Harriet's family relocated from London to the port city of Nantes in the late summer of 1778 where her father became one of the leading American merchants doing business in France and acted as commercial agent for the State of Maryland and the U.S. Congress. It was during this time that Catherine Nuth Johnson gave birth to daughter Harriet Johnson in Nantes on the 18th of June 1781. Harriet was baptised the following year on January 13 in the Nantois Protestant Church.
   Harriet was almost 2 years old when her family returned to London in the spring of 1783, where her father served as the first American consul to London during the 1790s. The family remained in England until the fall of 1797, when 16 year old Harriet's family returned to Maryland. President Washington appointed her father Superintendent of Stamps after his return to the United States, a position Johnson held until being discharged by Thomas Jefferson in 1801. Harriett's father died the following year in 1802.
   Harriet married about 1804 to George Boyd. George Boyd was a bearer of dispatches to Ghent at the time of the treaty in 1814 which ended the War of 1812. He was later a Federal Indian Agent at Mackinac Island, Michigan by 1819. They moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin about 1832 where George Boyd served as an Indian Agent. Harriet's husband resigned as Indian Agent in 1840 and they lived the remainder of their lives in Green Bay.

   "....Miss Harriet Johnson, daughter of Joshua Johnson, a niece of Thomas Johnson, the first governor of Maryland, and a sister of Mrs. John Quincy Adams. Their married life was blest with a large family--eight boys and one girl....."
   [Herbert B. Tanner, Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Vol. 12, Sketch of George and James M. Boyd, pp. 284-316]