Thomas Johnson

Thomas Johnson (November 4, 1732 – October 26, 1819) was an 18th-century American lawyer, politician, and patriot. He was a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, where he signed the Continental Association; commander of the Maryland militia in 1776; and elected first (non-Colonial) governor of Maryland in 1777. Throughout his career, Johnson maintained a personal and political friendship with George Washington, the daughter of the judge under whom he apprenticed. They had eight children, including one who died in infancy and a second who died as a young adult.

Johnson returned to Maryland and continued his work in the state's Assembly when the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. In 1775 he drafted the declaration of rights adopted by the Maryland assembly and later included as the first part of the state's first constitution. It was adopted for Maryland by the state's constitutional convention at Annapolis in 1776. He also served as a senior brigadier general in the Maryland militia from January 1776 to February 1777, commanding troops sent to aid Washington during his retreat through New Jersey in the winter. Thomas Johnson and his brothers supported the revolution by manufacturing ammunition and possibly cannon. Their former factory, Catoctin Furnace, is now part of a state park near Camp David, just north of Frederick, Maryland. In the winter of 1777, Johnson delivered supplies to the Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge. the resulting conference agreed to regulate and settle the jurisdiction and navigation on their mutual border of the Potomac River. Their process served as a predecessor to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Johnson attended the Maryland Convention in 1788, where he successfully urged the state's ratification of the United States Constitution. That year, he lost to John Eager Howard in the Maryland gubernatorial election.

Federal years In September 1789, President George Washington nominated Johnson to be the first federal judge for the District of Maryland, but he declined the appointment. In 1790 and 1791, Johnson was the senior justice in the Maryland General Court system. In January 1791, President Washington appointed Johnson, with David Stuart and Daniel Carroll, to the commission that would lay out the federal capital in accordance with the Residence Act of 1790. In September 1791 the commissioners named the federal city "The City of Washington" and the federal district "The Territory of Columbia".

On August 5, 1791, Johnson received a recess appointment from Washington as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, to the seat vacated by John Rutledge, and was sworn into office on September 19, 1791.

Johnson was one of the first investors in the Illinois-Wabash Company, which acquired a vast swath of land in Illinois directly from several Indian tribes. Soon after his death in 1819 his son Joshua Johnson and grandson Thomas Graham sued William M'Intosh in the landmark Supreme Court case Johnson v. McIntosh. The case, which remains one of the most important property decisions in American history, determined that only the federal government could acquire Indian land, so Johnson's descendants did not have good title to the property.

Other schools named after Thomas Johnson include Governor Thomas Johnson Middle School in Frederick, Maryland, Thomas Johnson Middle School in Lanham, Maryland and Thomas Johnson Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1978, the Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge was opened to traffic. The bridge crosses the Patuxent River and connects Calvert with St. Mary's Counties. As Johnson was a slave owner, the naming of schools for him has become controversial.