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JONES, ABSALOM 235the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), and onChristmas Day in 1724, he opened the first Anglican church building in Connecticut,at Stratford. Over the years, Johnson became a leader among the SPGmissionaries serving congregations in Connecticut, and he was a consistent advocateof an American episcopate.He also became an intellectual disciple of the Irish philosopher George Berkeley,with whom he maintained a correspondence. Although he was not a particularlyoriginal thinker, Johnson did help to introduce in the colonies new themesin European thought, and his Elementa Philosophica (1752) was the first philosophytextbook published in America. Unlike the great Congregational theologianJonathan Edwards, he defended belief in the freedom of the will and rejected theCalvinist doctrine of predestination as incompatible with true human freedom andmorality.In 1749 Johnson turned down an invitation to become president of the Collegeof Philadelphia. In 1754, however, he reluctantly accepted a request to becomethe first president of King’s College (now Columbia University) in New York.His nine years there were marred not only by institutional problems but also bypersonal tragedy, as epidemics of smallpox led to the deaths of two wives, a son,and a stepdaughter. Johnson returned to Stratford as rector in 1764, and he servedthere until his death in 1772.BibliographyA. Elementa Philosophica (Philadelphia, 1752); Samuel Johnson, President of King’s College:His Career and Writings, ed. Herbert Schneider and Carol Schneider, 4 vols.(New York, 1929).B. AAP 5, 52–61; ANB 12, 125–26; DAB 10, 118–19; DCA, 598; MCTA, 64–66; NCAB6, 341; SPCK, 153–56; WWWA Historical vol. 1607–1896, 281; Don R. Gerlach,“Champions of an American Episcopate: Thomas Secker of Canterbury and SamuelJohnson of Connecticut,” HMPEC 41 (1972): 381–414; George E. DeMille andDon R. Gerlach, “Samuel Johnson and the ‘Dark Day’ at Yale, 1772,” ConnecticutHistory 19 (1977): 38–63; Donald Francis Marc Gerardi, “Samuel Johnson and theYale ‘Apostasy’ of 1722: The Challenge of Anglican Sacramentalism to the NewEngland Way,” HMPEC 47 (1978): 153–75; Donald Francis Marc Gerardi, “TheAmerican Doctor Johnson: Anglican Piety and the Eighteenth Century Mind”(Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1973); Eben Edwards Beardsley, The Life andCorrespondence of Samuel Johnson (New York, 1874); Joseph John-Michael EllisIII, The New England Mind in Transition: Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696–1772 (New Haven, 1973); Peter N. Carroll, The Other Samuel Johnson: A Psychohistoryof Early New England (Rutherford, N.J., 1978).JONES, ABSALOM (6 November 1746, Sussex, Del.–13 February 1818, Philadelphia).Education: Self-taught. Career: Store clerk, Philadelphia, 1762–94; layminister, later deacon and priest, St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, Philadelphia,1794–1818.