Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Johnson, Thomas

Thomas Johnson was the first governor of Maryland. He served in the Maryland House of Delegates in the early 1780s and was chief judge of the Maryland General Court from 1790 to 1791. Johnson was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1791, where he served a brief and uneventful term before resigning because of poor health.

Johnson was born November 4, 1732, to Thomas Johnson and Dorcas Sedgwick Johnson, in Calvert County, Maryland. Johnson was one of twelve children, and he received no formal education as a child. His parents sent him to Annapolis, Maryland, to work as a registry clerk at the land office under Thomas Jennings. Following his apprenticeship, Johnson began to study law in the office of Stephen Bordley, an Annapolis attorney. He was admitted to the bar in 1760, and practiced law before entering politics.

In 1766 Johnson married Ann Jennings, the daughter of his former instructor at the Annapolis land office....