Born on the Rails

Nothing further from the county histories. The six histories held here end in 1913 and this story belongs to 1966, so there is no passage in them that bears on it. Rather than attach an unrelated page and let it look like corroboration, this story stands on the sources listed below.

Checked against the record. It was still the wrong outcome, and it is exactly the failure negative-verdicts-need-proof warns about: cutting a true fact for lack of a source reads as discipline in the moment and as a hole in the work later. It says: "When the Pennsylvania Railroad was being projected through the county more than a century ago the company established a station here and named it Mapleton because of the many huge maple trees standing in the area." The centennial says the railroad company named the station, for the trees. Naming by a corporation is a sharper fact than naming by drift. The centennial says "A town was laid out and building encouraged, but by 1858 only three houses stood here." So a town WAS laid out, it simply did not take. The post now says both: it was laid out, and it did not take. Both sources agree 1858 is the year the place was still almost nothing, three houses, not the year it was laid out. Independent corroboration gained: the 1966 centennial separately confirms Africa 1883 on the 1851 owners (M. F. Campbell and John Donaldson) and on only three houses standing by 1858. Two sources eighty three years apart agreeing on both details is much firmer ground than Africa alone. New material added: Campbell gave the borough land for all of its churches and the cemetery, and the Presbyterian church still in use was built by Campbell, Clayton and Mrs. John Donaldson from brick made in Campbell's own factory. Ocr note: the centennial's scan renders the capital C in Campbell, Clayton and Cemetery as G throughout ("Gampbell", "Gayton", "Gemetery").