# Okey Johnson

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**Okey Johnson** (born [Long Reach](/source/Long_Reach,_West_Virginia) in what was then the state of [Virginia](/source/Virginia), March 24, 1834; died [New York City](/source/New_York_City), [New York](/source/New_York_(state)), June 16, 1903) was a lawyer, politician, judge, and educator in the state of [West Virginia](/source/West_Virginia). He served as a justice of the [Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia](/source/Supreme_Court_of_Appeals_of_West_Virginia) from January 1, 1877, to December 31, 1888.

After graduating from [Marietta High School](/source/Marietta_High_School_(Ohio)) across the river in Ohio in 1856, Johnson entered [Harvard Law School](/source/Harvard_Law_School), earning a degree in 1858. After several years farming and undertaking trading voyages on riverboats,[1] he established a law practice in [Parkersburg](/source/Parkersburg,_West_Virginia) in May 1862. An active [Democrat](/source/Democratic_Party_(United_States)), Johnson was an elector for [George B. McClellan](/source/George_B._McClellan) in 1864. Johnson was elected to the state senate in 1870 and to the constitutional convention of 1872. In 1876 he was elected to the Supreme Court of Appeals, serving a 12-year term.[2]

In 1896 Johnson served on a committee of the West Virginia Academy of Science to inquire into forest protection and draft legislation to set aside forest reservations in the state.[3]

Johnson served as the dean of the [West Virginia University College of Law](/source/West_Virginia_University_College_of_Law) from 1895 to 1903.[4] He died in New York City after having surgery there.

## Family

Johnson was one of seventeen children of William Henry Johnson (1789-1871), by his second wife Elizabeth Dye Johnson (1809-1869). Johnson's younger brother [Daniel Dye Johnson](/source/Daniel_D._Johnson) (1836-1893) was a Union officer in the Civil War and served as president of the West Virginia State Senate. Their much younger brother Thomas Corskadon Johnson (1848-1922) was a prominent Baptist minister in Charleston who served many terms as the moderator of the Kanawha Valley Baptist Association and was a local leader in the fight for [prohibition](/source/Prohibition_in_the_United_States).

Okey Johnson married Sarah Elizabeth Stephenson (1836-1921), widow of Benjamin Jackson. They had five children.

## References

1. The Baptist Encyclopedia, entry "Judge Okey Johnson", ed. William Cathcart, Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881, p. 606.

1. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Bar Association, ed. Nelson Hubbard, Wheeling: West Virginia Printing Co., 1904, p. 109-110.

1. *Garden and Forest*, April 15, 1896, "A Forest Reservation in the Allleghanies", p. 152.

1. [https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2008/04/04/6670](https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2008/04/04/6670) WVU Today, April 4, 2008, "WVU selects distinguished scholar to lead College of Law"

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