Benjamin Franklin Johnson
Was born July 28, 1818 in Pomfret, Chautauqua County, New York. When Benjamin was a child he accompanied his mother and older siblings to the Presbyterian Church each Sunday. He learned to read and write from the Bible.
In the year of 1829 was when he and his family began to hear about a young man professing to have seen an angel, who had shown and delivered to him, on gold plates and engraved in a strange new language, and hid up in the earth, from which he had translated a new bible entitled "The Book of Mormon".
His mother, along with some of the neighbors, began to meet weekly in secret to read the Book of Mormon in order to prove its falsehoods and slowly became converted to the truth that there truly was a prophet upon the earth. Benjamin was baptized in the Spring of 1835.
The following winter he attended the "School of the Prophets" with the Prophet Joseph Smith and most of the first elders of the Church, where he was taught the Lectures on Faith as contained in the D & C and grammar by Elder Wm. E. McLellin. He also attended an evening class in Geography and History.
As one studies his life, it is easy to see how these studies must have helped prepare him for the great challenges he faced. He was one of great pioneers and builders of this church and this nation.
