Talk:Rosalie Slaughter Morton

Joan of &cet
Do you have the exact text for that handy, and is it contemporaneous, or relatively new? Anmccaff (talk) 06:42, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The exact text is in the short summary section before the long bio, where - among the other awards - it simply says "Joan of Arc Medal". From some googling it seems there was a medal called this before the one we have an article on, but I can't find any information about it. There's no mention of the award in either of her books (though she does make a passing comment about Joan of Arc in the first one). Sam Walton (talk) 08:08, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I mean what's the exact wording in the source? Is this from The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z (Ogilvie & Harvey)? It doesn't seem to be in the primary source there, nor in Hurd-Mead, but it is, like you say, in the bio intro. This looks worth keeping (i.e., I don't doubt it is real) but it'd be nice to know how big a deal it was; the modern thing with a similar name can be given by any O-5, by the look of it. Anmccaff (talk) 18:13, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh you mean from the source of the Biographical Dictionary? I'm not sure which reference it came from unfortunately. I'll look into this some more. Sam Walton (talk) 19:17, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The other Hurd-Mead book, Medical women of America, mentions awards from Serbia and, surprise, surprise, France, but doesn't specify the French ones by name that I could find. Anmccaff (talk) 19:36, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Date of birth
I came across this image of the historical marker for Morton which lists her year of birth as 1872. This is different to the date of birth listed in the sources we've used here, which give 1876 as her year of birth. I've contacted the Virginia Department of Historic Resources but haven't heard back yet. 1876 makes more sense in terms of other dates in the article (she would have started college at age 17 instead of age 21), but it's inconclusive as far as I can see it. Sam Walton (talk) 14:31, 22 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Just realised I never updated this. The Department got back to me, stating that Morton "listed 28 October 1872 as the date of her birth when she applied for a passport in 1898", was "listed as an eight-year-old in the 1880 census", and "the social security death index on Ancestry gave her birthday as 16 Oct. 1872" (note the different date in the last source). They say that following her marriage, Morton began to use the year 1876 in official documents (including the marriage register and her passport and immigration materials), and that people changing their ages wasn't uncommon in their experience.
 * It seems that 1872 is most likely to be the correct date of birth, and the VDHR are quite certain, so I've switched the date of birth in the article and updated the source to the historical marker. Sam Walton (talk) 10:45, 4 October 2022 (UTC)