Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So this is part
two of a two parter, and in part one we
talked about the life of William Morgan. He lived in Batavia,
(00:24):
New York with his family in the mid eighteen twenties,
when he decided that he was going to write an
exposee of the Masonic Order, and as a consequence, gained
the ire of many Freemasons. He was, according to witness accounts,
abducted on September eleventh, eighteen twenty six, and was taken
to Fort Niagara, and his friends and family never saw
(00:46):
him again, and his disappearance led to immediate criticism of
the Freemasons, and volunteer investigators sought to figure out what
had actually happened to William Morgan. A body found a
year later was determined to be is but then was
identified as another man. So the mystery remain. So today
we're picking up by talking about Morgan's book and what
(01:08):
secrets it actually held, and the various confessions and accounts
of Morgan's fate that were published in the decades decades
following his abduction, so Morgan's publishing partner, Colonel Miller, did
publish Morgan's manuscript, although it wasn't as complete as Morgan
had intended. He had planned to include the details on
(01:32):
how a member would pass through the seven first degrees,
but the manuscript Miller published included only three. The publisher
wrote a lengthy introduction for it himself. Quote, we come
to lay before the world the claims of an institution
which has been sanctioned by ages, venerated for wisdom, exalted
(01:53):
for light, but an institution whose benefits have always been overrated,
and whose continuance is not in the slightest degree necessary.
Strip it of its borrowed trappings, and it is a
mere nothing, a toy, not now worthy the notice of
a child to sport with. Miller goes on to make
the case that masonry had value when knowledge was held
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in but a few places, and the order was needed
as a quote guide and conductor, but that masonry and
its members no longer had any valuable knowledge which was
not quote known to every inquiring mind. He points out
that its origin was with workmen who were joining together
to ensure their trades were regulated, but it became something
(02:38):
else over the years, noting quote but that there is
anything intrinsically valuable in the signs, symbols, or words of masonry.
No man of sense will contend that there is not
any hidden secret which operates as a talismanic charm on
its possessors. Every man of intelligence, Mason or no Mason,
must candidly acknowledge. Perhaps the most damning is Miller's passage
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quote Masonry is of itself naked and worthless. It consists
of gleanings from the holy scriptures and from the arts
and sciences which shone in the world, linking itself with
philosophy and science and religion. On this it rests all
its claims to veneration and respect. Take away this borrowed aid,
and it falls into ruins. So if you're wondering what
(03:26):
salacious secrets this book held, prepared to be disappointed. It
does exactly what Miller says. It starts by laying out
the opening ceremonies of the lodge, starting with the call
to Order and the Call and Response, which starts meetings
consisting of the lodge master asking the people in various positions,
what their duties are, and having them state them. It
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then details the manner in which a new initiate would
be brought into the lodge, voted on, and initiated if
that vote passed. It includes the various steps of the
same ceremony, which have particulars that make them unique and ritualized,
but really are generally pretty benign. There's the bringing forward
of candidates to the order, their statements of intent, and
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voting on whether to initiate them. There's a part where
the candidate's clothes are removed and the candidate wears only
his shirt, a barred pair of trousers that the lodge
kept for the occasion, a blindfold, a slipper on his
right foot only, and a rope around his neck and
sometimes left arm. All of these are explained as symbolic
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of things like humility and trust and other traits like that.
There's a promise of secrecy forever. And then, according to
this document, the men would stand in a circle and
clap their hands and stamp their right foot, and then
the three great lights of the order are introduced. The
Holy Bible is invoked as a guide for faith. A
square like a stonemason or a carpenter would use to
(04:55):
square their actions, and a compass to keep the brothers
in do bonds with all mankind, but especially brethren. And
then there are three burning candles called the lesser Lights,
representing the Sun as the ruler of the day, the
Moon is the ruler of the night, and the Worshipful
Master is ruler of the lodge. All of the language
throughout this ceremony, as William Morgan wrote, it is about
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honor and uprightness, and keeping Christian values, and befriending all
brothers and helping them win in need, etc. The book
then describes the closing of the lodge with a similar
call and response ceremony, including a prayer, and then the
text goes into detail on all of various symbols and
their meanings, how the lodge is the representation of King
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Solomon's temple, and a lot of the passages that members
studied and memorized to participate in these rituals. There is
a section that describes being promoted to the second degree
of masonry, and it's not all that different from the initiation.
There's more swearing of duty and recitation of call and
response questions and discussions of the meanings of the symbols
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and what they represent an even deeper commitment on the
part of the member being promoted. The same write up
of the third degree, the master Mason's degree, and how
it is conferred, is also again pretty similar. This one,
though involves travel. We're using air quotes there, which is
really the promotee leaving and returning to the lodge, and
each time being told it's a new place, and once
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again there's a call in response. There's a little bit
of hazing type behavior along the lines of carrying him
around in a blanket and pretending that he's being buried
in a play acting farce involving Solomon and the death
of the character Hiram Abraf, who is the architect of
Solomon's temple. All of these rituals involve an awful lot
of pontificating. Morgan writes of these ceremonies quote, the ceremonies, history,
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and the lecture in the preceding degree are so similar
that perhaps some of the three might have been dispensed with.
The conclusion of the book is almost like a glossary,
a list with all the various grips and hand signals
and words, as well as arrangements of props that are
part of the life of a lodge. This book is
(07:09):
really not exactly shocking. It's mostly just a lot of
rhetoric and kind of made up lore. Promises that members
will have each other's backs. Nothing in it seems worth
killing someone to protect. And this is particularly the case
when you consider that there were already published books that
already told masonry secrets. In his eighteen ninety nine book
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A Standard History of Freemasonry in the State of New York,
author Peter Ross notes a handful of similar books that
had been published in England as far back as seventeen
twenty four, and that a book titled Masonry Dissected, which
was written by Samuel Pritchard in seventeen thirty, had a
lot of reprints and was very popular in North America,
(07:53):
and no doubt because of this whole abduction and the
fallout from it, Morgan's book was also very popular. Yeah,
it's one of those things where you read it expecting
like some really dark secret will be revealed, and it's
kind of like, huh, this is just a bunch of
guys kind of telling ritualized Bible stories. This story stayed
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in the public eye for decades after Morgan's abduction and disappearance,
both because it was a horrific event and because as
members of the Batavia community in surrounding areas wrote their
memoirs near the ends of their lives, they sometimes divulged
their own knowledge of what had happened. Here's the thing,
those accounts are impossible to verify because of both the
(08:36):
time that has elapsed since the accounts and since the
matters discussed, and because everything about who knew what and
participated was intended to be secret to begin with. One
of these accounts was written by Thurlow Weed in eighteen
seventy five, so that was nearly fifty years after Morgan's abduction.
Weed was also anti Masonic, so there's that contacts there.
(09:00):
He stated that he had originally been asked to print
the manuscript, but had refused on the basis that he
felt Morgan was breaking his vow to keep the Order's secrets.
He also stated that the original plan for William Morgan
was that he was going to be transferred to a
Canadian lodge and then moved west in that country and
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given a job in a fur company there to try
to keep him away from the Batavia community and the
lodge that felt so threatened by this manuscript. But he
said the Canadian lodge had changed their mind once this
whole kidnapping was in motion, and that was why Morgan
and his captors returned to Fort Niagara. Weed names several
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men who he says then as a group were active
participants in Morgan's end, meaning his murder, But Weed is
pretty delicate in his language to not come out and
say that they murdered him. He also wrote of these
men that they were quote all men of correct habits
and character, and all I doubt not, were moved by
an enthusiastic but most misguided sense of duty. He continues
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later in his account, quote, of all the persons connected
with the abduction, arrest, imprisonment, and subsequent fate of Morgan,
there was not one within my knowledge who did not
possess and enjoyed the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens.
It was not strange, therefore, that facts subsequently established beyond
denial were at first very generally and indignantly rejected. The
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people would not believe that respectable citizens were guilty of
open and gross violations of law. We'd also hinted in
this book, and many people believed that he would relay
even more specifics of what had happened to William Morgan.
One day. Coming up, we'll talk about a different account
that came out almost fifty years after the abduction. But
(10:53):
before we do, we will take a quick sponsor break.
So we talked about Thurlow Weed's account that he wrote
in the eighteen seventies. Another decades later account of what
(11:14):
had happened to William Morgan was published in eighteen seventy three.
That was Samuel Green's book titled The Broken Seal or
Personal Reminiscences of the Morgan Abduction and Murder. In the introduction,
Green writes, quote, I have no intention of writing an autobiography,
except in relation to one feature of my history. Many
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years ago, I was brought, in the providence of God,
into strange and intimate association with a series of events
which deeply affected my own mind and for a long
time powerfully agitated society. Green explains that he was in
the same lodge with Morgan and witnessed quote much that
went concerning him, and he says that he is prepared
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to bear testimony on the subject that few other men
could give. He also states plainly that he has come
to believe that Freemasonry is injurious to morality, hostile to
good government, and also hostile to the Christian Church. Green
mentions that, like him, other members of the Freemasons had
found it to be corrupt and immoral and were distancing
(12:20):
themselves even before the events related to William Morgan. He
writes about colleagues who, speaking to other Masons about Morgan,
found them to be very ready to justify what had
happened to him. We mentioned that there was a rupture
among the Masons in the aftermath of this abduction and disappearance,
and this was a big part of it. Although the
(12:41):
fracturing had really already begun, many saw this as the
last straw in their association with the group. Green states
that he doesn't think that the men who became members
of the organization are inherently evil, but they became part
of quote an institution which has its own laws and
its own methods of working, and by it they are
(13:04):
shaped and controlled in ways they know not of. He
makes the case that setting up any society as secret
and separate from the rest of society is just inherently
problematic and is sure to lead to corruption by degrees
so subtle that its members don't even realize it's happening.
Green lays out the same details of Morgan's abduction that
(13:26):
we've already discussed, but he also offers a sad revelation
about halfway through the book, which reads, quote, I was
still a Mason in good and regular standing. Some might
suspect me not to be true to my oaths, but
my secret was not yet out. I still attended the
lodge meetings, for I could not very well do otherwise.
Just now there I heard enough after a little time
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to convince me that Morgan was no longer in the
land of the living. It was just as well understood
by the members of our lodge that Morgan was dead,
as it is when our families attend a funeral of
any person and return to tell the news. Only the
Masons did not make the announcement in the same way.
They had a great deal of rough joking over the subject,
(14:11):
implying that he was drowned somewhere in the direction of Canada.
Green's account states that lodge leadership clearly quote understood well
that Morgan had been put out of the way. By
some accounts, there were as many as sixty nine people
involved in the plot to stop William Morgan from publishing
his book from the beginning of the plot, as it
(14:33):
was hashed in a tavern owned by a man named Ganson.
There were Masons from Batavia, Canadagua, Lockport, Lewiston, and other
towns and villages in western New York. So while it
may have been the work of only some of the order,
it was a significant number of people. How many of
them knew that things would escalate from organized harassment to
(14:55):
kidnapping to murder is really unknown, and it could be
that different pockets of the group knew differing degrees of
the plan and were willing to go to different lengths
to try to secure their secrecy. There's also a theory
that the plot was purposely doled out in pieces in
the interest of maintaining deniability. The remains that we mentioned
(15:18):
in the opening of part one were found in eighteen
eighty one in Pembroke, New York, about eleven miles west
of Batavia. That was during a dig project that was
to precede the establishment of a stone quarry on the site. Initially,
the men working on that dig thought that they had
uncovered the remains of a Native American because the site
of the planned quarry was just two miles away from
(15:40):
the Tonawanda Reservation. But there wasn't anything on or with
the body that supported that idea. That body had been
covered with rocks and dirt. This was not a scenario
where a body had been accidentally buried over time. All
evidence indicated it had been deliberately buried with the intent
to conceal it. This is a case where the unearthing
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of the body might make you cringe, because it really
wasn't handled with the sort of careful techniques that ideally
would be used today. The workmen who found the remains
removed the bones. According to the paper, it was carefully.
They set them aside and then started sifting through the
dirt with their hands. Ideal or not, this method did
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turn up some other clues. There was a silver ring
with the monogram WM engraved on it, and then what
was believed to have been an old tin tobacco box
which contained a manuscript. While there was agreement that the
initials WM on the ring were not conclusive because a
lot of people have those initials. The manuscript was recognized
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as potentially important, and it was taken to a man
the papers referred to simply as doctor Phillips, who examined
it under a microscope to see if they could make
out any of the very faded writing on it. Basically
like to the naked eye, you couldn't tell what any
of the words were, and he was reportedly able to
identify the following words Mason's liar, prison, kill, and the
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name Henry Brown. Henry Brown was a lawyer in Batavia
who wrote a book three years after Morgan vanished, titled
A Narrative of the Anti Masonic Excitement in the Western
part of the State of New York during the years
eighteen twenty six, seven eight and a part of eighteen
twenty nine. This book seems like it's on Morgan's side
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in some ways. It describes him being abducted in great
detail and says it was over zealous Masons who had
done this, but it also asserts that there was no
proof of a murder taking place, And then it kind
of chides William Morgan for having gotten everybody so riled
up in the first place by writing his book At
(17:50):
this point. With this new body discovered, at least one
member of the press hunted down William Morgan's adult daughter
for comment. The New York Times reported on July ninth,
eighteen eighty one, that Missus Smith, who was married to
Captain William Smith and was living in Portland, Oregon. Quote
says her father was drowned by five men who took
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him one night into the lake. She states that one
of the five men who assisted in the drowning for
many years resided in Portland, Oregon, but is now dead.
Just a few weeks later, on July twenty second, eighteen
eighty one, the New York Times ran a piece titled
Another Morgan Story. It is, in essence an obituary claiming
(18:32):
that William Morgan had died in Smyrna Turkya known today
as is Mere. This item's subtitle kind of sets up
the tone for the peace quote, the much drowned and
off killed man dies in Smyrna. The timing of the
reported death is a little unclear, so one of many
accounts that claims that this information came from an old
(18:54):
timer who has since passed on, although it does say
that he heard the story in eighteen forty nine, a
year after the eighteen eighty one discovery of remains, William
Morgan got a monument which was viewed with some suspicion.
And we'll talk about that after we hear from our sponsors.
(19:22):
In eighteen eighty two, a monument to William Morgan was
erected by an anti Mason group called the National Christian Association.
This group was new, and it incited some suspicious speculation.
The New York Times wrote of the monument on September fifteenth,
eighteen eighty two. Quote, to most people, the fact of
the existence of a National Christian Association was made known
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for the first time the other day by the unveiling
of a statue erected by the Association in honor of
one William Morgan. This article reflects the negative sentiment that
still surrounded Morgan fifty six years after his death. It
continues in the language of a smear campaign, sounding surprisingly angry. Quote.
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At first sight, it may seem rather odd that a
National Christian Association should take pains to honor the memory
of a drunken vagabond whose one claim to fame lies
in the fact that he violated a dozen or more
of the most solemn oaths, or told a large collection
of ingenious falsehoods to add to the beauty and symmetry
(20:25):
of his moral character. Mister William Morgan always maintained that
he violated his alleged oaths and betrayed the confidence of
his associates from a sense of duty. He thus crowned
his moral edifice with hypocrisy, and was as various and
miscellaneous a rascal as our prolific country had produced. This
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article then goes on to exaggerate the anti Mason stance
for effect sort of blaming every ill of the world
on the fraternity as a means to discredit the stance
of the National Christian Association by noting how utterly harmless
all Freemason's look while talking about their alleged bloodthirstiness is
kind of an intense read, it really is. It's so
(21:08):
angry for something that is half century old. The discovery
of the wm Body led to more people asking for
thurlough Weed to finally tell everything he knew, if in
fact there was more to his story as he had
hinted in eighteen seventy five. At this point he was
the only surviving person with ties to the case, and
(21:32):
in eighteen eighty two he did write another follow up
to the story. He included the fact that he had
left Rochester and the paper that he ran there after,
sentiment against him grew in the wake of calling for
Freemasons to quote take the laboring or in the search
for Morgan. Subscriptions to his paper dropped so rapidly after
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he had made this statement that he left the paper
to his business partner and just sought work elsewhere. In
his follow up, we need comments on the fact that
three of the men who were part of the volunteer
committee that formed in Rochester to investigate Morgan's abduction back
in eighteen twenty six had been Masons themselves, and that
two of them had been involved in the abduction. He
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mentions that the legal efforts to bring the perpetrators to
justice and multiple different municipalities were all hindered by the
fact that Masons in each community were protecting each other
and the order, and that obtaining indictments had been impossible
quote in five of the six counties where indictments were needed.
In discussing the evidence, he noted, quote there was every
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reason to believe that he was taken from the magazine
and drowned in Lake Ontario. This, however, was boldly and
persistently denied. Denials accompanied by solemn assurances that Morgan had
been seen alive in several places, divided the public sentiment.
Weed noted that while this issue led to political positioning
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as parties being pro or anti Mason, he and his
committee quote firmly resisted all efforts, urging all who were
connected with us in an effort to vindicate the law
to vote for the candidates of the party with which
they had been previously connected. But he explained that once
it was discovered that Mason's had enough power to control
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the outcome of elections and pretty much everything else, he
and like minded colleagues incorporated their anti Mason stance into
their politics. Weed was a politician. He was a member
of the New York State Assembly the year before Morgan's disappearance,
and he was elected a member again in eighteen thirty.
Through an account he attributed to a man named John
(23:40):
Whitney who was involved in the plot, We'd ultimately placed
the blame for the initial idea to stop Morgan's book
through kidnapping on David John's and then he implicates several
other masons as he described the confession that one gave
him of the end of Morgan's life. According to that account,
which we'd stated he never shared because of was told
to him in confidence, Morgan was told he was being
(24:03):
taken to Canada and that his family was going to
be brought to him there. So he willingly got into
a boat, and that at the mouth of the Niagara River,
a rope was tied around him with a sinker attached
to him, and he was dumped. In a particularly sad detail,
he tried to hold on to the edges of the
vessel but was pushed away, and he managed to bite
(24:25):
one of his killers in the process. Weed gives a
complicated story about why he did not obtain a signed
copy of this confession. He said that Whitney wanted once
to be made to be shared after his death, but
that Weed was so busy he forgot to do it. Yeah,
there's a whole weird side track story where he's like, oh,
I was in town for a convention and I told
(24:45):
him I would go do it, but I got so
busy I forgot about it. And then I went to Iowa,
and then I remember like it's a very like here's
the overly complicated, a detailed explanation of why don't have
a signed version of this? The Whitney account was not
the only late in life confession to the murder of
William Morgan. There were others, but they created new problems,
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as in some cases the details did not match up
among them. Additionally, and frustratingly, the remains that were found
in eighteen eighty one never seemed to lead to any
sort of conclusive revelation. That story just sputters out in
the papers. So if people were hoping that Weed's second
writing on the matter, one of the confessions, or the
(25:29):
investigation of the body and its accouterment would lead to
a final resolution, they did not get it, and there
never has been one. Even modern tellings of Morgan's story
disagree deeply on what kind of man he was, Whether
this entire thing was a sinister plot, a case of
a handful of people getting carried away by their zeal,
(25:51):
or even a stunt created by Morgan and Milner two
bolster sales of their book, But the majority seemed to
chalk the whole thing up to zeal. It went too far,
as it agitated among the men responsible for the abduction
and likely end of Morgan's life. In a standard history
of Freemasonry in the State of New York, which we've
quoted in this episode previously, author Peter Ross, who we
(26:16):
could not call a fan of William Morgan by any measure,
makes the case for why this entire scenario escalated to
such a tragic end. Quote. Had it been proposed to
issue the illustrations of masonry in a large city, it might,
if we judge by previous instances, have created no comment.
But in a little country place it was different. Quite
(26:38):
an excited sentiment against the proposed work was aroused, and
the feeling was intensified by the worthlessness of its real
or reputed author. Had it been a work of an
honest man, which is difficult to realize, of an educated
man or a thinker, it might have been viewed differently
and with some degree of respect. But for a graceless,
(26:59):
good nothing scamp to propose selling secrets he had sworn
to conceal for the prospect of a few dollars was
too much to be regarded lightly. And as the matter
was discussed, the rumors gathering in clearness of the nature
of the work ascribed to it a merit far beyond
its due, and intensified the excitement. So this is both
(27:23):
an insightful commentary on small communities in the way that
strife can impact them, and a pretty biased description of
William Morgan, also pretty victim blamey oh one hundred percent. Uh.
Samuel Greene, who was far more sympathetic to Morgan, makes
a similar statement in his book quote never were greater
emotions awakened from so small and unimportant a cause. He
(27:48):
then adds quote, but there was nevertheless a philosophy underlying
this excitement. It must be remembered that masonry is too
sacred and important a thing to be committed to books.
The theory is that it must be transmitted from generation
to generation through the air. That the whole communication of
these tremendous secrets must be purely oral, passing from mouth
(28:09):
to mouth, as the illustrious order lives along the ages humans.
Mm hmmm, always so disappointing. So for listener mail, I
have one that's a correction. This is from our listener Jenny,
who writes about our Mad Gasser of Matoon episode. Jenny writes,
(28:30):
Dear Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to the show
for years now and love the broad array of topics
you bring to lay. I can proudly say that I
have my PhD and stuff you missed in history class,
although it is an ongoing job to maintain that degree
and I am now a couple of months behind. We
always say this, but it bears repeating again. That's cool.
I never want anybody to feel like, you know, listening
(28:53):
to something they enjoy is an obligation and not something
that's actually enjoyable. I was about to say, there's no
obligation at all. No, we love, we love our listeners,
and we love that you're listening. But like we get
behind on the media that we love all the time,
it happens. Life are thing that it is full of
activities and needs and responsibilities. Your entertainment should never feel
(29:13):
like a responsibility. Jenny writes, I have wanted to write
in for a long time, and I hate that I
finally got around to it. By pointing out a minor
correction in the Mattoon Gaser episode, you mentioned the Alton Railroad,
pronouncing Alton as it looks like how it should be pronounced,
like the Food Network host Alton Brown. As this is
my hometown, I feel compelled to let you know that
it is actually pronounced all ten. All ten is in
(29:36):
fact an interesting little rivertown that could provide material for
the show someday. It is the site of the seventh
Abraham Lincoln Douglas Debate, the hometown of the record holder
of the tallest man in the world, Robert Wadlow, the
home of Elijah P. Lovejoy, the first martyr for the Press,
the birthplace of Miles Davis, site of Piazza bird legend,
and unfortunately, the home of Philish Slafelyy. Yeah, I would
(29:59):
not have known all ten pronounce that way, so thank you.
Finally attached to the obligatory pet tax. The reddish brown
guy and black brown girl are my current babies, Ziggi
and Melusine. I also feel I must include my pets
who have sadly passed on, as they too heard plenty
of hours of stuff you missed in history class with me.
The smiling black dog is Achilles, so cute, the brown
(30:20):
rabbit is Summer, also so cute, and the black one
is Autumn. Bunnies make great pets and are really fun
and loving. However, they can have a lot of health
problems and are not as easy to care for as
people expect. Unfortunately, this leads to people setting them free,
which domesticated rabbits are not prepared to handle. But I digress.
Thank you for all you do and keep up the
good work. So we got a correction and a PSA
(30:41):
about rabbits. If you want to adopt a rabbit, they're
very cute, but yeah, they're all animals are worked. You
got to be prepared for the commitment of an animal.
Thank you for that correction. Sorry all ten, didn't mean
to do it wrong. If you would like to write
to us with minor corrections, pet pictures, or your thoughts
on unsolved but kind of solved murders, you can do
(31:04):
that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can
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(31:27):
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