His mother was of the Particular Baptist faith, believing that the redemptive work of Christ only applied to those who were saved.

As a child he met President George Washington and Dr. Richard Furman, pastor of the First Baptist Church Charleston, who made a great impression on him.

He had intended to become a lawyer, but was converted during a Baptist revival in 1804, and devoted the rest of his life to Christian service.

[2] One of their eight children who reached maturity, Francis C. Johnson, became a Southern Baptist missionary to China in 1846.

[2] Johnson became the last southern president of the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions between 1841 and 1844.

[1] In this role he helped found the Furman University, which became Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1859, based in Greenville, South Carolina.

As the late Anderson College professor, Charles S. Sullivan, said, "the continuity that runs through the life of a community from one generation to the next is expressed in cultural traditions as well as in visible institutions.

His portrait hangs in perpetuity in the Truett Cathy Old Common Room in Merritt Hall on the Anderson University campus.