1856–1922

Introduction

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portrait

Born: Ap­ril 21, 1856, near Med­ford, New Jer­sey.

Died: Sep­tem­ber 25, 1922, Nor­man, Ok­la­ho­ma.

Buried: Ev­er­green Ce­me­te­ry, Lumb­er­ton, New Jer­sey.

Biography

Johnson was the son of John­son Oat­man and Ra­chel Ann Cline, hus­band of Wil­hel­mi­na R. Reid of Lum­ber­ton, New Jer­sey (mar­ried Ju­ly 21, 1878), and fa­ther of Mi­ri­am Oat­man.

He at­tend­ed Her­bert’s Aca­de­my in Vin­cen­town, New Jer­sey, and the New Jer­sey Col­le­gi­ate In­sti­tute in Bor­den­town.

He was or­dained a Me­tho­dist Epis­co­pal min­is­ter at age 19, but his pas­tor­al work was con­fined to lo­cal church­es, as he worked full time in the re­tail and in­sur­ance in­dus­tries. He wrote lyr­ics for 5,000 Gos­pel songs.

Works

Sources

Lyrics

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