"[3] As a student, he disliked mathematics and classics preferring history and natural science, especially botany for which he had a great passion and allowed him to be outdoors.

He married Anna Tweed McQueston, a local school teacher, on May 25, 1896, and went on a honeymoon (which doubled as a work trip for Clifton) to England, Scotland, Ireland, and France.

1905), later a sailor and captain of the "Charmian" as well as his own three ships all named Yankee, on which he and his wife Electa circumnavigated the world seven times, Katherine (b.

"[5] His first commission, to illustrate Wonderful deeds and doings of little giant Boab and his talking raven Tabib, a children’s book by Ingersoll Lockwood, came in 1890, followed by Little Captain Doppelkop by the same author a year later.

His series of travel books, Highways and Byways of America, published in the first two decades of the 20th century and covering forty-eight states focused especially on rustic life.

Wherever I go the characteristic and picturesque phases of the local farm environment always appeal strongly to me, and in what I have written I have tried to convey to others the same interest I have felt, and at the same time have endeavored to give a clear and truthful impression of the reality".

I go out a good deal like a reporter, though I do not so proclaim myself, and talk along with the people I meet, getting friendly with them, you know, until suddenly they say something which is unusual or picturesque.

Usually that suffices.”[13] According to Carl Withers, his travel books showed evidence of the life history method and read "like the field records of an anthropologist."

Despite their appeal as well written stories, Johnson’s moralistic tales tend to reflect his own Puritan values and prevailing educational standards although he highlights the progressive system which sought to be more attractive to children rather than education by “rote and rod.”[15] Inspired by Felix Adler's sentiment that "falsehood, gluttony, drunkenness, and evil" should not be a significant part of children's tales, Johnson edited out many cruelties.

Instead of focusing on the unlikely, the exceptional, or surprising, his camera chose the usual, the everyday, and perhaps even the mundane which he turned into a visual poetry.

According to Mary Bronson Hartt, his photography was "[r]elieved by its very aims from the strain of the quest for sensation, Johnson's work is singularly restful to eyes long wearied by the monotony of surprise."

"[21] Johnson treated a print as a rough draft and at times retouched them by adding clouds and birds, toning down whites and heavy blacks, or even removing details or objects to make the photograph "tell its story more simply and gracefully.

"[22] Because of this compositional simplicity, Johnson framed one aspect, whether a person or event in a way that easily draws the eye while the environment does not pine for supremacy bewildering the senses.

Using impressionist techniques and approaches, he would use a light blur to soften the hard and dim distinctness of details like grasses or forests.

"[25] Johnson took expansive trips across the United States and Europe to illustrate and photograph each geographical area for commissioned works and his own books.

In 1895, D. Appleton and Company sent him to England to illustrate a new edition of White's Natural History of Selborne, followed by an 1896 trip commissioned by Dodd, Mead and Company to illustrate Ian Maclaren's Bonnie Brier Bush (1896) and ‘’The Days of Auld Lang Syne’’ (which the New York times predicted would appeal to the reading public and prove popular as gifts),[26] as well as Barrie’s Window in Thrums (1896).

He liked to stay in small towns and Villages rather than cities and preferred to sleep in farmhouses which he felt gave him a better chance to observe habitual behavior and talk of everyday life.

He disliked large cities as too cosmopolitan to be authentic and on one occasion he arrived in London with the intention of remaining there for several days but "the big town seemed so dingy and commonplace, and there was so much of crowds and noise, that I changed my mind and toward evening took a train that carried me northward.

When Johnson was not travelling, he visited the store every Tuesday and Friday and even though Henry was the owner, the two were close and Clifton served as an advisor and silent partner.

Beside sitting on the school committee and writing an account of the local one-room schoolhouse (The Country School, 1895), he published a book on the history of his town, Historic Hadley: quarter millennial souvenir, 1659–1909 (1909) and made numerous donations to the local First Congregational church including a $10,000 (well in excess of $100,000 in 2018) donation he made for the church's renovations without mentioning the gift to his family.

"[34] Johnson's photograph Barred Door; Rocky Hill Meeting House, c. 1910 was featured in American photography, 1890–1965, an exhibit by the Museum of Modern Art in New York which also toured Europe in 1995–1997.