"The Shortest Man in Hackettstown" - Oct. 8, 1886

Jessie Bilby

We Are Fan of the Week

@myhist Your podcast is great. http://t.co/QDzE83fgsy
— Free James Titus (@freejamestitus) January 23, 2014

@freejamestitus. Thanks. Fan of the week
— Bruce Carlson (@myhist) January 25, 2014

Recommended:
My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Podcast

Mostly major stories, not local ones, but definitely recommend.

"Hard to tell the difference between facts and folklore..."

"Evilness sells...that's the name of the game."



"In order to study the laws of history we must change the subject completely, forget all about kings, ministers and generals, and turn to the homogeneous, infinitesimal elements that move the masses to action. No one can say how far it is within man's grasp to arrive at the laws of history in this way, but it is obvious that this is the only possible way of discovering any historical laws, and human intelligence has hitherto not devoted to this way of thinking a millionth part of the effort that historians have put into describing the doings of various kings, ministers and generals, and expounding their own opinions of these doings."
-Leo Tolstoy, "War & Peace" Volume III, Part III, Chapter 1

Mead/Meade

Influential sociologist George Herbert Mead entered Harvard in 1887. I wonder if he could have been a relation to "Student Meade", who testified against James Titus and tried to collect the $10,000 reward before disappearing.¹ We may never know.


¹Sullivan, Denis. In Defence of Her Honor: The Tillie Smith Murder Case. Flemington: D.H. Moreau Books, 2000.

War & Peace - Volume III, Part I, Chapter I

 Although on a conscious level a man lives for himself, he is actually being used as an unconscious instrument for the attainment of humanity's historical aims. A deed once done becomes irrevocable, and any action comes together over time with millions of actions performed by other people to create historical significance. The higher a man stands on the social scale, the more contact he has with other men and the greater his impact on them, the more obvious are the inevitability and the element of predestination involved in everything he does.<sup>1

1</sup>Leo Tolstoy

The Ethics of the Historian

It is true that, whether he is labeling a museum exhibit or writing a biography, the historian that lets himself be carried away by the hope that he is describing a "first", "oldest," "largest," or whatever, may be in for some embarassment. But there is nothing especially ethical about a desire to avoid embarassment; even burglars take care to avoid discovery. Embarassment is not the penalty to be feared. The historian who knowingly lets the truth be covered up or stretched out of shape may never be contradicted. His authority may be accepted in good faith. Those who doubt him may shrug their shoulders and say nothing, not wishing to upset him with inconvenient facts or arguments. The ethics of the historian are important precisely because he can so often expoect his sins to go unexposed. This is even truer of the local historian than of the professional academic. ¹

¹Felt, Thomas E. Researching, Writing and Publishing Local HistoryNashville: American Association of State and Local History, 1981. ISBN-0-910050-53-8

The Fire Could Have Been Prevented

There was a big fire in Hackettstown on Halloween night, 1899.

Hackettstown Historian Dan LeMasters told me today that the Centenary College Fire (Halloween 1899) was caused in the boiler room by loose rags lying around in the long place.
The Denis Sullivan book about Tillie Smith said that James Titus was a very conscientious janitor. When It his duties are listed, the first one was tending the furnace.

He would have been manager of the Maintenance Department by 1899. If he had not been sent to jail for a murder he did not commit, there would have been no fire. Hackettstown would be a totally different place.

What do you think?

Free James Titus! - Shame James Creelman!

James Creelman
Originally uploaded by Erik B. Anderson

"...If the war against Spain is justified in the eyes of history, then "yellow journalism" deserves its place among the most useful intrumentalities of civilization. It may be guilty of giving the world a lop-sided view of events by exaggerating the importance of a few things and ignoring others, it may offend the eye by typographical violence, it may sometimes proclaim it's own deeds too loudly; but it never deserted the case of the poor and the downtrodden."
-James Creelman<sup>1

1</sup>James Creelman, On the Great Highway. Boston, 1901; pp. 177-78.

"They mah hang me, but they can't hang my soul."

I found this in the archive at the Hackettstown Historical Society. It did not come with a source. I suspect this was printed in the Express-Times, but I really have no idea.