[43] Ibid. An alleged copy of the declaration published in A Picture of Clinton County (Lock Haven, 1942), p. 38, is clearly spurious. The language of this Pennsylvania Writers' project of the W.P.A. is obviously twentieth-century, and it contains references to events which had not yet occurred.
[44] Fithian: Journal, p. 72.
[45] Muncy Historical Society, Muncy, Pa., Wagner Collection, Anna Jackson Hamilton to Hon. George C. Whiting, Commissioner of Pensions, Dec. 16, 1858.
[46] Ibid., John Hamilton to Hon. George C. Whiting, Commissioner of Pensions, May 27, 1859.
[47] The veracity of the witness is an important question here. Meginness, in his 1857 edition, devotes a footnote, p. 168, to this remarkable woman who was in full possession of her faculties at the time. The Rev. John Grier, son-in-law of Mrs. Hamilton and brother of Supreme Court Justice Robert C. Grier, wrote to President Buchanan on Nov. 12, 1858, (Wagner Collection), stating that "Mrs. Hamilton is one of the most intelligent in our community." Buchanan then wrote an affidavit in support of Grier's statements to the Commissioner of Pensions, Nov. 27, 1858, (Wagner Collection). Aside from the declarations of Mrs. Hamilton and her son, the only other support, and this is hearsay, is found in the account of an alleged conversation between W. H. Sanderson and Robert Couvenhoven, the famed scout. W. H. Sanderson, Historical Reminiscences, ed. Henry W. Shoemaker (Altoona, 1920), pp. 6-8. Here again, the fact that the reminiscences were not recorded until some seventy years after the "chats" raises serious doubts.
[48] Pennsylvania Archives, Fourth Series, III, 545.
[49] Ibid., p. 546.
[50] Linn, History of Centre and Clinton Counties, p. 473.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid.