Recorded in 1850, it bore an inscription commemorating Robert and Elizabeth Johnson, dated 1670, making it one of the older legible memorials noted in the area. What gives it a particular resonance is that someone thought to write it down at all: by the mid-nineteenth century, antiquarians were already aware that such stones were disappearing, worn smooth by weather or broken up during building work, and the act of recording was itself a form of preservation.

The tombstone appears in the second volume of "Memorials of the Dead," a remarkable Irish antiquarian publication of the 1890s that systematically documented inscriptions from graveyards across the country before they were lost entirely. The Johnson stone, dated 1670, places it in the years following the Cromwellian period, a time when Dublin's population was shifting rapidly and the old parish churches were absorbing new communities of settlers alongside older ones. St Michan's itself is a venerable foundation, established in the eleventh century on the north side of the Liffey, and its churchyard accumulated centuries of burials from the surrounding Smithfield and Oxmantown area. The record was compiled by Geraldine Stout and uploaded to the national monuments database in August 2012, drawing on that nineteenth-century source.

St Michan's Church is on Church Street, on the north side of the city, and is generally accessible to visitors. The church is perhaps better known today for its vaults, which contain mummified remains preserved by the dry limestone environment beneath the building, a feature that has drawn curious visitors for generations. The churchyard itself is a more modest affair, and anyone hoping to locate the Johnson stone should be aware that its current condition is unrecorded; after nearly two centuries of exposure, it may no longer be legible, or may not survive at all. The value here is less in the stone itself than in what its documentation represents: a momentary record of two seventeenth-century lives, caught just in time.