Barbara Johnson (fashion)

Barbara was born in 1738 in Olney, Buckinghamshire, the eldest of four children of Woolsey Johnson and his wife Jane, née Russell, and baptised in London.

Her father was a vicar who opposed dissent in his parish and her mother a writer whose pedagogical materials and letters have proved useful for historians of epistolary literacy and informal education.

[1] George took over the family estate; Robert married a sister of the 6th Earl of Craven; and Charles became a senior fellow of a college.

Although she received an additional £50 per year after the death of her brother George, she said that she had managed to keep herself independent on her smaller income and 'met with as much real friendship, affection and esteem (the true blessings of life) as if I had possess'd a much larger fortune.

[1] In 1746, at the age of eight, Barbara began collecting scraps of fabric from her new clothes in an account-book belonging to George Thomson.