John Quincy Adams Johnson was born around 1837 in Amesbury, Massachusetts, to William and Lavinia Johnson. His father was a shoemaker who owned $1,000 of real estate by 1850. Johnson grew up and attended school in Amesbury. By the early 1860s, he was living in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and working as a shoemaker.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on May 10, 1861, and he mustered in as a sergeant in Company A of the 17^th Massachusetts Infantry on July 21. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 7 ½ inches tall, with light hair and grey eyes. The regiment was stationed in North Carolina, and Johnson was wounded at Goldsboro, North Carolina, on December 17, 1862.

 

He began suffering from a “spinal complaint” in January 1863, and his health gradually deteriorated. Union officials admitted him to a hospital in New Bern, North Carolina, in May 1863. He remained devoted to the Union, declaring in May 1863 that “secession is one of the devil[‘]s gettings up and must like himself go back to its original Hell.” He added that “before I would see Jeff Davis hold the rains of government I should rather be shot a dozen times.” He was discharged for disability on September 10, 1863. As a surgeon explained, Johnson was “completely broken down,” and he had “been unfit for duty most of the time during the past year.”

 

He settled in Newburyport, Massachusetts, after the war, and he earned a living as a mechanic and a carpenter. He was an active member of the local Grand Army of the Republic chapter. He died by suicide in Newburyport on May 16, 1906.

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