Johnson, Ransom

Pioneer, Physician, Farmer, War of 1812 Veteran

Birth: February 25, 1790, Woodbridge, New Haven County, Connecticut
Death: June 25, 1870, Hartford, Trumbull County, Ohio
Burial: Dunlap Cemetery, Vienna, Trumbull County, Ohio
Find a Grave memorial

Military Service: Ransom Johnson served from August 24 to November 11, 1812, in Captain Asa Hutchins' Company, 3rd (Hayes') Regiment, Ohio Militia, in the War of 1812. Capt. Hutchins' company contained many men from Vienna Township.[1]

Ransom Johnson was a physician in Vienna, having settled in the township in 1812. Johnson's brick house, which likely doubled as his medical office, stands (2014) on Lot #10, on the west side of Scoville-North Road. Land he owned included the parcel now known as Dunlap Cemetery. Interestingly, his occupation was listed as "farmer" on the federal censuses of 1850 and 1860.

Medical Practice

Johnson's life spanned many changes in American medical practice in the nineteenth century, including the institution of training through medical schools and regulation through state licensing laws. Against this movement toward professionalization were medical practitioners who engaged in what today would be called "alternative medicine" but was simply a continuation of traditional practices. Particularly popular in Ohio was the medical system of Vermonter Samuel Thomson (1769-1843) who, in 1822, published New Guide to Health, or Botanic Family Physician. Thomson believed in the use of natural herbs in "curing disease with vegetable medicine"; his motto was "every man his own physician."

Johnson likely practiced the Thomsonian System, for his name appears in 1834 as an agent for the first issues of Thomson's monthly magazine entitled the Thomsonian Botanic Watchman.[2] He served as agent for The Thomsonian Recorder in 1834.[3] The journal published at least one letter from a Vienna resident, one W. C. Wells, in that volume (page 303).

Around 1835, Johnson's brother-in-law, sixteen-year-old Abner Banning, joined the household. He assisted in the preparation of medicines, and, according to a late-nineteenth-century history, "studied medicine some, and also practiced for a while."[4] This may be evidence of Johnson's Thomsonian practice. (Evidence of a botanical society in Vienna Township may be found in the first volume of The Thomsonian Recorder in 1833.[5] )

Public Service

Johnson served, in 1843, as treasurer of Vienna School Number 3.

Private Life

Johnson married three times: Elizabeth Williams (1791-1816), on February 19, 1812; Currance Hawkins (1797-1834), on January 19, 1817; and Usebe (Useba or Eusebia) Minerva Banning (1810-1897), on December 2, 1835.