For what purpose does this dispute continue?
Having had ancestors living along the borders of Union, Franklin, Fayette,
Wayne, and Rush counties as early as 1806 and having myself been born in
Connersville in 1969, spending the first 17 years of my life roaming all of
these counties...... it's hard to believe anyone on this list is debating how
much of which county was taken to form Union County. Go to the library in each
of these counties and you will find a lot of information on the others. I've
only been researching for about 8 months and it did not take me long to figure
out that if I wanted to find all I could on my earlier ancestors in any of these
counties, I had to check the information available in the bordering counties.
I also consider the sometimes near-illegible handwriting of some census takers
in the past and think "How reliable are these people?" If anyone on this list
grew up taking all the short-cuts (back roads), then you know how often you can
go in and out of these counties with no clear definition of the border lines. It
doesn't seem unreasonable to consider that more than one census taker (or even a
landowner himself) along the borders of these counties would get confused. This
isn't the first time I've heard from a family researcher that Liberty or
Whitewater was in Wayne County. I don't think I have ever seen any document or
writing in any book at any of the libraries in these counties stating "Liberty,
Wayne Co"..... wasn't that the question originally? Is the researcher who first
posed this question wanting to know where to look for further information on her
ancestors..... if so, I think we can all agree she'd be wise to look in all of
the counties, especially if her ancestors were farmers. If she just wants to
clarify what county Liberty is in.... I think we can all agree that after about
1830, Liberty was definitely in Union County and not Wayne County.
Sorry.... just starting to feel like this "debate" was missing the point that
the families living in these counties were (and still are) closely connected
however dispersed throughout these rural counties. In researching these counties
before 1900, I have begun to look at them all as a whole.
Stacy Cox
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