Willaiam Gordon Johson

1834–1897
Hometown: Ithaca, Thompkins, New York

William Gordon Johnson (Image courtesy of C. Gardenier)

Civil War Marine Will Johnson was the son of Benjamin Franklin Johnson, Esq., and Jane Dey and his siblings included several prominent Ithaca residents:

His sister Eleanor married the Rev. Anthony Schuyler, who was the son of Caroline Brother (Charley Brother's aunt) and Peter Schuyler. Eleanor named her third child Charles Brother Schuyler (1841-1929).

His sister Hetty married the banker Charles Philo Dibble, who as a child played with the Roosevelts.

His brother Charles was a graduate of West Point Military Academy but resigned the military to pursue business and died in Mexico.

His sister Louisa married wealthy Joseph Britton Sprague, who later became the mayor or village president. His gardens were so lovely that they opened his estate for the public to stroll about as a park.

His sister Isabella married real estate developer Charles Titus, who also served as president of the Geneva & Ithaca Railroad Company and assemblyman for New York (three times).

A year and a half before Johnson signed up for the Marines, his mother, a widow for 14 years, had moved into a new house. She was a descendant of the family attached to the Dey Mansion Washington’s Headquarters Museum.

Johnson stated that his mother’s new home in Ithaca was considered the finest place in town, even better than the new home for Ezra Cornell, who would establish Cornell University four years later.

Johnson worked as an Express Agent and Sunday School teacher before the war.

His father’s work as a beloved mayor of Ithaca, New York and attorney there shaped our Civil War Marine, although he was only 14 years old when his father died.

Ben Johnson followed the laws of slavery even though he detested it.

Will enlisted at the Marine Barracks in Brooklyn, New York on August 15, 1862 and served on the USS Vanderbilt and the USS Nerius.

After the Civil War he did not care for business but preferred a more romantic, rural, and gentler life as a landscape architect for Ezra Cornell’s growing university.

Johnson married Melissa and had one child, a daughter, Louise, who was raised as a sensitive, fine musician and who later married Charles Marston and moved to Wolverhampton, England with her mother. Will stayed behind, living at the old Cornell residence away from the town, affectionately called “The Nook” by Ezra and friends.

[Johnson] was a very polished gentleman; a graceful writer and his pen furnished many beautiful articles for magazines and papers. He excelled in landscape gardening.

Ithaca Daily News (Ithaca, NY) Thursday, March 4, 1897.

His Civil War diaries are held by The History Center in Tompkins County, Ithaca, NY.