Talk:John Sullivan (general)

The most important John Sullivan?

Of all the people called John Sullivan, is this guy really the most notable? I was expecting the wrtier of 'Only Fools and Horses'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.1.85.102 (talk) 14:17, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Revolutionary War general, governor, and federal judge? I'd say this is the most notable bearer of the name. bd2412 T 17:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Catholic?

Was he Catholic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.56.205.8 (talk) 02:35, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I doubt it. I found this quote.

'Their grandfather was one of the "Wild Geese" who fled with Sarsfield from Limerick to France. His son married Margaret Brown, a fellow "redemptioner", and with their six children all drifted into Protestantism. One of their sons General John Sullivan, of Revolutionary fame, writing on 5 September, 1774, of the "Quebec Act" that gave religious freedom to the Catholics of Canada under British rule, denounced these co-religionists of his grandfather as "determined to extirpate the race of Protestants from America to make way for their own cursed religion"."'

Source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02703a.htm

(Esterhase (talk) 18:46, 20 February 2013 (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: moved per request. Favonian (talk) 07:08, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

---

• John Sullivan → John Sullivan (general)
• John Sullivan (disambiguation) → John Sullivan

– While this John Sullivan had an important role in the American Revolution and may well be more accomplished than any one other person on the dab, he simply doesn't meet WP:PRIMARYTOPIC criteria. I didn't even have to journey beyond the second section of the dab to see this. John Sullivan (writer) alone gets almost as many views; last month, the general had only 3391, which is astonishingly low, even with the generous assumption that everyone one of those readers was indeed looking for this person. Perhaps not surprisingly, John Sullivan (American football) is most prominent in a general Google search. The general does better in a Google Books search, but Scholar is all over the place.

I would be open to other dab terms, but this one appears most often in Category:Continental Army generals, and I don't see any other generals on the dab. BDD (talk) 18:40, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support per nom. The various John Sullivan articles and redirects seem to also need clarified disambiguation, and correcting ambiguous redirects -- 76.65.131.217 (talk) 21:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support per nom, and verbatim with 76.65. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:04, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Strong support and suggest speedy as obvious: Don't forget John L. Sullivan (10,000 page views in the last month), the legendary boxing champion. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:29, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support. The champion boxer (who always gets an "L." in his name) is the most famous John Sullivan, but John Sullivan shouldn't redirect there since we have articles on people just named "John Sullivan". It's better to make John Sullivan a disambiguation page and keep the most prominent holders of that name at the top. 168.12.253.66 (talk) 16:40, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support per nom. No primary topic except for maybe the boxer. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:11, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

  I think the boxer's not primary either. I think the IP editor above was correct – the boxer always (or at least typically) seems to be "John L. Sullivan", not just "John Sullivan". Anyhow, boxer or no boxer, I think there's no primary topic here. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:30, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Ditto. --Vivaelcelta {talk  · contributions} 10:31, 15 October 2013 (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.

Dispute unsourced Founding Father label

No prominent source can be found on the internet that considers Sullivan a Founding Father. Unless multiple sources can be produced to support this assertion, the label will be removed. My concern is that this is already being picked up by websites that citing Wikipedia as a source, none of them prominent, of course. For example: Wikipedia used as a source. It's also reflected by websites that "mirror" Wikipedia, so on a google search on John Sullivan, the first "hit" is Wikipedia with "Founding Father" prominent in the description and then several sites that mirror WP and say the same. The sum result of which is that we are creating false information that may never be reeled back in. Allreet (talk) 05:45, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, signers of the other three founding documents are accepted per sources and various talk page discussions as Founding Fathers, and since there is no dispute that the Continental Association is a founding document, site consistency applies. Besides the defining 2017 Werther article "Analyzing the Founders: A Closer Look at the Signers of Four Founding Documents" in the Journal of the American Revolution here are two other sources which, for consistency and per WP:COMMONSENSE, acknowledge that the Founders include the signers of the fourth: The Founder of the Day article "Signers of the Continental Association" clearly states "Below is a list of the Founders who signed the Continental Association" [emphasis mine], followed by the names of the 53 signers (Founder of the Day also names the Association as one of the four founding documents). The worldhistory.edu "Top 10 Founding Fathers of the United States of America" - section "List of Founding Fathers of the United States" asserts "Also, two broader groups of Founding Fathers capture the signers of Articles of Confederation (the initial version of the American Constitution which was adopted in 1777 and ratified in 1781) and the signers of the Continental Association (created on October 20, 1774)" [emphasis mine]. Please add these sources to the pages of the other Association signers you are intent of removing from Founding Father status, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:45, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The issue is not whether four documents are considered "founding documents" - that's a diversion. The issue is whether signing one of those documents, the Continental Association, qualifies someone as a Founding Father.

None of the citations @User:Randy Kryn refers to are satisfactory. The only reliable source of the three is the Journal of the American Revolution article, which it turns out contains no text indicating "53 signers of the Continental Association are considered Founders". Citing a combination of text and title is not acceptable, not "clear" and "direct" as required under WP:VER.

The other two sources referred to (founderoftheday and worldhistoryedu) are highly questionable in terms of their reliability. For example, neither website provides references that readers can consult to verify claims. No surprise, then, that neither source is associated with a historian.

COMMONSENSE does not apply in the case of an extraordinary claim, one where multiple sources are needed. What is extraordinary here is the idea that dozens of people previously not considered to be Founding Fathers all of sudden deserve the title because someone has come to an interpretation of an article nobody recognized before.

This matter can be easily settled by producing some reliable sources and adding them as citations. I've already searched high and low for such sources, which I'll continue to do. But I will not add citations for sources I take issue with. Feedback from other editors would be greatly appreciated.Allreet (talk) 23:44, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Will get back to this as I try to keep up with Allreet who has been at his crusade of canceling founders for what seems like months on dozens of pages and tens of thousands of words. For example, he has opened and closed three (3, III) simultaneous RfC's on the same question because he didn't like the results (a Wikipedia record?), and is now looking for a different conclusion (which wouldn't count anyway given the results of three simultaneous RfC "loses") I'll answer further within a day or two, can only juggle so many of his new discussions at a time (which he knows and is maybe - surely? - counting on) but I do ask him now, is he going to add this campaign to the Peyton Randolph page, who, given Allreet's wishes, would lose Founding Father status on Wikipedia? Randy Kryn (talk) 23:46, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

It's been a month or so, my "crusade". But I've got a lot of catching up to do, chasing down unsourced edits in more than 50 articles. Prior to those changes, made last October, nobody of note considered signers of the Continental Association and Articles of Confederation to be Founding Fathers. And there was nothing on Wikipedia to suggest otherwise.

So what you're saying, @User:Randy Kryn, is not exactly true. But you don't have to take my word for it. I'll let the journal articles I have and a couple other sources, such as the National Archives and U.S. Congress, have the last word. P.S. Both of those latter sources dispute the Continental Association and Articles of Confederation as "founding documents". Allreet (talk) 10:14, 23 February 2022 (UTC)