Melvin C. Johnson is an independent historian and retired college professor, writer, and speaker who pursues subjects dealing with the East Texas mill town culture, the Texas Hill country before and in the Civil War, and the intersection of Western America and Mormonism. His work won the Smith-Pettit Best Book Award (2007) for Polygamy on the Pedernales: Lyman Wight's Mormon Village in Antebellum Texas and the Greg Kofford Best Theological Article (2017) for "John Hawley: Mormon Ulysses His LDS Mission to Iowa and Eventual RLDS Conversion," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. He and Halli, his wife, live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Tyler, Texas.