Researching Andrew Johnson

Johnson was born into poverty and never attended school. He was apprenticed as a tailor and worked in several frontier towns before settling in Greeneville, Tennessee. He served as alderman and mayor there before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835. After briefly serving in the Tennessee Senate, Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 1843, where he served five two-year terms. He became governor of Tennessee for four years, and was elected by the legislature to the Senate in 1857. In his congressional service, he sought passage of the Homestead Bill which was enacted soon after he left his Senate seat in 1862. Southern slave states seceded to form the Confederate States of America, including Tennessee, but Johnson remained firmly with the Union. He was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not resign his seat upon learning of his state's secession. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as Military Governor of Tennessee after most of it had been retaken. In 1864, Johnson was a logical choice as running mate for Lincoln, who wished to send a message of national unity in his re-election campaign; and became vice president after a victorious election in 1864.

Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction, a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to reform their civil governments. Southern states returned many of their old leaders and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, but Congressional Republicans refused to seat legislators from those states and advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency. Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment which gave citizenship to former slaves. In 1866, he went on an unprecedented national tour promoting his executive policies, seeking to break Republican opposition. As the conflict grew between the branches of government, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act restricting Johnson's ability to fire Cabinet officials. He persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, but ended up being impeached by the House of Representatives and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate. He did not win the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination and left office the following year.

Johnson returned to Tennessee after his presidency and gained some vindication when he was elected to the Senate in 1875, making him the only former president to serve in the Senate. He died five months into his term. Johnson's strong opposition to federally guaranteed rights for black Americans is widely criticized; he is regarded by many historians as one of the worst presidents in American history.

He is most famous for being one of the original cast members of EastEnders, playing the shop-keeper Saeed Jeffery from the first episode in February 1985 until December 1985. During his time on the show, Johnson's troubled character struggled in an arranged marriage to an unwilling wife, Naima (played by Shreela Ghosh).

After leaving EastEnders Johnson moved to Hollywood, but a successful film career failed to materialise. He eventually got minor roles in the amateur detective series Murder She Wrote and later in the ITV drama, Inspector Morse. In 2005 he appeared in the low-budget film Secret Agent 420.

He was born in Clapham, Inverness Township, Canada East, the son of Samuel Johnson and Agnes Steel. Johnson was the owner of the Johnson Asbestos Company, a mining company, and helped establish the asbestos industry in the province. He married Maria McGommon. He was postmaster at Clapham and served on the municipal council at Thetford Mines. Johnson was mayor of Thetford Mines from 1885 to 1888. His election to the Quebec assembly in 1886 was annulled in 1888 and he lost the subsequent by-election to William Rhodes. Johnson was elected again in 1890. He died at Thetford Mines at the age of 77 and was buried in Sherbrooke.

The Andrew S. Johnson Science Building at Bishop University in Lennoxville, Quebec, was named after him. He was a trustee member of Bishop's Executive Committee from 1935 since 1966, as well as Chairman of that committee from 1956 until 1963.

His son Andrew Stuart Johnson, Jr. took over the operation of the asbestos company after his father's death.

Anders Jönsson was born in the parish of Ovansjö in the county of Gävleborg, Sweden. He was trained at Uppsala University where he received an award from King Charles XV of Sweden for his contest winning design He used the prize money to emigrate to America in 1865, where his building career lasted from 1870 to 1910.

After arriving in the United States, his name was changed to Andrew Johnson. He first settled in a Swedish-American community in Evanston, Illinois. About 1870, he moved to Sardis, Mississippi where he became associated with James B. Cook, an English-trained architect who had moved from London to Memphis, Tennessee in 1855. Johnson served as contractor building the Second Empire style Panola County Courthouse that Cook designed and was built in 1873 and as contractor on at least two other buildings. Johnson and Cook collaborated on at least two other buildings.