Fact or Fiction? More Answers on the Dewitt Blackman Mug Book Bio
In " Fact of Fiction: Dewitt Samuel Blackman and the 1890 Mug Book ," I wrote about my project to see how accurate a county history "mug book" biography was for my husband's great-great-great-grandfather. His biography appeared in the book Portrait and Biographical Album of Sumner County, Kansas, Containing Full-Page Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County , published in 1890. For this just-for-fun project, I entered each fact noted in the bio into a spreadsheet and researched each to determine if they were true, false, or somewhere in between. Some claims were about Dewitt, his wife, and their family, while others involved his parents, his wife's parents, and even some generations further back. There were many claims to document, and I didn't complete the task with that first post. I've continued to research the facts, and here's my latest update. The following facts in the biography are tr...
