sarah gave birth to a baby who was given the name Wesley Johnson.
“...we have lost a devoted teacher, and Africa a devoted friend and martyr.” *
*Tribute of Respect to the Memory of Dr. Wesley Johnson, Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the American
Colonization Society, January 21, 1845,
Hon. Henry Clay, President.
Article adapted from the 2023 RJHS Exhibition, "The First 40: A Celebration of Local History Preserved"
A Fascinating Link to Our Local
History Discovered at
Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
Spring 2026
WESLEY JOHNSON
UPDATE!
New research and text by Ron Otteson
If you visited the RJHS museum in Copake Falls back in the summer of 2023 you may recall seeing a small display of information and artifacts related to a young 19th century physician from Hillsdale named Dr. Wesley Johnson. To learn more about Dr. Johnson, please see the 2023 article included on this page of the website.
Since our 2023 summer exhibit, ongoing re-search by the RJHS has identified that Dr. Johnson was sending African animal and plant specimens to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia* as donations to its collections. In this effort, Dr. Johnson dealt with John Cassin, a curator at the Academy, and one of America's foremost ornithologists. Cassin was also a contemporary of John James Audubon. For more information on John Cassin and the specimens still remaining in the collection to this day, please be sure to see the illustrations and link below.
Background on Dr. Wesley's time in Liberia
Shortly after earning his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1836, Dr. Johnson travelled to Liberia in West Africa. He was employed there for several years as a teacher and physician. His work was sponsored by Pennsylvania organizations that were affiliated with a national anti-slavery movement seeking to settle freed American slaves in Africa. Dr. Johnson returned to Hillsdale in 1844 where he soon succumbed to the effects of a tropical illness at the age of 31. (The Quincy Johnson House, the Hillsdale family home where he grew up, is still right there on Old Town Road just off Route 22.)
In the final year of his work in Liberia Dr Johnson established a school on a small island in the St.Johns River near a coastal settlement named Bassa Cove.
This school was funded by the Philadelphia Ladies’ Liberia School Association, a benevolent organization run by Rachel (Willett) Blanding of
Philadelphia. Rachel was the wife of Dr. William
Blanding, a prominent 19th century naturalist.
(Ever heard of the semi-aquatic “Blanding’s Turtle”, Emydoidea blandingii ?)
In one of Dr. Johnson’s letters home, the farm boy from Hillsdale writes about encouraging his students (mostly the young sons of freed slaves) to learn about the natural world around them on the St. John’s River:
“We rise at 5 1/2 o'clock, (by the bell,) work from 6 to 8, breakfast from 8 to 9, study from 9 to 12, dine and recreate from 12 to 2, study from 2 to 4, work from 4 to 6, (sunset,) sup from 6 to 7, get a lesson for the morning recitation, and go to bed at 9. Our times for studying natural history are at noon, and when we go to the settlements in a canoe, we take one of the presses along and collect on the margins of the river.”
Source: Kocher, K.L. (1984). Duty to America and Africa:
A history of the independent African colonization movement in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania History, 51(2),
143 https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/24445
*Renamed the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in 2011, today the museum on Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Boulevard is the oldest natural science research institution in the Americas.
The label on this specimen indicates that it is a Red Eyed Dove, a common African pigeon species known for its distinctive red eye-ring, dark grey-brown plumage, and a black collar on the hindneck. (The label identifies the bird as Turtur erythrophrys; its current scientific name is Streptopelia semitorquata erythrophrys.
In addition, the label misclassifies Dr. Johnson as
Rev. Wesley Johnson. This error is understandable since many
of the administrators of the early Liberia settlements
were religious ministers.)
The label on this specimen indicates that it is a form of
Crimson Seedcracker, a small, chunky finch found in West Africa, with a short, thick bill adapted for cracking hard seeds. (The label clearly shows that it was classified with the name Pyronestes coccineus cassin. In fact, John Cassin (1813-1868) was one of America’s most well-known ornithologists and was a curator
at the Academy from 1842 to 1869.)
The label on this specimen indicates that it is a bird known today as the Western Nicator (Nicator chloris), a shy - but very vocal - songbird that lives along the coast of West Africa.
For more about John Cassin and the 19th century study and collection of African bird species, read Elizabeth Serrano's article "The People Behind the Birds Named for People: John Cassin' from All About Birds by Cornell Labs.
CLICK HERE
Special thanks to Dr. Nathan Rice at the Academy at the Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia for providing the above specimen photos.
The RJHS is continuing to research Dr. Wesley Johnson of Hillsdale (1813-1844) and to collect artifacts related to him for the museum collection. If you have any information about his story or his descendants, please reach out to the RJHS and let us know. We’d really love to hear about it!