Born: December 11, 1869
Died: September 23, 1947

Peter Schermerhorn Johnson was born 11 December 1869 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. His father was Joseph W. Johnson, a pioneer in the oil and gas business in New York, and later Oklahoma. Founder Johnson attended grammar school at the academy in Claverack, New York.

Johnson contributed some of the secret work of the fraternity and penned the words to the song "Fovens Mater." He is also credited with the design of one of the fraternity's early symbols: the hand of humanity reaching for the key of knowledge, and the poem of explanation that accompanies the design.

Although he earned a law degree from Cornell in 1891, due to a severe hearing loss, Johnson chose business over the legal profession. After graduation, he formed a partnership with his father in an oil and gas business is Bolivar, New York. Johnson later moved to Woodfield, Oregon, where he was associated with Andrew Mellon in a natural gas business. He then operated a hardware business in Colorado. In 1908, Johnson moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, at about the time the commercial oil and gas business began to develop in that area.

In 1914 Johnson married Clara von Gonten of Tulsa. They had no children.

During the law vs. general membership debate, Johnson was clearly on the law side. The march 1920 issue of the Quarterly published his letter in which he argued strongly for a single-membership professional organization. He offered his opinion that the law alumni would not support the fraternity if eligibility for membership should be broadened to include non-law men. Further he wrote that a new general fraternity would need a new motto, ritual, coat of arms, and other symbols. He expressed his hope that the fraternity could find a way out of the conflict short of changing to a general fraternity. After the decision in 1922 to drop the law requirement for membership, Johnson gave his complete support to the re-organized fraternity.

At age seventy-seven, Johnson, the last surviving founder of Delta Chi, died 23 September 1947 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was buried in the Oaklawn cemetery of that city.