Johnson, A.J.

Alvin Jewett Johnson, more commonly known as A. J. Johnson, was an American mapmaker and publisher born in Vermont in 1827. His notable historic maps do not begin to appear until about 1854 due to the fact that he pursued other careers as a young adult before turning to mapmaking later in life. He started out with a career in teaching, later becoming a book canvasser (a door-to-door salesman), before he began producing maps and eventually started his own publishing firm. He continued to create and publish maps, either under his own name or with collaborators for several decades. Today, the vintage maps he produced between 1854 and the 1880s are very desirable to a variety of collectors.

A. J. Johnson's first known work appeared around 1854 and was a collaboration with another notable mapmaker of the time, D. G. Johnson (no known relation). The wall map, entitled "Johnson's New Illustrated and Embellished County Map of the Republics of North America" was very similar to D. G. Johnson's previously published "Johnson's New Map of Our Country", but it was enough to launch A. J. Johnson's new career. It wasn't long before he started his own publishing company.

In 1859, Johnson teamed up with fellow Vermont native Ross Browning to form the firm Johnson and Browning, which worked with well-known publisher J. H. Colton to produce Colton's Atlas the same year. Only one year later, in 1860, Johnson's own atlas, entitled "Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas" was published, ostensibly following the purchase of steel engraving plates from the J. H. Colton Company. Although Johnson used these plates for several reprints under his own name, he made changes such as altering the decorative borders (which Colton maps were noted for) and of course, making geographic revisions as necessary. It is in the 1860 publication, however, that the Colorado and Dakota territories first appear, making that particular atlas a significant addition to historical maps of the United States.

Johnson's partnership with Browning ended shortly after the onset of the Civil War in 1861, as Browning was forced to abandon his printing presses and equipment in Virginia to flee north. Johnson then formed Johnson and Ward in 1862, likely to gain access to new printing presses, and continued publishing revised editions of his atlases through 1885. A. J. Johnson's antique maps are notable not only for their quality, which was in part due to the steel plate engraving process he adopted from Colton, but also for the fact that the many revised editions of his atlases chart the changes occurring during the tumultuous period in which he was publishing. The changing American landscape, in particular, including the post-war period and westward expansion, are well documented in the old maps featured in Johnson atlases.