He was born in 1890 in Toomog townland, Castlecaulfield, County Tyrone,[1] to John Johnston, a national school teacher, and Mary Geddis.
[3] He supported Home Rule and was the author of Civil War in Ulster (1913) and The Nemesis of Economic Nationalism (1934).
[1] He was first elected to Seanad Éireann as an independent member in 1938 by the Dublin University constituency.
[4] In 1914 he married Clara Wilson, a teacher from Ballymahon, County Longford; and they had two children.
[5] His daughter, Maureen Carmody, was a member of the National Executive of the Irish Labour Party for many years, and at one time an elected Labour member of Nenagh Town Council.