Johnson, Thomas Herbert, 1902-1985

homas Herbert Johnson (1902-1985) was born in Bradford, Vermont, the son of
Herbert Thomas Johnson (1872-1942) and Myra Burbeck Johnson. Myra Burbeck came
from Danvers, Massachusetts. Herbert, the son of Thomas and Harriet (Avery) Johnson,
also of Bradford, Vermont, had served in the Vermont National Guard during the
Spanish-American War and was Vermont’s Adjutant-General from 1917 to 1941. The
Vermont National Guard’s headquarters in Colchester, Vermont, Camp Johnson, is
named for him. His father, Thomas, was the son of Captain Haynes Johnson of
Newbury, Vermont.
Thomas H. Johnson married Catherine Schyler Rice of New York on September
11, 1934, and they had two children, Thomas and Laura. Thomas had a sister, Ruth,
married to Francis P. Tompkins, and a brother, Edward C., who died at age twenty-four.
Thomas briefly attended Dartmouth, and after a year of teaching, started over
again at Williams College, class of 1926. He earned his PhD. from Harvard in 1934. He
taught at Rutgers, Harvard, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Williams.
He joined the faculty of the Lawrenceville School in 1937, serving as chairman of the
English Department there from 1944 until he retired in 1967. He was the author of The
Oxford Companion to American History, is credited with discovering the Puritan poet
Edward Taylor (1664?-1729), co-edited the Literary History of the United States (1948, 3
vols.), and was the editor of six volumes of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. His
last work was Emily Dickinson: An Interpretative Biography, published in 1955. Thomas
H. Johnson died January 3, 1985.