Speaking of the California Gold Rush last week, I'm reminded of some other young men connected with it in what appears to have been a false report. We have to begin by remembering that there was no instant news reporting in the 19th century and that much of what passed for news was either rumor or convoluted facts.
The Norwalk Experiment newspaper of Aug. 10, 1952, reported that William, George and Charles Raymond had been murdered in May 1852 while en route to Oregon. They were sons of Alanson Raymond of Sherman Township. I took this report as true until I found in the Norwalk Reflector of March 20, 1855, a news item reprinted from the Sacramento Union newspaper concerning two brothers named Raymond who arrived in Placerville from Carson Valley. They had told the man who told the newspaper reporter that their father lived about two miles from Monroeville in Huron County. The man who reported this story was one Thomas Knott of Ripley Township in Huron County.