The Return of the WASP: DNA Discovery in Antarctica and Related to President FDR?

Oh, and did my ancestors invent Anglo-American democracy? You're welcome!

Last photograph of Roosevelt, taken April 11, 1945, the day before his death

My eldest uncle Dwight L. Johnson is a rather remarkable man who I have had the good fortune to reconnect with after a quarter century interlude. Insofar as I can recall he and I haven’t spoken with one another since I was eight. I’m now 34. Nor has anyone else in my immediate family had much contact with him. But seemingly apropos of nothing in particular, dear Uncle Dwight reestablished connection with my sister who passed him on to me after he reached out through the 23andme.com interface.

For our purposes what’s remarkable is that our interests are relatively similar notwithstanding all this time apart. We didn't influence one another but happily Uncle Dwight shares my obsession with genealogy and its role in predicting world events.

His own history is nonetheless astounding and included a stint in Antarctica as one of the first student to winter there.

This is how he recounts it.

In 1961, I met Francis Crick when he showed my genetics seminar the white photo with gray dots on it that got Watson & Crick the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of chromosomes.

At the same time, I was in Antarctica helping some real biologists retrieve the oldest living material on earth - the first stuff with DNA in it.

Almost as a joke, I announced, when our bottom scoop came up, "It's the primordial slime."

Nobody laughed...30 years later they proved that it was the oldest genetic material on Earth. It still is.

And I had nothing to do with it, except cutting a hole in the ice and retrieving some slime from a volcanic vent!

But I was thanked in the first research paper on the subject that sent people all over the earth finding more of it near volcanic vents on the bottom of the oceans.

I’d come into some trouble researching the family line and Uncle Dwight has helpfully filled in some of the gaps, in particular our early time in America.

The Great Swamp Fight of December 19, 1675. It was the most violent per capita battle of American history.

My ancestor Isaac Johnson was killed in the King Philip’s War. He was 58 and was buried here.

Here’s Dwight on Isaac.

Captain Isaac Johnson. He was a son of John Johnson, and brother of Humphrey Johnson. All three were immigrants and founders of Roxbury, later founders of Hartford and Roxbury Latin School - oldest US school in continuous operation still.

They all came to Boston in about 1635, founded Roxbury and went to church in Dorchester until Roxbury got their church built.

Most of the people around Roxbury were from the same small communities in England, in an area known for its attitude toward the Roman church and moron King Charles I.

"The Great Migration" began when Parliament's House of Commons had the King arrested for not doing his job, and the House of Lords impeached him, issued a death warrant and sent Oliver Cromwell after him.

Cromwell eventually arrested him, tried him, and beheaded him just after they did the same to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

During this period "The Great Migration" sent a few thousand well heeled and well educated Protestants to New England, mostly Massachetts and a fuse was lit that eventually blew up our dependency on the German king of England.

Villages and estates I've identified (and visited) in England sent Johnson and kin to Boston with their church rectors. About 80 such churches have been identified.

It is not an exaggeration to say these people invented Democracy, mostly before they came over here. Towns and villages in East Anglia had been quietly governing themselves for about 100 years. Many of them transplanted to New England, said "Hi" to Plymouth's Pilgrims and went somewhere else to create Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Isaac Johnson was our ancestor. His brother Humphrey was President FDR's ancestor, via a marriage to someone named Delano. FDR was [my father Admiral] Dwight Johnson's boss in WWII.

I’ve checked and sure enough, Uncle Dwight is right. We are related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

For those curious about the affects of East Anglia on our politics today read Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989) or listen to Kerry of Mary Lincolniana discuss it with Razib Khan.