Safely relied upon as historically accurate

The history of four counties published in 1920 names its editor for LaGrange County on its title page. Under the editorial supervision of Ira Ford.

Its second volume, the volume of biographies, carries a sketch of him.

Ira Ford, supervising editor for LaGrange County in the compilation of this publication, has been in close touch with people and events in that county for at least half a century and has lived there since he was about eight years old.

He was born in Wayne County, New York, on the thirteenth of October, 1848, and came to LaGrange County with his parents, Jared and Rebecca Ford, in April 1856. He taught school, then farmed in Clearspring Township. On the sixth of February, 1873, he married Julia A. Peck, daughter of Hawley and Harriett Peck.

The county history published in 1882 has a sketch of the same man, on the same seven particulars: the county of his birth, the day, his parents, the month the family came, the day of his marriage, his wife, and her parents. It does not say who supplied them. The 1920 book does say, in its preface, who supplied its own.

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An Ira Ford appears five times in the first volume of that book, each time as somebody the book is describing.

He is among the secretaries of the county agricultural society, in its chapter on agriculture (page 48).

He is the president of the Old Settlers' Association. The present officers are: Ira Ford, president (page 113).

He is one of the men who took down the reminiscence of John Smith, the next item in the same chapter (page 115).

He and J. N. Babcock are the two men who conceived the notion that a hall should be secured for the Sycamore Literary Society, in the chapter on Eden Township (page 147).

He is the secretary of the Pixley Grange, in the chapter on Clearspring (page 170), a line the 1882 history had already printed.

The book does not say that any of these is its editor.

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The book introduces the third of these this way.

The following reminiscence was dictated by pioneer John Smith, of Lima Township, in June, 1918, when he was ninety-five years of age, but his mental faculties were but little impaired. Ira Ford and three others of the Old Settlers Society made this interview, and it can be safely relied upon as historically accurate:

The book is vouching for an interview taken by its own editor, in the third person, and does not say whose interview it is.

The same volume's chapter on Clearspring Township has a section on peppermint. It makes Hawley Peck The first man to introduce this industry into LaGrange County, and it has him bringing the first roots from Constantine, Michigan, in a sack, and selling a thousand pounds of oil in New York for $5,000. The 1882 history has no sack, no Constantine and no thousand pounds. The book does not say that its editor had married Peck's daughter.

Its chapter on agriculture names some of the agricultural society's presidents.

Among the men who held the positions of president and treasurer for the first third of a century may be recalled among others these: Messrs. C. B. Holmes, Hawley Peck, Elisha Talmage and John McDonald, all of whom were presidents at different times and for numerous terms each.

Peck is one of four, among others.

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The editor's sketch is in the second volume, under his own name, with his marriage in it. The first volume does not join it to anything, and the book was not built to.

The book says how it was built, in its preface.

Every biographical sketch in the work has been submitted to the party interested, for correction, and therefore any error of fact if there be any, is solely due to the person for whom the sketch was prepared.