An interesting point that I just became aware of, while searching for links to post in #102, above, is in the "Adolph Ruth's Directions to the Lost Dutchman Mine, on the rootsweb Website, by Garry Cundiff."
In his .pdf, Garry says that the original source of the Ruth note, was an article written by P. C. (Pierpont Constable) Bicknell that appeared in the January 13, 1895, San Francisco newspaper. He then goes on to say that the article couldn't be located in the paper's records, or as a possible reprint by a Kansas City newspaper. He adds that the reason it wasn't located at that time, was probably because in the July 15, 1931 Prescott Courier, an article, by Ralph O. Brown, was published which repeated, word for word, a significant portion of the 1895 San Francisco Chronicle article, but listed the original as being printed in the
1892 Chronicle, three years earlier than the actual publication date.
Then it says, "There the search for the article would languish until Gregory E. Davis located the article in the mid 1980’s."
Further along in the story, he tells of visiting Greg Davis, and seeing the handwritten Adolph Ruth note, with the horizontal lines where some data is missing, and having the word "square" instead of "circle" (yet it also uses the term "diameter," which seems strange).
Here is the puzzlement: If Garry knew that Greg had the original Chronicle article, then why didn't he provide the words which are missing from the note, when he wrote this story?
Although elsewhere in his story, he lists several different versions of the article, he never states that any one of them are the version found by Mr. Davis, and thus the true original. This data would be significant, considering that the storyline indicates all along that the Ruth note actually originated from the Chronicle article.
Two more questions are left: Where did Mr. Bicknell get his version of the "directions"? And did Mr. Ruth, rather than using the Chronicle version, get the directions in his note from a
different source? Possibly even from a
better source?
The Chronicle article ran in 1895, yet Ruth didn't get all excited about having "the directions," and go into the Supers, until 1931.
Had Ruth discovered additional, more convincing, evidence?
