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| Location |
| 6531 Marysville Road, Browns Valley, CA 95918 |
| Hours |
| Available weekends by appointment |
| Phone |
| (530) 743-6740 |
| Fax |
| (530) 743-1320 |
Donna M. Landerman is a notary public and a member of the National Notary Association. She is a member of the Yuba County Board of Education, and in that capacity, she supported a 2008 proclamation opposing the right of same-sex couples to marry.1 She is also the Official County Historian of Yuba County. She writes a regular column about local history for the Territorial Dispatch, which could be improved if she started noting when large portions of the text for her columns are copied from other sources and started citing those sources. For example, compare the following paragraphs:
| From the book History of Yuba County, California (Chapter XXVIII: Long Bar Township) by Thompson & West, 1879 | From the column "Catharine Johnson Berry" by Donna Landerman, Territorial Dispatch, August 11, 2010 |
| A family by the name of Nash came that fall, the first at the bar. There were three girls in the family and they were the recipients of the attention of many young miners, who oftentimes came miles to see them. | An amusing incident Catharine Berry told was in connection with the three Nash girls, the first girls to come to Long Bar with their parents. It happened when she was living at Sawmill Bar (which was close by) with her husband and two boys in the fall of 1849. |
| Mrs. J. V. Berry, now residing in Smartsville, relates an amusing incident in connection with the charming Misses Nash. Mrs. Berry was living at Saw Mill Bar with her husband in the fall of 1849. There was also a young lawyer from Tennessee, named Wiley H. Peck, a handsome man, six feet five inches tall. In the rough camp life of the mines, fine clothes were scarce, and facilities for making an elegant toilet few indeed. One Sunday morning, Mr. Peck asked Mrs. Perry [sic] to lend him a white towel that was hanging on the line. She readily assented, thinking he desired it to use in making his toilet. After a little while he presented himself before the astonished lady for her approval of his tout ensemble, as he was about to pay a state visit to the Nash girls. He was faultlessly arrayed in a suit of broadcloth that he had brought across the plains. The lady, commencing at his carefully combed locks, could detect not a flaw in his "get up" until she came to his feet, when, lo! what a sight! Having nothing with which to encase his pedal extremities except heavy miner's boots, and being ashamed to make a call with those unsightly things on his feet, he had decorated his bare feet with blacking to represent boots. The towel also, instead of being used in making his toilet, had been placed in his pocket, with the end protruding, to represent a white handkerchief. Thus arrayed he had sallied forth "to conquer or die". | There was also a young lawyer from Tennessee named Wily H. Peck, a handsome man 6'4" tall. In the rough camp life of the mines, fine clothes were scare [sic] and facilities for making up an elegant toilet few indeed. One Sunday morning, Mr. Peck asked Mrs. Berry to lend him a white towel that was hanging on the line. She readily assented thinking he desired it to use making his toilet. After a little while he presented himself before the astonished lady for her approval of the "tout ensemble," as he was about to pay a state visit to the Nash girls. He was fabulously arrayed in a suit of broadcloth that he had brought across the plains. The lady, commencing at his carefully combed locks, could detect not a flaw in his "get up" until she came to his feet, when, LO! WHAT A SIGHT! Having nothing with which to encase his pedal extremities except heavy miner's boots and being ashamed to make a call with those unsightly things on his feet, he had decorated his bare feet with blacking to represent boots. The towel also, instead of being used to make his toilet had been placed in his pocket with the end protruding to represent a white handkerchief. Thus arrayed he had sallied forth "to conquer or die". |
It would have been a valuable service to the readers of the Territorial Dispatch if Ms. Landerman had let readers know that this amusing tale was transcribed almost word-for-word from the 1879 book History of Yuba County, California (Chapter XXVIII: Long Bar Township) by Thompson & West, or even mentioned the book at all anywhere in the column she wrote, so that interested readers could have considered reading the rest of the book. It is unfortunate that a member of the Yuba County Board of Education disregards such standard scholarly practices.
Comments
Footnotes
1. McCarthy, Ryan. "Yuba board backs Prop. 8", Appeal-Democrat, October 08, 2008.
