Hi Justin: I am out in California at present visiting my cousin on my father's side but I did find that William B. Eckley, my gggrandfather, was deposed by the Congressional committee investigating this disputed election between a Democratic candidate and the Greenback Party candidate. The most interesting information that W.B. Eckley provided was that he had lived in Centre County for 40 years and disclosed that he had voted for the winning Greenback Party candidate. I was intrigued enough to research a little bit about the election and found that farmers were in favor of the Greenback Party thanks to their position that the government should print money without backing by, for example, gold, which would let them pay off their loans for their property with inflated funds. This election was also one of the few in U.S. history where a minor party actually won a significant number of seats in Congress, approximately 25 or so, although their positions were usurped by the next election by ! the major parties which meant that they were quickly voted out of the Congress. Anyway, I found this information by googling William B. Eckley's name and the Congressional committee's report was apparently published by Congress with all of the depositions included. I don't think that I would ever have known of this report if Google had not been digitizing this type of information. I think I found this report about the March or April timeframe and thought it was awesome since it places the Eckley family in Centre County for quite some time. Take care and maybe I'll run into you at the end of July when I visit Bellefonte. Patrick Deady -----Original Message----- >From: Justin Houser <jkhouser84@gmail.com> >Sent: Jun 13, 2009 5:31 PM >To: pacentre@rootsweb.com >Subject: [PACENTRE] Interesting Centre County information > >Recently, I received information about the case of Curtin v. Yocum, >disputing the Congressional Election in Central Pennsylvania in 1878. The >testimony in this case mentions many, many Centre Countians who were called >to testify about the circumstances of the election. Many of them gave their >date and place of birth -- for example, Peter Garess of Potter Township >stated that he was born in Berks County in 1805, and was unable to read. >There may be some very helpful information here, so I suggest that you take >some time to read through and search these records. This link should take >you to the file: > >http://books.google.com/books?id=ErEZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3213#PPA3215,M1 > >Justin > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PACENTRE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ________________________________________ PeoplePC Online A better way to Internet http://www.peoplepc.com