3 February 2025
By Edward H. Jones
Readers of HTBS might be familiar with Frenchy A. Johnson (ca .1850 to 1883). He was an African American who had been enslaved in Virginia in the antebellum American South. And yet, he rose to become a skilled and popular professional sculler following emancipation and relocation from Fort Monroe at Hampton, Virginia, to Boston via the steamship George Appold in 1867.
CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. – It will be seen by the dispatch from
Portland [ME] that Frenchy Johnson, a colored man, belonging to Boston, is
now the greatest oarsman in the world, having beaten “Ross, of St. John [NB],”
Landers of Salem [MA], and three others, in a short three mile race.
Halifax (NS) Herald, August 16, 1877, 3.
Perhaps “Champion of the World” is a bit of a stretch, especially given the fact that Johnson never travelled beyond North America. Nevertheless, the newspaper item shows that as a sculler, Johnson’s flag was firmly planted on the professional rowing landscape. In fact, Johnson’s notoriety was such that in 1876 a woman named Mary Wilson appropriated the name “Frenchy Johnson” to carry out a shoplifting spree in Boston until her eventual arrest. In another incident that drew upon Johnson’s notoriety, handbills were circulated about Palmyra, NY, in 1881 announcing a rowing match between Johnson and fellow professional oarsman and friend Charles Courtney for a purse of $75 dollars, calculated to be worth more than $2,300 today. However, it was later discovered that two amateur rowers had deceptively used the names of the two professional oarsmen merely to drum up interest in a match which was actually between the two amateurs. Con artists were not the only ones taking note of Johnson’s popularity. His accomplishments as a rower did not go unrecognized by the more reputable members of the citizenry. In 1878, a dinner was held in his honor at the elegant Young’s Hotel in Boston to congratulate him upon his success as an oarsman after having recently won the Silver Lake (MA) Regatta.
To some, Johnson is best known as one of the three principals involved in what became known as the “Chautauqua Lake Fizzle” when Canadian sculling champion Ned Hanlan – dubbed the “Boy In Blue” because of the color of his racing attire – was scheduled to race American sculling champion Charles Courtney at Lake Chautauqua, NY, on October 16, 1879.
Frenchy Johnson was to serve as Courtney’s assistant/trainer. However, on the morning of the big race, it was discovered that Courtney’s prized racing shells had mysteriously been sawed almost in half. Thus, the race never took place, and the whole incident was described by one account as a “miserable farce.” Accusations were made, and of the three principals (now suspects), none was immune from scorn and suspicion that they were involved with the sordid affair. But as one writer proclaimed years after Johnson’s death, Frenchy always denied that he was a party to “the deed.” The writer strongly believed that Johnson was unjustly the target of accusations and was used by those who were in on the deal. There is no concrete evidence to suggest that Johnson had any part of the scheme. So unless some new evidence surfaces, the mystery of the Chautauqua Race Fizzle will remain unsolved.
In the year following the Chautauqua Lake Fizzle, Frenchy Johnson was directly involved with his own fizzle. On June 1, 1880, he was scheduled to row against Wallace Ross of New Brunswick, Canada, in a three-mile race on the Charles River at Boston. At the word “Go!” Johnson “bounded off with a rattling stroke,” while Ross just sat in his boat and did not even “dip his oars,” claiming he never heard the starter say “Go!” The one-sided, non-race ended in controversy, and the event was to be rescheduled for later that day, but it never happened. That evening, Johnson encountered Ross and a fight ensued, whereby Ross knocked Johnson down twice. Johnson, in turn, put Ross in a headlock and was “pummeling” him when the police were called to stop the fight.The Boston Globe called the race “Another Fizzle.”The St. John Daily News (New Brunswick) ran the following item from the Toronto Daily Mail lambasting Ross:
The United States has its Courtney, but Canada has its Ross. Both have done
their best to disgrace professional rowing, and both have been eminently
successful.… Courtney sawed his boats at Chautauqua, Ross turns a deaf
ear to the starter at Boston, and follows up with a rough-and-tumble fight
with his colored opponent.
Unfortunately, Johnson’s professional rowing career lasted only about five years, having been cut short by the onset of tuberculosis. But being the consummate sportsman and sensing his rowing days were numbered, Johnson, dubbed “Boston’s favorite Sculler” by one source, had taken up the sport of competitive target shooting where he further displayed his athletic prowess. In the same way he had become a skilled oarsman, Johnson earned recognition as an expert marksman.
In Johnson’s day, competition marksmen aimed their shotguns at targets that included clay pigeons, live pigeons, and glass balls launched into the air that were not unlike glass Christmas tree ornaments, only with thicker glass. Some glass balls were even filled with feathers so that the shot would “make the feathers fly” when the ball was hit, producing the same effect as when an actual bird was shot. Johnson would also set his sights on live targets a bit more formidable than pigeons. In 1878, he shot a three-hundred-pound black bear during a stay in Canada, prompting the Boston Globe to remark that in killing the beast, he “made more of an impression with his gun than with his oar.”
As a professional oarsman based in Boston trying to make a living with his oars by competing in regattas, Frenchy Johnson would travel up and down the eastern seaboard to race. In the winter of 1879-80, when northern waters were choked with ice and near the end of his rowing career, Johnson took a winter sculling/shooting sojourn through the southern United States. His arrival at Jacksonville, FL, in early December of 1879 from Boston via a steamship named the Seminole elicited a newspaper notice worthy of an esteemed dignitary:
JACKSONVILLE, FLA., December 6 . . . Frenchy Johnson, a celebrated
oarsman, arrived a day or two since. Being a colored gentleman of
considerable distinction as a sculler, he will attract some attention in this
age, when it is fashionable to deify muscle, and will divide the honors
with Mr. Stoughton, ex-Minister to Russia. He will have a fine opportunity
on our splendid river to give an exhibition of his skill.
Special dispatch to the Savannah (GA) Morning News, Dec. 8, 1879, 1.
On January 31, 1880, Johnson competed in a three-mile sculling race with a turn on Jacksonville’s St. Johns River for a purse of $1,000, calculated to be worth over $30,000 in today’s dollars. He defeated George W. Lee by a boat length. Six weeks later, on March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day), Johnson defeated Lee again in a three-mile race on Savanah’s Wilmington River.
Not wanting to abandon his shooting, a month after his arrival in Jacksonville, on New Year’s Day, Johnson celebrated the holiday by competing in a glass ball shooting contest, the object of which was to try to break all 100 balls launched into the air by a spring-loaded device called a trap. Johnson lost by only one ball, the winning score being 98 broken balls to Johnson’s 97. However, between his two boat race victories he redeemed himself at another glass ball target shooting contest on February 26 where he “won the prize” at the Jacksonville Fair that saw five to six thousand fairgoers. Upon his return to Boston that spring, Johnson would continue his winning ways with his shotgun by placing first in glass ball shooting competitions in April and again in July when his perfect scores over four weeks was praised as “capital shooting … worthy of especial mention.”
Johnson’s skill as a marksman made him a natural choice to become a member of an all-Black volunteer militia in Boston, where in 1880 he held the rank of Private. The group was known as the Shaw Guards, named in honor of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a white officer who commanded the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment during the American Civil War. Shaw died in 1863 while leading his troops during a failed assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina, depicted in the 1989 movie Glory. Prominent Black citizens of Boston had pledged to keep alive Shaw’s name and believed it was the duty of every Black man in the city to “impress on the public the necessity of the colored people having a military company representing their race.” The Shaw Guards afforded Johnson a further opportunity to display his shooting skills, such as the time he outshot his fellow guardsmen during a rifle practice outside of Boston in August of 1880.
What is most interesting is the respect given to Frenchy Johnson the marksman by the Boston Globe when it referred to the city’s adopted son as Mr. Frenchy A. Johnson and Mr. F. A. Johnson [emphasis added]. In contrast, such respectful form of address was almost never shown to Frenchy Johnson the oarsman, which was possibly an indication of the less than lofty esteem the country was beginning to have for the sport of professional rowing in the late nineteenth century. Even Johnson had begun to question the wisdom of continuing to row professionally as the sport was becoming increasingly tainted by dishonesty. “I do not know many that have grown rich by being honest,” he said during an interview with the Evening (NY) Auburnian, “I know I haven’t.” But then he explained, “I’ve got a good situation now. I shoot matches for a gun company, advertising their guns, and I expect to make a dollar or so, and it’s better than I have been doing. They treat me very nicely.” Quite possibly Johnson was the first African American product pitchman who wasn’t simply a stereotyped caricature.
By the fall of 1880, Frenchy Johnson had sold his boats and given up racing, claiming the money just wasn’t there. He continued competitive shooting, however. Regarding his health, in the spring of 1881, he said he had been sick but was improving and would “soon be around.” But in the fall of that year, he told a reporter from the Fall River (MA) Daily Herald that he had left rowing altogether. “I’m troubled, you know, with lung disease,” he explained, “and my best hold is to keep out of such active exercise.” When asked further about his illness, Johnson acknowledged that he had consumption (tuberculosis). “I have consulted the best doctors in Boston,” he said, “[b]ut I feel better today than I have felt in a long time.” The reporter noted that although Johnson spoke in a husky voice, he nonetheless looked robust. By December of 1882, it had been reported that Frenchy Johnson, “once well-known as a professional sculler, and the friend and admirer of Charles Courtney,” had been sent to Lowell, Massachusetts, by the Lynn (MA) Sportsmen’s (Gun) Club, of which he was a member, on account of his consumption. The Club later arranged for Johnson to relocate to the milder climate of Florida, as he was reportedly “slowly dying” from his lung ailment.
In a dispatch dated March 19, 1883, the New York Clipper announced the death of Frenchy Johnson in Florida, reportedly in Jacksonville according to the New York Globe. He was estimated to be around thirty-three years old when he died, as his exact date of birth was never conclusively established. His gravesite has yet to be located. One of his obituaries, in addition to praising his sculling prowess, noted his skills as a marksman: “While able he shot game for the Boston hotels and the general market. He has won many money prizes and trophies at glass ball and pigeon shooting.”
As someone who rose from slavery to become a respected and accomplished participant in two sports (sculling and shooting) that were overwhelmingly white, Johnson triumphed over adversity by his skill, determination, and willingness to brave the indignities that came with being a Black man in late nineteenth-century America. This little-known athlete deserves to be elevated to his rightful place in the pantheon of American professional scullers.
Before there was the pioneering Black major league baseball player Moses Fleetwood Walker, before there was the Black world champion bicycle racer Marshall “Major” Taylor, and before there was three-time Kentucky Derby-winning Black jockey Issac Murphy, there was the celebrated Black professional oarsman from Boston, Frenchy A. Johnson. Three other Black scullers of note at the time were Robert Berry of Toronto, Burt Brown, referred to in the press as the Union Springs (NY) mulatto, and Frank Hart of Boston, a sculling protégé of Johnson who later became a champion pedestrian (competitive race walker). While all three achieved a measure of sculling success, none received the accolades and garnered the popularity of Johnson.
Not surprisingly, Johnson even tried his hand at the then-popular sport of pedestrianism, losing to fellow Boston oarsman George Hosmer in a fifty-mile indoor race at Boston’s Revere Hall in 1879. Race walking was apparently not one of Frenchy Johnson’s athletic competencies.
While other Black athletes may have achieved a degree of prominence during this era, none received the acclaim and adulation of Johnson. So let the nation acknowledge Frenchy A. Johnson as “America’s First Black Sports Star.”
In Part II, which will be published tomorrow, Edward H. Jones has written an ode to the oarsman Frenchy Johnson.
Editor’s note: Edward H. Jones is a retired attorney and a former club rower who learned the sport on Pittsburgh’s Allegheny River, the same body of water where his subject, Frenchy Johnson, won a single sculls race in 1879. A detailed account of Frenchy Johnson’s life can be found in “Frenchy A. Johnson: The Life and Times of America’s First Black Sport Star” by Edward H. Jones in Boston’s Black Athletes: Identity, Performance, and Activism (Lexington Books, 2024) available for viewing online at Google Books, here.