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Archiver > OHMORROW > 2000-08 > 0965230498


From: Suzanne Schroeder Enlow <>
Subject: Re: an interesting item from 1880 paper
Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 10:34:58 -0500


It is my understanding that the individuals in those types of books
wrote their own bio. and paid to have it placed in the book.
Suzanne

Jane Peppler wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Since many of us have combed the 1880 history of Morrow County, I
> thought the piece below, reproduced in this month's newsletter of the
> Morrow County Genealogical Society, would be of interest. Remember that
> just 'cause something is in print doesn't mean it's right.
>
> "From December 9 1880 Sentinel, West Gilead Items: "It has not been safe
> for a book agent to travel through this neighborhood since that book of
> all books, the _misrepresentations_ of Morrow county, has been
> delivered. ... the balance of the history of this place is far from
> correct ... [several examples of inaccuracies which I did not bother to
> retype] ... Again the history says, "that the first grocery-store was
> kept by Davenport Rogers." This is not true. Before Mr. Rogers came
> here, grocery-stores were kept here by Isaac De Witt, Mr. Waring, Lot
> Burt, Samuel Christy, Seth McCormack, Alexander Nellens, Thomas Hull,
> Westley Hanmer, Mr. Vanatta, Nathan Hiskett and James Cooper. If we are
> to judge of the correctness of the work from what we know here at home,
> there is not more than one statement in ten that is correct."
>
> My Burt family appears not at all in this history despite the fact that
> Ebenezer Burt emigrated to Canaan Township in before 1827 and was an
> early Justice of the Peace there, and had five sons who made their lives
> in Morrow County (including the Lot Burt grocer mentioned above), and
> that his grandson Adin Burt was a prosperous fur trader living in
> Cardington in 1880 when the book was published. My theory is that those
> neighbors who supported the enterprise, perhaps by paying into the book
> (for instance, the autobiographical sketches), were prominently
> featured. The main member of my family living in Morrow County in 1880,
> Adin Burt, was cheap and irascible. He probably took a piece off the ear
> of the traveling biographer who visited him to the extent that they
> expunged our family from the history. Don't think this doesn't happen.
> I'm interested in other people's reactions to this.
>
> Jane Peppler
> researching Burt, Leonard, and Tucker in Morrow County

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