Thomas Murphy Johnston,1836-1869, was the first surviving son of David Claypoole and Sarah Elizabeth Murphy Johnston. He became noted for his crayon portraits figures and landscapes. He painted portraits of Wendell Phillips, John Greenleaf Whittier, Charles Sumner, Captain Edwin Humphrey, Frank Thomas of Hingham, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Charles Lowell and Abraham Lincoln. The portrait of his mother was exhibited (pictured above and left) at the Boston Athenaeum in 1859. A crayon portrait of Abraham Lincoln was his most famous portrait, and was the result of his being sent in 1860 to Springfield, Illinois, by Charles Henry Brainard (1817-1885), a Boston publisher; Lincoln was then the Republican candidate for President. A story of Johnston’s interview with Lincoln and his letters giving his impression of Lincoln were reprinted in the Boston Globe in February 7, 1932. Although the portrait itself has disappeared, the lithographed reproduction still exists [there is one at the Boston Athenaeum]. Johnston studied with Samuel Worcester Rowse (1822-1901), the crayon portrait artist, and later with William Morris Hunt (1824-1879).
The Payson family lived on Payson Street in Dorchester.
See the description of the Johnston family collection at the American Antiquarian Society
https://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Johnston/introduction.htm