Sidney Root

Article summary

Sidney Root (March 11, 1824 – February 13, 1897) was an American businessman. Root was born in Montague in western Massachusetts, but early in his life his family moved to Vermont, where his boyhood days were spent in the shadow of the Green Mountains. On his father's plantation he acquired the industrious habits which characterized him through life. Though prevented by reason of his father's limited resources from attending school more than three months in the year, he made the most of his meager opportunities and soon found architecture was the passion of his youthful mind. He possessed exceptional talents for skillful and accurate designing, but his practical father considering that such an accomplishment was comparatively worthless, refused to encourage it, and so apprenticed his fourteen-year-old son to an indifferent sort of a jeweler who taught him the business of watch-making. In the early 1840s, he came to Lumpkin, Georgia, to clerk for Vermont-native William A. Rawson who married Root's sister in 1843. He did well but wanted larger opportunities. In the early summer of 1857 he came to Atlanta to co-partner a dry-goods business with Mr. J.N. Beach. In the autumn of that year, on the railroad from St. Louis to Chicago, he met with accident which broke his hand and arm in five places. In the Spring of 1861, he decided to support secession over union.…

Key claims

1. date of death: 1897-02-13 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. The record states that the date of death is "1897-02-13". What evidence would count against this claim?
3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

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