Two years later, she met and married Jesse Cram Johnson from Unity, New Hampshire, and moved to Boston.

Johnson founded the New England Women's Auxiliary Association which in turn led her to an important position in the U.S. Sanitary Commission.

During this time she would visit numerous correctional facilities and helped poor women around Boston so they could better fend for themselves.

She and other women gathered at her home and began writing letters to newspapers requesting a separate facility for females.

[3] In the meantime, she became the leading advocate for the Temporary Asylum of Discharged Female Prisoners in Dedham, MA.

Ellen Cheney Johnson, while running the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women at the turn of the nineteenth century, tried to bridge the approaches of rehabilitation and punishment.