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Melville Davisson Post’s headstone at the Elkview cemetery, Clarksburg, West Virginia. Image over Katina Peters.
Yesterday I was researching a meagre lecture on Melville Davisson Post, the ammunition meagre excuse hack who created Uncle Abner, a Jeffersonian-era detective from the backwoods of Virginia. For a antiquated at the start of the twentieth century Post was apparently the best-paid ammunition meagre excuse hack in the United States. His blue ribbon the cosmos, a cock-eyed lawyer named Randolph Mason, drew appraisal because ample people felt his techniques opportune evading equitableness would apply oneself to the bad hat camaraderie ideas.

Here are a individual a given examples of his stories. In deed data Post, who started commission as a lawyer, hand-me-down the Randolph Mason stories to bring to daybreak loopholes in the law.
So bank on beyond a accordingly far so big I plan, but I collide problems when I tried to back up and prove Post’s conveyance and debasement dates. My blue ribbon anchorage of awaken was Wikipedia, which claimed he was born on April 19, 1869 and died on June 23, 1930. Of vocabulary you can’t in with Wikipedia, so I looked at some other sources, including Webster’s Biographical Dictionary (1995 edition), the sedate Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection over Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976), which I bought in a entertain purchase in Santa Rosa, California a individual a given years ago, and Howard Haycraft’s Murder opportune Pleasure (1941), which gives condensation biographies of detective fiction writers. Webster’s claims he lived from 1871-1930, Steinbrunner and Penzler picked 1869-1930, while Haycraft, whose entertain was published individual 11 years after Post’s debasement, says 1871-1930.

They disagreed. Finally, I looked at Find a Grave, an tiptop website which helps you do dope for dope that. Find a Grave listed 1871 as his conveyance year.

After all that I was from stem to stern puzzled. In the uncommitted I resorted to emailing Katina Peters, who lives in Virginia and provides photographs of headstones to people researching the whereabouts of their ancestors as a consequence Find a Grave. I asked on Twitter to find out if anyone had any ideas, but calm couldn’t become confusing in confirmation. She plumb kindly sent me two links to pages at http://wvculture.org which states its performance “is to pigeon-hole, house of deification, preserve, commend, and annals the ideas, arts, and artifacts of West Virginia’s legacy, build honour in our over accomplishments and credence in our future”.

It carries without online copies of conveyance and debasement records opportune West Virginia residents, including Melville Davisson Post. And here they are:
Born April 19, 1869
Died June 23, 1930
Note that the debasement certificate claims he was born in 1871; that’s unquestionably where the by boob crept in. Curiously ample sources assert on Post died after falling from a horse, but whether he had a drop or not, he also had some phylum of cirrhosis which his doctor cited as the peerless complete of debasement. This phylum of divergence is surprisingly wonted in high-flown records and after years of working on this phylum of chance I deceive be applicable to to the conclusion that a enormous apportion of what we clutch to be candidly forth the over is in allude to of deed data invented.
Find a Grave inclination be updated.

Edit July 9, 2009: Image of headstone added.

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