Talk:William Jackson (secretary)

Untitled

I can't believe a signer of the Constitution did not have an article here until several days ago, thanks for writing the article! mstroeck 08:45, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Issue-Owen Roberts

I am new so forgive an mistakes. Just a note that on The William Jackson page the Owen Roberts connects to supreme court Judge of the 20th century rather than the merchant that raised William Jackson in Charleston. Since I am new I don't know how to correct this. Sorry! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwjackso2 (talk • contribs) 20:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus, default to long-term title. Jenks24 (talk) 13:38, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

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William Jackson (presidential secretary) → William Jackson (secretary) – User:Roman Spinner moved this page from its original to its current title without discussion. Jackson is almost certainly more notable for his role as secretary to the United States Constitutional Convention than he is for his job as a presidential secretary. The original page name indicated both positions. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 06:09, 20 July 2012 (UTC) Fishal (talk) 06:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I defer to the veteran editor who created this entry, with the caveat that a brief discussion might be useful in order to put forward alternative presentations. The parenthetical qualifier "(secretary)" is rarely, rather than simply infrequently, appended to main title headers of Wikipedia articles because, it would seem, more precise qualifiers are available for selection. This job description is most frequently heard when it is applied to members of presidential cabinets or to high-level state officials elected to oversee specific departments. Those who bear names requiring disambiguation, and attain notability by acting as personal assistants to celebrated individuals or as minute takers and record keepers at glorified public events, are likely to receive a slightly longer, but more-specific, qualifier such as "(presidential secretary)", as currently used herein. In this specific case, William Jackson, in addition to serving in military, diplomatic and national government functions as well as attaining the position as first personal secretary to the first President of the United States, held, as User:Fishal already pointed out above, the even more important, historically, post of secretary to the country's Constitutional Convention, which included the assignment of reading out the Constitution to the Congress. In view of the subject's uniquely specialized place in history, a somewhat longer, but more-appropriate qualifier such as "(Constitutional Convention secretary)" or "(secretary to the Constitutional Convention)" seems more fitting. While such qualifiers do not include his time with George Washington, most qualifiers tend to single out a subject's key position in history to the possible exclusion of his/her (occasionally multiple) other accomplishments. As to the use of the stand-alone qualifier, "(secretary)", Category:Secretaries, contains only one such entry, Peter of Poitiers (secretary), a 12th century monk who served Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny. Even in this instance, a more-specific qualifier would seem to be "(religious scholar)", "(scholarly monk)" or, simply, "(monk)".—Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 19:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

It's true that it's the rare person who is chiefly notable for working as a secretary. That is probably why the category is so empty. Fortunately he fits into other, more helpful categories as well (Category:Personal secretaries to the President of the United States and Category:Signers of the United States Constitution).

The tricky thing about Jackson is that he held two such notable positions, as we both have said: secretary to the Constitutional Convention and secretary to the President of the US. Either post, by itself, would make Jackson notable enough to have an article. My thinking when I named the article originally was that (secretary) happened to reflect both positions nicely. Do you think that (Constitutional Convention secretary) is more fitting? To me that seems cumbersome. Generally, disambig tags are only as specific as they need to be, and don't give more information than necessary to disambiguate from other pages - hence, William Jackson (footballer), but William Jackson (Canadian politician) and William Jackson (New Zealand politician), and even William Jackson (organist born 1730) and William Jackson (organist born 1815). Fishal (talk) 20:50, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Signature on the Constitution

Jackson signed a marginal note attesting to the corrections which were made to the document after it was engrossed. He didn't actually sign the Constitution itself, nor was he a delegate to the Convention. Therefore I don't think it is accurate to describe him as the fortieth person to sign the Constitution. I intend to delete that sentence, but I'll wait and see if anyone objects. Richard75 (talk) 14:48, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Done. Richard75 (talk) 17:59, 16 September 2020 (UTC)