Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William Rickman


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Spartaz Humbug! 06:07, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

William Rickman

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Multiple reasons. The article consists of two (unsourced) competing histories, and the claim of notability (that he served in a role that was a predecessor to Surgeon General) is unsourced and somewhat dubious. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 21:06, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Baby miss  fortune 10:19, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Baby miss  fortune 10:19, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions. Baby miss  fortune 10:20, 30 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete. I'd be willing to buy "Director of Hospitals of the Continental Army in Virginia" as a credible notability claim if the article were actually supported by reliable source coverage about him, but that's not what the sources here are. #1 is a (deadlinked) family genealogy, not a reliable or notability-supporting source, #2 is here only to support a statement about the usual age at which men married in that era but contains no information about Rickman whatsoever (not even a glancing mention of his name!), and #3 is the (deadlinked) front splash page of a local historical society (with no verifiable evidence on a Wayback Machine search that it actually contained any content about Rickman himself.) And in addition to not being reliable sources in the first place, all of them are just footnoting the conflicting speculations about his personal life, rather than any content that actually pertains to his potential notability claim as a public official at all. Which means none of the sources here are cutting it at all in terms of establishing notability, and the role is not "inherently" notable enough to exempt him from having to be sourced much better than this. Bearcat (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment. Going only by the current article and its properly-formatted references, there would be only two, fairly minor, points to add to the previous discussion. Firstly, a badly-formatted reference in the second paragraph of the "Kittiewan Plantation interpretation" section of the article does provide a legitimate source (even if it is primary and far too brief to contribute much towards notability) - a contemporary announcement of Rickman's 1775 marriage to a daughter of Benjamin Harrison V. Secondly, that full section of the article is shown by a look at the article history to have been added by an SPA in 2009 - and reference #3 is best taken not as an actual reference but as a declaration of authorship by the SPA. Moreover, a Ph.D. dissertation with two passing mentions of Rickman sources one of those two references (on page 242) in a way which strongly suggests that the SPA (or a namesake) is or was connected as a volunteer, contractor or employee to the current owners of Kittiewan Plantation.
 * Turning more generally to potentially reliable external sources, most relate to his period as what the article refers to as "Director of Hospitals of the Continental Army in Virginia" between 1776 and 1780. The nominator seems to regard the notability of this role as in some way dubious, and the claim of notability in the article is certainly rather overblown. I can only find the title as the article gives it in modern sources, and the actual title given to Rickman seems to vary from one resolution of the Continental Congress to the next - the situation behind it seems most clearly described in this account (which I am inclined to take as a reliable source). Judging from this, the official at this time who was most directly the predecessor of the Surgeon General of the United States Army was probably not Rickman but William Shippen Jr. - but Rickman was completely outside Shippen's authority. Another wrinkle in this situation is that the same work as I have just cited elsewhere describes how the Commonwealth of Virginia set up its own completely separate hospital, appointing James McClurg as its director.
 * Rickman's career in the post scarcely seems to have gone smoothly. The Ph.D. dissertation already mentioned (this time on page 178) notes that Rickman's original appointment attracted accusations of nepotism, and cites John E. Selby's "The Revolution in Virginia, 1775-1783" to this effect (though the relevant page of this is not visible in GBooks). The book mentioned in the last paragraph describes not only the previously mentioned turf wars but also the delays in finding a suitable hospital site that preceded them. Then, following some rather disastrous results of a smallpox inoculation program (for which this account seems to be the most thorough source, and this a fairly full but possibly less reliable one), the Continental Congress suspended Rickman from his post in December 1777 but reinstated him after an investigation in March 1778. After that, the sources go fairly quiet. His resignation in October 1780, in the midst of a reorganisation which had no obvious place for him, is approved in the Journal of the Continental Congress, who also then chase him over a couple of items of unfinished business. The next we seem to hear is in late 1783, when his widow petitions the Virginia House of Delegates for what amounts to backpay apparently owed to him - she gets title to about 6,000 acres in Ohio. After that, we get a chain of legal cases over the next century, all disputing or claiming this inheritance - and all quite likely in (easily findable) primary sources only. There are quite a few sources attesting to his ownership of what is now Kittiewan, but while this is almost certain to be true, it seems difficult to find any source that does more than assert this.
 * Moreover, Rickman effectively has no verifiable past before 1775 and his marriage to Elizabeth Harrison. In the two or three years before the marriage, he slowly gets more and more passing mentions in primary sources - but that is all. The William Rickman who was a surgeon on a Royal Navy ship between 1766 and 1769 seems to have one or two reliable sources, but none which firmly connect his with our William Rickman. And we seem to have no reliable information about other aspects of his previous life - when he was born, had he married previously, and so on.
 * What we are therefore left with is a person almost certainly with enough good sources to guarantee notability for a very limited period of his life - but where even the basic facts of the rest of his life can not be reliably traced. And very little (perhaps none) of the current article would be likely to survive in a satisfactory article here. So, while in principle, there is enough for a keep !vote, it is not clear that it is worth it in practice. PWilkinson (talk) 00:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 14:51, 6 February 2018 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 05:36, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. I don't have time right now to sort through all the particulars, but it is well sourced that he was the director and chief surgeon of a hospital in Virginia from 18 May 1776 to 21 October 1780, according to the Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia and documents in the Library of Virginia Legislative Petitions Digital Collection A US Army Medical Department chapter titled "Evolution of the Continental Army Medical Department" mentions that he headed one of several Continental Army hospital systems. The book World Epidemics states he didn't behave very well in a 1777 smallpox epidemic, though an article disputes that. He was the first owner of Kittiewan Plantation. The National Park Serice entry for Kittiewan provides a whole paragraph about him and his wife, his death and her subsequent remarriage. There seems to be enough reliable info for an article, regardless of what's there now. This Virginia General Assembly document, however, gives his birth year as 1720. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:13, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:33, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:33, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Smmurphy(Talk) 16:52, 16 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep - I don't find many sources other than those already listed. There is some mention of him as justice fo the peace in Charles City in newspapers from that era, but I'm not familiar enough with the era to know if attaching that William Rickman to this one is obvious or OR, although he is listed next to his neighbor David Minge in those newspaper articles. It seems certain to me that he was chief administrator of Continental Army Hospitals and director of a hospital in Virginia during the Revolutionary War (I would consider the thesis a reliable source, here). That he died in 1783, and he married Elizabeth Harrison, daughter of Benjamin Harrison. That he lived in Charles City. I wouldn't argue against saying that he owned land which is now all or part of Kittiewan, although I agree that the sources there aren't the best. Based on the sources I've looked at, I wouldn't include anything about his life before his marriage to Elizabeth. And while I see genealogies and DAR records about his descendents, I also don't see anything reliable that can connect him to any children. With those caveats, he seems a suitable subject for the encyclopedia and an article can be written about him wich is verifiable, neutral point of view, and not original research. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:10, 16 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.