Talk:William Steuart (Mayor of Baltimore)

Conflation of Two William Steuarts
The article confuses William Steuart, the wealthy planter, with another, unrelated William Steuart, a prosperous stone mason and social activist on behalf of the "mechanical" class in Baltimore. The Lt. Colonel in the War of 1812 and Mayor of Baltimore was the second William Steuart. This second William Steuart is the subject of a biographical sketch (including a portrait) in Schultz, Edward T., "The History of Freemasonry in Maryland," 1884, vol. ii pp 749-751; another sketch appears in Wilbur F. Coyle, "The Mayors of Baltimore," 1919, pp 37-38. Both can be found in pdf versions online. I hope this helps.LAndrewes (talk) 02:54, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

William Steuart - Planter or Mayor?
I attempted to correct what was plainly a hastily and carelessly contrived article, containing a random mingling of the biographies of two separate contemporary men, both named William Steuart, but of widely differing lives and social strata. I additionally tried to replace the picture, which was of the wrong William Steuart, with one of the right William Steuart, but found I was not authorized to upload pictures, so I edited the caption of the bad picture with a URL for the correct picture. I had never tried to edit a Wikipedia article to such a drastic extent, and obviously the extent of the edit alarmed the bot, which then undid my edit. Too bad, since the article reverted to its former terrible state. I hope no one will try to use the article as it stands for a source, for such articles draw ridicule to Wikipedia. LAndrewes (talk) 21:59, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi LAndrewes. The solution in a situation such as this is not a drastic edit to the existing article but rather to create a new page for the individual for whom you have reliable sources. Then, with judicious editing, you can separate out the two individuals so there is no confusion. If, as you say, the planter is not the Mayor, then simply edit the planter page accordingly. It might, perhaps, be renamed "William Steuart (planter)". Steuart was not an especially common name in 18th century Maryland so it is not necessarily surprising that two individuals might have been conflated. I will be glad to help out, but the first task is for you to create a new page. Asteuartw (talk) 09:44, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

REPLY: Hello, Asteuartw, and thanks for your reply and offer of help. Without getting involved in a dispute about how common the name "William Steuart" is in places like Baltimore City where there are many Scots, I will proceed to the issue at hand. The situation currently seems to be that my article has been disapproved, but posted nevertheless, except that its "edit" page contains the earlier article that my article attempts to correct. My article thus cannot be edited, which it needs, without rewriting the whole thing. I posted it after much difficulty learning the editing procedure, and at a point where I was bleary-eyed (and bleary-minded), and it definitely needs to have a couple of typos corrected. You suggest that I post both a planter and a mayor page, which seems reasonable except that I have no information qualifying me to write about the planter. I do not think it is creditable to Wikipedia for people to post articles after quickly checking out the subject from a basis of complete ignorance. I do know a little about the mayor, or certainly enough to distinguish him from the planter. It seems to me that what is needed, therefore, is a way for me to correct the typos in my article and include the correct picture, and for someone who knows something about the planter to submit an article about him. The original article was titled for the mayor, after all, and what I did was correct wrong statements about the mayor. Do you feel inclined to write the planter article? Any thoughts? Thanks again for your interest.LAndrewes (talk) 21:52, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * William Steuart (Planter). There are many William Stuarts, and even more William Stewarts, but relatively few William Steuarts. ---Asteuartw (talk) 15:22, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

(William Steuart Planter) This is no doubt true. ---LAndrewes
 * So I leave you LAndrewes with the job of cleaning up William Steuart (Mayor of Baltimore), since you have better sources than I do. There does seem to be something wrong with the page, however, in as much as it does not seem to be possible to edit it in the normal way. There seems to be some sort of bug, which I have not encountered before, which makes the page revert to an older version when editing the content. ---Asteuartw (talk) 16:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

And I in turn, dear Asteuartw, will leave it to you, its original creator. LAndrewes — Preceding undated comment added 00:53, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

This seems like a perfect job for a first-time editor. Pyramvs (talk) 04:02, 19 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Separation of Planter and Mayor complete now, I think. ---Asteuartw (talk) 13:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)