Joshua Johnson, merchant and diplomat, was a partner in Wallace, Davidson, and Johnson, the first American tobacco firm to operate independently of British middlemen, and then in Wallace, Johnson, and Muir, which played an important role in expanding the tobacco trade with France and in marketing French goods in the United States in the last years of the Revolutionary War.

Johnson was born near St. Leonard's Creek in Calvert County. He was one of seven sons and four daughters of Thomas Johnson (1702-1777) and Dorcas Sedgwick. Thomas Johnson, the first governor of the State of Maryland, was one of Joshua's older brothers.

Johnson established himself as a merchant in Annapolis by 1767, when his first advertisement appeared in the Maryland Gazette. In March 1771, Johnson entered into a partnership agreement with Charles Wallace and John Davidson to establish the Annapolis firm of Wallace, Davidson, and Johnson. Johnson became the firm's London representative, responsible for selling tobacco shipped by Wallace and Davidson and for buying goods for sale in Annapolis.

Not long after his arrival in England, Johnson married an Englishwoman, Catherine Nuth. The couple had at least four children; one daughter, Louisa Catherine (1775-1852) married future president John Quincy Adams in London on July 26, 1797.

Wallace, Davidson, and Johnson prospered for a time, but the 1773 tobacco market depression caused severe difficulties for Johnson. He feared being thrown into debtors' prison for lack of sufficient funds from Maryland to cover the firm's English purchases. A shift to the consignment trade, in which the company acted as marketing agent on commission, rather than buying tobacco outright, eased Johnson's situation. But with trade further disrupted by colonial non-importation and non-exportation agreements (organized in response to the Intolerable Acts), Johnson brought the business to a close in the fall of 1774.

For a time, Johnson continued in London on his own, speculating in tobacco and investing in a trading venture to Russia. In the spring of 1778, he relocated to Nantes, where he became one of the leading American merchants doing business in France. He also acted as commercial agent for the State of Maryland and as consul in Nantes for the Congress until December 1780. Initially Johnson sent cargoes to Wallace and Davidson on commission, but in 1781, Wallace, Johnson, and John Muir formed a new partnership. Johnson purchased French goods for the firm's customers, managed the sale of cargoes (mainly tobacco, but also pig iron and other commodities) shipped from Maryland, and supervised construction of ships in which the firm had invested.

Johnson returned to London in the spring of 1783, where he served as the first American consul during the 1790s. Although perhaps the most important firm operating in the upper Chesapeake, Wallace, Davidson, and Muir faced competition from merchants in Georgetown and other tidewater towns. A more serious challenge came from the depressed state of the tobacco market after the Revolution, with the result that the partnership ended on January 1, 1790. Johnson remained in England for a time to pursue the consignment trade on his own, but the business eventually failed. A nephew later described him as "a weak, vain man, fond of great people and impoverished by an ambitious and extravagant wife" (Delaplaine 351).

In fall 1797, Johnson returned to Maryland to claim his profits. Three arbitrators set the amount of Johnson's compensation in February 1798, but the decision did not meet with Johnson' approval. He sued Wallace and Muir in the hope of getting a larger settlement but the suit was unsuccessful. President Washington appointed Johnson Superintendent of Stamps after his return to the United States, a position Johnson held until his death in 1802.

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Delaplaine, Edward S. The Life of Thomas Johnson. New York: The Grafton Press, 1927.

Papenfuse, Edward C. In Pursuit of Profit: The Annapolis Merchants in the Era of the American Revolution, 1763-1805. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Price, Jacob M. Price, ed. Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1774-1777. Chatham, England: London Record Society, 1979.