Talk:Jacob Johnson (father of Andrew Johnson)

Untitled
Apart from being the father of a US president, how is Jacob Johnson notable? -- Chuq 02:22, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * He was a prominant Raleigh citizen who saved several mens' lives. Mike Helms 12:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Would either of those be notable if he wasn't also a former president's father? I guess my question is, what disambiguator name should we use (since other people with this name exist - see Jacob Johnson (disambiguation)).  Jacob Johnson (father of President), doesn't really look right.  Neither does Jacob Johnson (Raleigh citizen) or Jacob Johnson (rescuer) -- Chuq 12:36, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion
I appreciate the concern about whether or not this page should exist, but I'd like to highlight a few examples of why it might remain. For these reasons, I am respectfully removing the Proposed Deletion info box. Mike Helms (talk) 12:46, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Jacob Johnson was the father of president Andrew Johnson. Yes, fame isn't inherited, but one doesn't just need to be famous to be on Wikipedia. In this case, knowledge about Jacob Johnson can inform our understanding of Andrew Johnson. I would also note that there's a Wikipedia category for "Fathers of Presidents of the United States," and one may safely assume that most of these men were not themselves famous.
 * Jacob Johnson is one of the earlier residents of Raleigh, North Carolina. There's not exactly a ton of information about the city's early residents, and Jacob's connection to Andrew Johnson makes his life marginally more accessible to historians.
 * This is a well-researched article with a good number of contributions. This does not detract from Wikipedia.

DNA results
Scientific data that have not undergone peer review are not considered WP:Reliable sources. There is no telling whether the self-reported data are authentic, either in terms of the reported genealogy or the haplotyping. Agricolae (talk) 15:32, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

I wish to address your edit. I am a professional archivist of 26 years and an experienced genealogical researcher of 39 years. Until last year, I was also a volunteer co-administrator of the Johnson/Johnston/Johnstone Y-DNA surname project at FamilyTreeDNA, a genetic testing company. I am also a direct descendant of Silvanus "Sill" Johnson (ca. 1696-1763) of Essex, Amelia, Prince Edward Counties, VA and Johnston County, NC. I have done extensive research on my ancestor Sill Johnson. I am also the contributor of the cited paragraph concerning the published research of Hugh B. Johnston in the "North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal."

The Johnson Project at FTDNA conducted genetic testing to identify the y-dna signature of President Johnson's direct male ancestors. Initially, two documentarily confirmed direct male descendants of Moses Johnson of Carter County, TN were tested. Moses Johnson was identified as a brother of Jacob Johnson, based on correspondence found in the Andrew Johnson papers. Those genetic tests were funded by FTDNA. Later, I personally facilitated the y-dna test for a confirmed direct male descendant of Silvanus "Sill" Johnson of Johnston County, NC. That participant (now deceased) was my second cousin once-removed. His test for Sill Johnson's line resulted in matches with other participants whose ancestors lived in the same geographical areas of Virginia as Sill Johnson. Also, a direct male descendant of Sill Johnson's son Henry Johnson (ca. 1730/35 - 1807) of Johnston County, NC has also proven to be a genetic match. This further corroborates the correct identification of Sill Johnson's haplotype, which was I-P37 (Burr Oak group at the Johnson project). The test of Silvanus "Sill" Johnson's line has shown that the descendants of Moses Johnson, presumed uncle of President Andrew Johnson, are NOT a genetic match. Thus, this result confirms that the theoretical ancestry first put forth by the late genealogist Hugh B. Johnson (whom I knew and corresponded with) is not accurate.

In 2010, I personally sponsored a y-dna test for a gentleman in Nashville, TN, a documentarily confirmed direct male descendant of William Johnson (1804-1865) of Brazoria County, TX, the brother of President Andrew Johnson. William Johnson is identified as the brother of President Johnson in his published correspondence. The genetic tests show that the y-dna direct paternal line of William Johnson (and thus President Andrew Johnson) belongs to I-M223 haplogroup (Scarlett Oak group at the Johnson Project). That test did match the two descendants of Moses Johnson, thus confirming the proposed relationship between Moses Johnson of Carter County, TN and President Andrew Johnson proposed by Hugh B. Johnston. However, it further refuted the alleged connection to Silvanus "Sill" Johnson of Johnston County, NC.

The theoretical ancestry of President Andrew Johnson put forth by Hugh B. Johnston has been unfortunately canonized into accepted fact for many years now. Genetic research has shown that this proposed ancestry is inaccurate. It is imperative that the evidence confirmed by genetic research be known, so that this erroneous theoretical ancestry is no longer perpetuated as established fact. The Johnson/Johnston/Johnstone Y-DNA project once had an independent web site which contained information about these findings. It was administered by two administrators and myself (as co-administrator). However, in 2016, FamilyTreeDNA made the decision that they wanted our site to make certain significant changes to conform to their policies, which my fellow administrators did not fully agree with. Thus, the decision was made to delete the project's former web site. I left the project as well, when the administrator's resigned. The project has now reverted to a standardized web page administered by FamilyTreeDNA and their own appointed administrators. As a result, much of the research and findings of the project have been lost, and are no longer available online.

The findings of the Johnson Y-DNA project are based on scientific genetic testing facilitated by or sponsored by participants at FTDNA. The statements made in the article concerning the genetics of President Johnson's ancestry are based on those findings, which are credible, scientific, and accurate. They are not baseless statements. They are based on former research of that project, whether published or not. Those findings should be presented to any readers seeking information about the correct ancestry of President Andrew Johnson.

mv66nc Mv66nc (talk) 16:00, 21 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Good for you. I am sure you have put a lot of work into this, but Wikipedia is not the place to publish your personal (or group) research findings - that is called Original Research, and is explicitly forbidden, and one should not use it for advocacy.  Please see WP:NOR, WP:FORUM, WP:SOAPBOX.  If the findings are of importance, then you shouldn't have any problem getting them published.  This is an important step because it means someone else, an editor, thinks what you have found is both accurate and important.  Self-published material is not considered reliable on Wikipedia, because there has been no such vetting of the material.  This is even worse, because your description suggests FTDNA did not think your synthesis was worthy of preserving, and as you say, it is now no longer available.  It doesn't matter how credible or accurate you think the results are, and it doesn't matter the expertise you claim (which, I note, does not include genetics).  Everyone thinks their own conclusions are correct, and anyone can claim expertise.  One of the fundamental features of Wikipedia (though some consider it a flaw) is that it does not give weight to the expertise of editors.  Wikipedia bases its conclusions on published, vetted, and preferentially secondary sources.  You are presenting as fact your personal interpretation of scientific data that has been self reported.  THat is not the material of which Wikipedia articles are built.  Agricolae (talk) 16:48, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

I will not contest this any further with you, nor engage in any edit war. It is simply not worth my time. Your assertion that the research of the Johnson Y-DNA Project is not peer reviewed is perhaps valid. It may indeed constitute "original research" based on the definitions and established rules of Wikipedia. That still does not make those conclusions invalid.

Regardless, I wish to clarify several statements. FamilyTreeDNA is a leading genealogical genetic testing company. They are respected as a credible testing company which utilizes scientific standards. I do not represent myself as a genetic expert (nor did I state so). However, FTDNA is staffed by geneticists who are experts, and they have established criteria of what constitutes a genetic match based on accepted genetic science. The determinations of whether one participant matches another is made by them, as are haplogroup designations based on ISOGG nomenclature standards. Either someone is a genetic match with another participant or they are not. Certainly, one can contest or question the genealogical research of particular participants, but when the lineages of certain participants with documented descent (based on primary source documents) from a common ancestor result in a genetic match which can be triangulated (accepted in genetic science as proof of a MRCA), then those conclusions are nevertheless factually based statements, whether they have been published and accepted in a peer reviewed article yet or not. Facts are facts. In the case of President Johnson's ancestry, the genetic evidence as set forth by the established standards of genetic research utilized by FTDNA (not myself) support the conclusion that President Andrew Johnson's brother William Johnson was not a descendant of Silvanus "Sill" Johnson based on Y-chromosome DNA. Their STR markers do not match. William Johnson (Andrew's brother) was, however, related to Moses Johnson of Carter County, TN. The only possible point of contention would be concerning the accurate lineages of participants, but those are supported by primary source documentation.

Also, I wish to clarify that the decision to delete the former project web site was not the decision of FTDNA, nor did it have anything whatsoever to do with their assessment of the "worthiness" or credibility of our project's work. It actually concerned some privacy guidelines of FTDNA concerning the use of participant's names on the site. In fact, FTDNA asked the administrators to revise the site or donate their content to a new, revised site for the project set up by FTDNA. The administrators with whom I worked, who claimed copyright to some of the site's content, elected not to share their page content with FTDNA. That was their decision. I was not involved with that decision either way.

I wish to state that I am the contributor of the content concerning the Hugh B. Johnston's theory concerning the ancestry of President Johnson (which was published and "peer reviewed"). I included that information in the article as a matter of providing historical background on the subject of Andrew Johnson's reputed ancestry, so the inclusion of the additional "personal research" on the genetic evidence is not advocacy of my opinions, but rather a further elaboration of the genetic evidence found by FTDNA testing since the publication of those articles. It is merely reporting that the genetic testing conducted at FTDNA has NOT entirely supported the accuracy of those published articles by Mr. Johnston.

While your arguments are valid in regard to Wikipedia policy, I would assert that an article accepted by a publisher for printing does not necessarily mean that article is empirically factual or accurate, nor are the comments or analysis of academics who review that article necessarily factual. One could validly argue that both the article and peer reviews, whether sourced or not, are still essentially advocated opinion. Expertise is often in the eye of the beholder, even in academia and publishing. Facts are not facts based merely on whether others (a publisher) believes them. In the area of science and genetics, they are what they are, regardless. Genetics don't lie, and while you can question my methods or interpretation of those findings, the STR marker results are what they are. They are not that difficult to interpret either, and do not necessarily require the expertise of a geneticist to understand. The genetic evidence based on these tests supports the conclusion that President Johnson is not a descendant of Sill Johnson (my ancestor), nor was he a descendant of Andrew Johnson (md. Hannah Hinkle) of Augusta County, VA, a line which has also been genetically tested and does not match. Certainly, the science of these genetics tests is more "factual" than what has been merely theorized and published by someone in a journal article or book, whether peer-reviewed or not. It has been my future plan for some time to publish these genetic findings in an article for inclusion in a credible publication.

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Johnson?iframe=yresults

Sill Johnson line (Haplogroup I2a1 Family A - Burr Oak) - Kit 136664 Jacob Johnson line (Haplogroup I2a2a Family E - Scarlett Oak - Kit 173780

mv66nc Mv66nc (talk) 19:27, 21 May 2017 (UTC)


 * This is why I am not a big fan of putting extensive genealogy in Wikipedia biographies. Some of what has been published in genealogical publications, particularly older ones, is demonstrably wrong, but it takes the Original Research to demonstrate it as such, and that is prohibited.  It only creates a connundrum.  If you are absolutely convinced that the published placement from the genealogical article is incorrect, don't include it in the article, or at least don't put so much emphasis on it. Agricolae (talk) 19:58, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

The citation to his gravestone information
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23297/jacob-johnson 38.42.2.144 (talk) 23:49, 19 June 2023 (UTC)