Francis Johnston was a reverend in Bertie County who in 1777 refused to swear an oath to the State of North Carolina and consequently had to leave the state. Later that year, fellow Bertie County resident James Buchanan wrote that he, along with Johnston and Robert Lenox planned to leave on the brig Tryal and head to Saint Croix. Whether he left on the Tryal or another vessel, he later became a rector of a church in Jamaica, from where he filed a claim with the American Loyalist Claims Commission for compensation after the war.