This year marks the centennial anniversary of the publication of the magisterial work: “The History of the Yorubas” written by Reverend Samuel Johnson, a scion of the famous Johnson family.
Unfortunately, R. N. Cust, the immediate recipient of the manuscript on behalf of the society, was ambivalent about it. In his words, By 1900, the manuscript was missing. If the CMS reported loss of the original manuscript in the custody of Cust and the emerging climate of European hostility towards the Yoruba in church and state in the closing decade of the nineteenth century are factors to go by, it is only providential that the History eventually saw the light of the day.
In other words, deaths and changing times added ontological dimension to Samuel Johnson’s decision to write the history of his people. And in doing so, he set out to rescue their fading memory. Samuel Johnson was first married to Miss Lydia Okuseinde on the 19th of January 1875 and their first child, Clara, was born in Kudeti on 6th December 1875. They did have a son, Geoffrey Emmanuel born in September 1878, but he died in October 1879. Unfortunately, Lydia died in February 1888 and he would later, on the 20th of June 1895, marry one Miss Martha E. Garber in Christ Church, Lagos. The ceremony was performed by his older brothers, Henry and Nathaniel.