Until now I have worked on one page a day, but this time it will be two: Metta (or Netta) P. Hart ("Your friend and schoolmate") writes on November 30. 1886: "Friend;- Learn as if you were to live forever, Live as if you were to die tomorrow" and adds on the side: "Gold is not all that glitters". A couple of blank pages further on, Virgie (or Virye) V. Hart writes: "Friend. In the golden chain of friendship regard me as a link. Truly Yours. Virgie V. Hart".
Hart is a well known name in Chagrin Falls, I came across that name a couple of times, so it should be easy to trace Metta and Virgie because Alexander Hamilton Hart is one of the first citizens of Chagrin Falls together with Noah Graves, S.S. Handerson, Chester Bushnell, Napoleon Coville and Ebenezer Willcox. Hart started living in the village in 1834 and a year later he founded with some others an independent "Congregational Church". Alexander was married to Minerva "Polly" Eldredge (1809-1847), and after her death he married - as far as I could find out - two more times. The result is a lot of children, nineteen kids. But Metta (or Netta) and Virgie (or Virye), grandchildren of Alexander Hart, I don't find anywhere. Frustrating!
Jane XII
There are of course websites where I can find a lot more information about the inhabitants of Chagrin Falls in 1886, but I would have to pay for it. I don't like that because the rule is: pay first and than you can investigate. Who guarantees that the information is valuable? Long ago I checked out my grandparents using an American website. Of their six children I only found one: an aunt who was murdered in Auschwitz.
In the census of 1910 I find William N. Wheelock. Back in 1886 he wrote in Otho's album: "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey where wealth accumulates and men decay". William hails from Canada where he was born in 1874. He lives in the house of his sister, Harriet Wheelock (1870-1960), who married physician George D. Cameron, born in 1829 in Scotland.
Jane XIII
Good heavens! On the next page there is a second Netta (not Metta as I thought earlier) but this time its Netta G. MLaughlin. Has Netta Hart married a man named MLaughlin? It might be, because this contribution dates from five years later: September 1891, but the handwriting is totally different. This Netta hails from Fort Scott, Kansas - which as the crow flies, is 1200 kilometers southwest of Chagrin Falls. Did she sign the album in Fort Worth or Chagrin Falls?
After some research I find a Netta McLaughlin, that must be her. She is an enrolling clerk in "The Legislative Department of Kansas" and is living in Fort Scott, Bourbon County, Kansas. Otho's last name is Scott and Fort Scott is named after Winfield Scott (1786-1866), a famous American general, who at one time even was a candidate in the presidential elections. Is there any relationship between the general and Otho? I decide not to delve any deeper, because I am busy with the album and the citizens of Chagrin Falls. Netta G. McLaughlin (why did she drop the "c" in her name when she signed the album?), is - after all - an outsider.
