Round nine: New Jersey Mirror index entries checked against Library of Congress newspaper OCR

Session date: September 13, 2026. Method: https://www.loc.gov/item/<lccn>/<yyyy-mm-dd>/ed-1/?fo=json to confirm a digitized issue and list its pages, then the text/xml (ALTO OCR) file for each page, fetched with curl -A "PineBarrensFieldNotes/1.0 (andrew@leahey.org)" and several seconds between requests. Titles/lccn used: The Mount Holly News, sn85035801, the only title tried this round.

Coverage note that corrects prior assumptions: a per-year search of https://www.loc.gov/search/?fa=partof:the+mount+holly+news+...&dates=<year>&fo=json shows The Mount Holly News is digitized essentially weekly (Tuesdays) for all of 1893, 1907, 1909, 1912, and 1917 — much fuller coverage than the “1912 and 1916 confirmed, 1903/1929/1933 not” note in project memory suggested. The same query for 1920 returns zero results, and a direct item request for January 6, 1920 404s, confirming 1920 is genuinely not digitized for this title (the run appears to stop before 1920, at least in what LOC has processed).

Upgraded

bennett-joe-frozen-1893 — Tried and found: Mount Holly News, January 10, 1893, p.3, headline “Frozen to Death.” Full item read and quoted. It corrects the index’s inferred day (Thursday, not Friday) and — significantly — reframes the “wild man of the Pines” nickname as one Bennett applied to himself (“Bennett took delight in calling himself…”), not only a tag the paper hung on him. It also gives a different supposed mechanism for the fall: his horse threw him and ran off, rather than Bennett falling from drink and wandering looking for the horse. Adds a three-day gap (Thursday to Sunday) before neighbors searched, and describes finding the horse loose near the house before finding Bennett half a mile off, partly snow-covered. Does not mention “Kean’s” bog (that detail stays sourced to the index alone, not contradicted). Entry rewritten around a direct quotation from the primary source; index kept as a second, disagreeing account.

odonnell-annie-new-lisbon-1909 — Tried and found: Mount Holly News, March 23, 1909, p.3. Full item read and quoted verbatim (“Mrs. Annie O’Donnell, of New Lisbon, was drowned near her home yesterday afternoon…”). Confirms the index summary in every substantive point (wind supposition, husband finding the body afloat, Coroner Seeds’s accidental-drowning ruling) and adds two things the index lacked: “yesterday afternoon” pins the death to Monday afternoon, March 22, 1909 rather than just “a Monday,” and the house is located “about a half mile up the stream from the picnic grounds” on Black’s bog. No index error found here — this is confirmation plus detail, not correction.

rigley-john-rider-bog-lawsuit-1917 — Tried and found: Mount Holly News, July 17, 1917, p.3. Full item read and quoted. This is an independent second paper’s report of the same 1917 employers’-liability suit the Mirror index describes, and it names the plaintiff “John Rigby, of Cornwell Heights, Pa.” — settling the surname question this site’s 1916 and 1917 entries had left open, in favor of “Rigby” (matching the 1916 entry and the governor’s proclamation) over the Mirror index’s “Rigley.” The given name “John” agrees with the Mirror index’s “John N. Rigley” but not the 1916 entry’s “James N. Rigby,” so the given name is not fully resolved. Adds his home address (Cornwell Heights, Pa.), not in either prior source. Gives a wage figure ($21.50/week) matching the index exactly, and a reduced-pay figure the OCR renders as $19.50 against the index’s $19.80 — flagged in the entry as an unresolved OCR-vs-index discrepancy rather than resolved either way. Also surfaces a minor itinerary discrepancy (sent “to” Hammonton vs. traveling “from” Hammonton) which is reported, not resolved.

Tried, nothing found (no change made)

  • simons-william-south-pemberton-1907 — Mount Holly News issues of February 12, 19, and 26, 1907 all exist and were fetched and searched; none contains anything about a man found dead on the South Pemberton road, William Simons, or Edward Logan’s farm. (One unrelated “J. E. Simons” and one unrelated “James Logan’s est.” tax-roll entry turned up and were checked and ruled out.) The story appears not to have been picked up by this paper, at least not in the three issues checked bracketing the event.
  • burchell-albert-georgetown-bog-1907 — Mount Holly News issues of September 10, 17, and 24, 1907 all exist and were fetched and searched; no mention of Burchell or a Georgetown-area cranberry-bog death in any of the three.
  • barnegat-pier-railroad-collision-1912 — Mount Holly News issues of March 26 and April 2, 1912 exist and were searched; neither mentions the wreck, the switch, or any of the named trainmen. This is an Ocean County event on the Pennsylvania Railroad; it appears to be outside this Burlington County paper’s usual local coverage.
  • toms-river-barnegat-forest-fire-1893 — Mount Holly News issues of May 16 and 23, 1893 exist and were searched; neither mentions the Toms River–Barnegat fire, Quail Run tollgate, or any of the named households. Also an Ocean County event; the paper’s May 16 issue does carry other Ocean County items (a horse theft from Barnegat, an ex-sheriff’s death at Forked River), so its absence here is suggestive but not conclusive that the fire went unreported.
  • lemmon-george-arson-suicide-retreat-1920 — No digitized Mount Holly News issue exists for 1920 at all (confirmed both by a per-year search returning zero results and by a direct 404 on a test date). No attempt could be made; entry left unchanged.

Not attempted this round

curran-leduc-pine-crest-1912 was already upgraded with LOC OCR in a prior round and was left as-is. No other New Jersey Mirror–only entries in the requested 1891–1922 range were checked beyond the list above, given the throttling-conscious pace and the session’s time budget.