Willis Fletcher Johnson

My Country 'tis of Thee (1892) by Johnson and John Habberton (World's Columbian Exposition)

Willis Fletcher Johnson (1857 – March 29, 1931), was an author, journalist, and lecturer who had a twenty-year tenure as the foreign and diplomatic editorial writer for The New York Tribune.[1]

Critical reception

According to Paula Hunt, writing in The New England Quarterly in 2015, Johnson's Colonel Henry Ludington: A Memoir was published privately by Ludington's grandchildren, Charles H. and Lavinia Elizabeth Ludington.[2] The biography, according to Hunt, "offers a laudatory account" of the colonel's life; Hunt states that it "was certainly not of the order of Johnson’s usual projects", noting that it was omitted from his New York Times obituary.[3] She writes that the New England Historical & Genealogical Register reviewed it as a "charming, simple memoir",[3] which she says was intended to "remedy a belief that the Revolution-era militia and its officers had not received the recognition they deserved and to ensure the colonel's place in American history", citing page vii of the Memoirs.[4] She characterized the work as a "not wholly reliable source".[5]

Works

Some of Johnson's works include:

• Life of Wm. Tecumseh Sherman.[6]
• Colonel Henry Ludington A Memoir[7]

References

1. "W. F. Johnson Dead; Editorial writer; Had Been on the Former New York Tribune's Staff for the Last Fifty Years. An Author And Lecturer. Wrote Much on Foreign and Diplomatic Subjects. Was of Early Colonial Stock". New York Times. March 29, 1931. Retrieved 2011-05-03. Willis Fletcher Johnson, author, lecturer and for twenty years foreign and diplomatic editorial writer for The New York Tribune, died here today of cancer in Overlook Hospital at the age of 74 years.
2. Hunt 2015, p. 192.
3. Hunt 2015, p. 193.
4. Hunt 2015, pp. 193–194.
5. Hunt 2015, p. 189.
6. Johnson, 1891
7. Johnson, Willis Fletcher. "Colonel Henry Ludington A Memoir". Project Gutenberg. Lavinia Elizabeth Ludington & Charles Henry Ludington. Retrieved 24 June 2020.

Sources

• Hunt, Paula D. (June 2015). "Sybil Ludington, the Female Paul Revere: The Making of a Revolutionary War Heroine". The New England Quarterly. 88 (2): 187–222. doi:10.1162/TNEQ_a_00452. ISSN 0028-4866. S2CID 57569643.
• Johnson, Willis Fletcher (1891). Life of Wm. Tecumseh Sherman. Edgewood Publishing Company.
• Johnson, Willis Fletcher (1907). Colonel Henry Ludington A Memoir. New York: Lavinia Elizabeth Ludington & Charles Henry Ludington.

External links

• Works by W. Fletcher Johnson at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Willis Fletcher Johnson at the Internet Archive
• Works by Willis Fletcher Johnson at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)