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Businessman Orange Johnson
Many have admired the house at 956 High Street where the Johnsons lived over forty years, but Worthington Historical Society docents are often asked, "Who was Orange Johnson?" An oversimplified answer is that he was a young man who came west to make his fortune. What separated Orange Johnson from many of his contemporaries was that he became a successful businessman who, by 19th century standards, did indeed make a fortune.
Twenty-four year old Orange Johnson arrived in Worthington in August 1814 with $16.50. It seems little, but Ohio was a cash starved country where most deals were made by barter. Griswold Inn records show another man about that time paid two dollars per week for lodging and meals. Johnson was a skilled hornsmith, attracted to James Kilbourne's Worthington Manufacturing Company, and he was carrying a stock of horn combs from which he quickly made a $10.50 sale to the Neil Brothers' store in Urbana.
Johnson seems to have prospered from the beginning, and in August 1815 married Achsa Maynard, whose father farmed just south of the Worthington Manufacturing Company where Johnson had his business. In January 1816, he paid $1,500 for a 35 acre farm just north of the village with improvements, including a two story brick house built in 1811 by Arora Buttles. Johnson bought adjacent land as it became available until his farm contained 119 acres. October 2, 1819 he paid Ezra Griswold $25.75 for 5,150 bricks, and $1.87 for 300 hand brick, apparently for the "new" Federal style house facing High Street.
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Businessman Orange Johnson
Joining the Worthington Manufacturing Company as a hornsmith in 1814, he became wealthy through real estate, banking, and railroad investments. The Worthington Historical Society musuem at 956 High Street was the home of Orange and Achsa Johnson from 1816-1862
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Worthington then had no bank and people borrowed or loaned money personally. As early as 1816, Johnson was doing well enough to loan $100 to Benjamin Bartholomew and $200 to Noah Andrews. His father had died recently in Connecticut, and although he willed $300 to his second son, Orange, most of that had already been advanced to him. Johnson prospered in Worthington on his own initiative as a comb maker, money lender, real estate investor, and farmer.
Johnson probably employed various young men in his comb making business. It is likely that Levi Buttles, younger brother of Joel and Arora, learned this trade with Johnson. In 1822 Levi Buttles was advertising "liberal wages" for two or three journeymen for his newly established comb factory in Columbus with "a large assortment of horn combs" offered to "merchants and peddlers." The same month Johnson was advertising a "Three Cents Reward" for a fifteen year old indentured boy named John Pratt who "went away" on Sunday, April 14th.
Most of Johnson's combs were sold wholesale to storekeepers throughout central Ohio. His $27.16 1/4 bill to Nathaniel Little's estate was primarily for combs provided in 1821-22, however "seventeen pounds of beef at .52 1/2" and "one side of leather at 3.37 1/2" shows Johnson sold a variety of farm products. As late as 1861, when Johnson's assets totaled several hundred thousand dollars, Dr. Tozer's account ledger shows he regularly bought vinegar at 25 cents per gallon or a cord of wood for $1.50 from Orange Johnson.
Johnson began extending his business affairs beyond Worthington when he became one of the incorporators of the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike. From its start in 1827 to completion in 1834, he served as superintendent, handling the company's business with construction contractors. Although the project was financially unsuccessful, Johnson was a paid employee as well as an investor, and was probably protected from loss.
Johnson developed key contacts with the Franklin Bank while financing the turnpike construction, and became friends with Columbus businessman, Joseph Ridgway, president of the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike. In 1840, after Ridgway had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, his friendship caused the Johnson family to make the most memorable trip of their lives, to the presidential inauguration of William Henry Harrison.
The orientation toward Columbus was intensified after the Johnson's only surviving child, daughter Mary, married Columbus businessman Francis Session in 1847. Orange and Achsa continued to live in Worthington and he listed himself as a "farmer" in the 1850 U.S. Census, but his business interests in Columbus included serving as a director of the Clinton Bank and the Columbus and Xenia Railway.
Johnson was successful in real estate and banking, but it was railroad investments which brought him significant wealth. This is dramatized by census returns which credit him with real estate and personal property worth $26,750 in 1850, and $300,000 in 1860. During this decade Johnson was a stockholder in the Columbus and Xenia Railroad, and the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad. He sold several real estate parcels to these railroads, including the site east of High Street where Union Station was subsequently built. He also built an elegant four story commercial property on South High Street in Columbus, known as the "Johnson Building."
In 1862, Orange and Achsa Johnson moved to Columbus to make their home with their daughter and son-in-law in a mansion on East Broad Street where the Columbus Art Museum now stands. Their Worthington property of 119 acres including the house on High Street was sold to Miles Pinney for $8,000. A businessman to the end, at his death in 1876, eighty-five year old Johnson was vice president of the Commercial Bank he and his son-in-law had founded.
Although the name Orange is unusual today, that was not so in the 19th century when there were at least three Orange Johnsons in Ohio. Worthington's well-known Orange Johnson is buried in Greenlawn Cemetery in Columbus, but an unrelated Orange Johnson lived in Worthington after the Civil War and is buried in Walnut Grove Cemetery. Additional confusion is added by Worthington physician and long-time village council secretary, Dr. Orville Johnson, who usually signed his name 0. Johnson.
Orange Johnson, owner of the home on High Street for more than forty years, was a successful businessman, but he identified himself as a "farmer" who lived on a farm just north of the village boundary. He began as a comb maker, and by the time he moved to Columbus had become quite wealthy through real estate, banking, and railroad investments.
SOURCES:
Orange Johnson's obituary in the Ohio State Journal, November 29, 1876, p. 1, contains details of his early life which can be credited to his wife, daughter, and son-in-law who survived him. His father, William Johnson's will, estate inventory, and estate administration are in Windham, Connecticut, Probate Court Records, Vol. 16, pp. 418 & 432; Vol. 17, pp. 22 & 59; Special Volume 7, pp. 95, 111, & 135. Orange Johnson's will in Franklin County Will Record, Vol. G, pp. 167-168 left his entire estate to his wife and daughter and no inventory or appraisal was filed.
Johnson's 1816 loans to Benjamin Bartholomew and Noah Andrews are recorded in the Griswold Family Papers, MSS 193, Box 2, Folder 2. Ohio Historical Society. Johnson's bill to the Nathaniel Little estate is in Case File 385, Franklin County Probate Record, Microfilm GR 1242, Ohio Historical Society. Ledger of William Tozer, M. D., 1860-1867, Worthington, Medical Accounts is in manuscript collection Vol. 416, Ohio Historical Society.
Levi Buttles' comb factory was advertised in the Columbus Gazette, 4 April 1822. After Buttles' death 6 August 1823, Johnson was one of the appraisers of his estate, presumably because of the comb business. Johnson advertised for his indentured boy in the Columbus Gazette, 22 April 1822, p. 1.
Most of the Franklin County deeds for Johnson's Worthington Manufacturing Company lots burned but are referred to in the index. The conveyance of lot 190 to Moses Brown in 1815 is in Deed Record G, p. 417. Deed Record H, p. 186 burned, but the index and current property abstracts record the sale of 35 acres in farm lot 29 from James Allen to Orange Johnson, 29 January 1816 for $1,500. Johnson's brick purchases in 1819 are in the Griswold Family Papers, MSS 193, Box 5, Folder 2, Ohio Historical Society. The sale by Orange and Achsa Johnson to Miles Pinney 12 March 1863 is recorded in Deed Book 75, p. 554. One of the most interesting of the many Johnson real estate deeds is Vol. 42, p. 150 for land in the area of the present Ohio Center.
The Johnson family appears in the Sharon Township, Franklin County census as #91 in 1850, and #69 in 1860. The marriage of Mary Johnson to Francis C. Sessions is recorded in Franklin County Marriage Records, Vol. 4, 18 August 1847. Johnson-Sessions tombstone inscriptions in Greenlawn Cemetery were printed in the Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, Vol. X (1907) p. 257. The Sessions home on East Broad Street was pictured in the Ohio State Journal, 6 April 1919, p. 8.
Alfred E. Lee, History of the City of Columbus (New York, 1892) contains information on Johnson's banking associations in Vol. I, p. 416, and railroads in Vol. II, pp. 236, 249-254. An illustration of the "Johnson Building" on South High Street appears on John Graham's 1856 Map of Franklin County. The Wiggins & McKillop Columbus Directory for 1876, p. 171 listed Orange Johnson as Vice-President, Commercial Bank.
The Orange Johnson buried in Walnut Grove Cemetery in Worthington was born in 1842 in Knox County, Ohio and served in Company "A," 65th OVI during the Civil War. A biographical sketch and official military records for this Orange Johnson are located at the Worthington Historical Society. Dr. Orville Johnson (1822-1896) is also buried at Walnut Grove Cemetery.
This article is one of a series of 31 articles originally published in the Worthington News and then in the book "Probing Worthington's Heritage" copyright by Robert and Jennie McCormick. The 1990 book is out of print, but copies are available at the libraries of the Worthington Historical Society and the Old Worthington Library. Much of this content was later included in the book "New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier" which can be purchased at our Gift Shop.
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