Ashley Sydney Johnson was born on June 22, 1857 in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, the son of Jeremiah Crockett Johnson and Barbara Jane Johnson. He married Emma Elizabeth Strawn from Canada, daughter of Joel Dennis Strawn (1834 - 1916) and Elizabeth Williams Strawn (1842 - 1924).
Ashley became a school teacher by age sixteen. At age seventeen, he enrolled at the University of Tennessee for one year then and attended Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio where he received an A.M. Johnson received an LL.D. from Christian University (now, Culver-Stockton) Missouri. In October 1877 after studying the New Testament, Johnson preached his first sermon and decided to dedicate his life to the Gospel ministry.
Ashley married Emma Elizabeth Strawn in 1884, and they moved to South Carolina to be evangelists, starting churches and encouraging the growth of existent churches. In South Carolina, Johnson founded a popular correspondence Bible school. With the goal of training preachers, Johnson founded a Bible school on farm land originally owned by his great grandfather.
In 1891, Emma gave birth to a stillborn child and almost died herself during childbirth, and she was unable to have further children
Johnson Univeristy, formerly Johnson Bible College, in Knox County, Tennessee, is named after Sydney. [1] The idea for a new school was first introduced in a sermon by Ashley S. Johnson at the Bearden Christian Church in 1892 when Johnson proposed the idea of a college level school for the gospels. Johnson saw to the building of the college, which opened in 1895, and served as its president until his death. After his death, his wife, Emma served as president until Her death. Ashley originally named the college The School of Evangelists.
Ashley Johnson went on to write numerous books and articles. Johnson died during an operation in Baltimore, Maryland on January 14, 1925 and was buried on the Heights on the college campus. Emma Johnson died of cancer two years later and was buried next to her husband. After Johnson's death, the Board of Trustees, renamed the school as Johnson Bible College.
Books by Ashley Johnson
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