Mr. Johnson was a native of Middle Haddam, Middlesex County, Connecticut, his mother, who died October 17, 1868, being formerly Miss Mary Whitmore, born at Middletown, Middlesex County, Connecticut, in 1780, and his father, Henry Johnson, born in 1776, and died July 6, 1869. Seth W. Johnson was the second son and third child of a family of nine, all of whom, with both father and mother, were alive on the 16th of October, 1868, the oldest child being then about sixty-one years old, and the youngest over forty. Young Johnson worked with his father a short time as a farmer, but not feeling in his element in the plow field or in the cow yard, he followed the bent of his mechanical tastes, and engaged himself to work in a ship yard. He commenced work in this line when about fourteen years old, and served out his full apprenticeship of seven years, when he set up in business for himself, taking full charge of the work of finishing ships. This he carried on for three years with considerable success. But New England, he rightly judged, was too narrow a field for the young man who wished to improve his prospects and with narrow means lay the foundation of a liberal competence. The West offered the most promise, and to the West he accordingly came, taking his kit of tools with him. Landing in Cleveland in the Fall of 1834, he satisfied himself that here was the proper place for the exercise of his knowledge and abilities, and here, accordingly, he prepared to make his home. Before settling down to steady business in Cleveland he made a trip to Perrysburgh, on the Maumee, where he assisted in finishing the Commodore Perry. This work done he returned to Cleveland in the Spring of 1835, and opened his ship yard, at first confining himself to the repair of vessels. But soon he was called on to build as well as repair. The steamboat Constellation was completed by him at Black River, and the steamboat Robert Fulton, built at Cleveland by Griffith, Standart & Co. In 1844, Mr. Johnson associated with him Mr. E. Tisdale, and the firm of Johnson & Tisdale acquired honorable fame as ship builders along the entire chain of lakes and beyond. The copartnership lasted nineteen years. Before the formation of this partnership, Mr. Tisdale had commenced the building of a railway for docking vessels, and this was the first firm to lift vessels for the purpose of repairing them. With his first work, in 1835, in Cleveland, he commenced the acquisition of vessel property, and steadily pursued the policy of taking this kind of stock, until he became a large ship owner as well as ship builder.