The first one is the Woman's Club. Sounds like Addie was pretty active with this group. Must have been difficult in between all the spousal abuse Rosemary claims happened. Of course all that rhetoric is unfounded and false.
DAR recognizes Addie for her contributions in the second resolution. I still wonder if Addie became a member because of one of E J's relatives. I know he had a relative that served in the Revolutionary War. Not sure about Addie's relatives since Rosemary has spent substantially more time on E J than collecting the history of her own family - at least in her blog.
The last part is from the annual high school Alumni Reunion. This article gets cut off after a bit but the relevant part is near the bottom. It states regrets for Elsie and Mattie (two surviving daughters of E J) Fargo's forced absence. Most probably that would be because they were quarantined in the house......that would be the logical conclusion.....even if it's not the most dramatic.
"There are deep regrets because of the forced absence of Misses Elsie and Mattie Fargo...." and Rosemary Thornton claims that there was no quarantine of the Fargo home. You see she has chosen to tell only bits and pieces of history in order to decieve readers into believing that which never happened.
ReplyDeleteI have been studying the history of Lake Mills since I was 14 years old and never was there so much as a hint of any impropriety in the untimely death of Mrs. Addie Fargo until the rumur of a rumur was published in Mary Wilson's "A History of Lake Mills". It is recognized by all who are well read about our history that Mary's book has errors that were unintentional but errors none the less. In a small community such things are accepted as a matter of course and all accepted that Mary was slipping in her later years. This may not have been apparent if you didn't know her well.
The rumur about Addie surfaced once again when the Fargo Mansion Bed and Breakfast had a big promotional campaign in 2001, if memory serves me. Funny that for so many years not a single word about Addie or ghosts was heard even though Tom Boycks and Barry Luce owned the Fargo home for quite a few years.
Once again the urban legend goes dormant until Rosemary Thornton and Tom Boycks figure that they could partner up and get some more mileage out of a tired old ghost buster story.
Rosemary Thornton gave a talk in Lake Mills and right away pitches her Sears Homes website. She proceeds to present a story, pieced together with flawed research, about the death of Addie Fargo. Right away she begins to make assertions and assumptions that are totally off the wall. She gives a time line of events that are untrue but then states "and all this happened pre-telephone".
You see, Addie died of diphtheria in 1901 and the telephone came to Lake Mills in 1880. Gee, she is only off by a couple of decades.
For most people that should have been the end of her talk. I listened to it on the internet after one of my friends at the library told me about it. I couldn't believe that what she was saying was supposed to be about Lake Mills. How could anyone accept anything she had to say after
making such a patently false statement.
Of course this same lady terms herself an "Architectural Historian" and proceeds to write about Sears Kit Homes. Substitute Menard's and Home Depot, add time and there you are.
One would think that a good reader would pick up on the ever-changing blog entries made by Rosemary Thornton. I give her credit, she never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.
DeleteYea, when I went back to check on some of the things she has written, it has disappeared. I remember early on she said that Enoch remarried 4 months after Addie Fargo died, later it becomes 7 months. Which is it? Also, according to dates supplied by Rosemary Thornton, Addie's mother died at age 36, did Homer Hoyt kill her. When Mary Rutherford Fargo died at age 37, she implies foul play. What ever became of the claim that Addie came from great wealth? Homer Hoyt was a farmer, co-owner of a livery which was purchased for $500.00 and lasted a short time, a member of a Anti-Horsethief Society or club of some sort. That is all that has been written about him. I have no reason to believe that he was anything other than a regular guy. You see, that didn't suit Rosemary Thornton's idea of her who her progenitors should be. It seems what drives most home chair genealogists is the search for a famous relative, somehow elevating themselves.
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DeleteHas Rosemary really removed entries from her blog? Like the entries that expose her as a charlatan and a grifter?
DeleteI've tried to check back to entries even on other webpages and whole links have been removed - always after someone questions something or provides information to disprove what has been said. As for Elsie and Mattie's "forced absence..." That darned Enoch. He was to blame for everything. By the time they chewed through the ropes the event was no doubt long over.
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