Righting a Wrong to Portsmouth
Autograph Letter, signed ("Walter Wellman") to C.A. Hazlitt of Portsmouth, N.H., acknowledging his mistake in reference to Portsmouth and the Census of 1800.
Washington, D.C: Oct. 19, [ca. 1905].
Price: $250.00
About the item
One page. 1 vols. 4to. Righting a Wrong to Portsmouth. Bit ragged at one edge, two punch holes, slight soiling.
Item #238163
Walter Wellman (1858 -1934) was an American journalist, explorer, aëronaut, founder of the Cincinnati Evening Post in 1879, and after 1884 became the Washington correspondent for the Chicago Herald, and then the Times-Herald. Here, he corrects a misstatement regarding Portsmouth, N.H.:
" ... you are right and I was wrong. Today I telephoned the Census Office, & they replied that Portsmouth was not given in the Census of 1800. Later they replied, 'The clerk who gave me the first information had looked at the wrong table, and that Portsmouth in 1800 had a population of 5,339' - your figure, you see ... My sincere apologies to Portsmouth, which i have visited, and for whose beauty & charm I have a great admiration ... "
It was at the Portsmouth Peace Conference in 1905 that Wellman first saw the French Lebaudy Dirigible Balloon - a machine in which he felt he could reach the North Pole.
