Talk:Chauncey Lee

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:Chauncey Lee/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: JJLiu112 (talk · contribs) 01:40, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Pencilsforall (talk · contribs) 01:38, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi there! I'll take on this review. Seems like a cool page. I'll start with source checking and go from there. I may be a little slow so as always others are welcome to jump in and ping me if needed. Pencilsforall (talk) 01:38, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Hi there! This was a fun page to learn about. Sorry for the lag in the review! All comments and sources are based on this version. I have some questions and clarifications below, primarily about tightening up the prose. The article is broad enough and edits to the prose will address concerns about the focus of the article. No concerns with POV, stability, or copyright. I did a spot check of 10 sources and questions are marked in the table below. In some cases I think the clarifications to the prose will help the connections to the sources and in other cases I couldn't find the information in the source. I may have just missed it so please feel free to correct me. :) Pencilsforall (talk) 19:35, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Hey! Thank you so much for your comments. I am glad you enjoyed reading! On your comments:

1. I have made the corrections to prose you highlighted. I have also added more information about Smith and Lee's relationship. However, I am not sure what is wrong with the line, "in this post he stayed the longest, nearly twenty-eight years, and was most associated." I suppose that in ordinary sentence construction it would be, "he was most associated with this post", but I am not sure the sentence is confusing as it stands? As for bibliography, I do not know whether it would be OR to just select a few "significant" ones, because there is no curated list available online. The MOS says: "Complete lists of works, appropriately sourced to reliable scholarship (WP:V), are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet." Of course, Bowditch's work is freely available and out of copyright. Please advise me if you have more experience or understanding.

2. As for sources, so far as I understand, I have sorted out (5) by refining my prose, and (18) by a better source. Re (21) & (22) note I did not put distinctly American in inverted commas, but, in any case, "Historical Conflict—Decimal Versus Vulgar Fractions" pp. 184–85 associates Lee's desire to eliminate vulgar fractions with the deliberate distinction of the United States as a decimal nation. "Subtraction Algorithms" I admit "Subtraction Algorithms" is a bit far so I have removed and replaced it with "Towards Mathematics". (29) I mistakenly did not cite the "Proceedings", which includes the part about the ark. (32) Though strangely formatted, it is hosted on the Colebrook Historical Society (https://www.colebrookhistoricalsociety.org/) which seems legitimate enough.

Hope this all makes sense, and that this satisfies your concerns of prose, RS and OR. Would love to know about how I can bring "focus" and "neutral" up to par. JJLiu112 (talk) 19:59, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Just pinging on this @Pencilsforall JJLiu112 (talk) 00:46, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

1. All of these edits are helpful. I think you just need the preposition in the sentence "he was most associated with this post" or "post with which he was most associated". I think the list of works is fine either way. I wouldn't think that selecting works really rises to OR, but I also think you provided enough justification for the reasons why you have this particular list of works.

2. Thanks for the revised and new sources. Took me a few days to locate a few, but all of the source checks are good. It's fun to read about these older textbooks. I still think the description of the his preferred system as distinctly American (I added the quotes in the source check because I was quoting the wiki page) is too strong based on the source. I'd recommend a re-phrase of the sentence to keep closer to the sources. Maybe to something like "Also in 1797, Lee produced a guide for teaching American schoolchildren practical methods of arithmetic, which he believed improved on previous methods using fractions. He also connected these new methods with nationalism, urging Congress to formally adopt the system, arguing that they should do so due to their sense of patriotism" You obviously know more about this topic than I do so this is just a suggestion. I personally thought these facts were very interesting and it avoids the complication of describing the system as American, which seems difficult to define, in my opinion.

3. The questions about focus and neutral were related to the clarifications about the relationships to Chauncey throughout. Those have been moved to approved now.

Overall, these are minor comments and I'll try to be quicker to respond. Pencilsforall (talk) 20:43, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

@Pencilsforall: I have made the corrections. Thank you very much for your comments and your kind words! I had a lot of fun writing and learning about this subject, too. JJLiu112 (talk) 22:40, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Looks good! I'll go ahead and close out the review.Pencilsforall (talk) 15:39, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Early life, education and legal career Overall this section is good but the relationship to the people discussed was not always clear.

• first by Jonathan's second wife, the also-widowed Love née Graham Brinckerhoff wording is a bit complicated here and in this section because it's not always clear who you are referring to.
• broke communion with the ecclesiastical county council (consociation) I think this might be unclear to a reader who is less familiar with these customs. Can you explain the importance of breaking communion? If you explain the situation a bit more this would strengthen this section. The source says that they called a special council to ordain rather than having the established county council (consociation) and as a consequence several of the members were suspended from the county council.
• By contrast, Love's father was John Graham Clarify Love's relationship to Chauncey Lee
• Both Graham and Lee were pamphleteers and served as chaplains Clarify which Lee this refers to and the relationship with Chauncey Lee and Graham's relationship to Chauncey Lee.
• 1806 engraving of John Cotton Smith Clarify relationship to Chauncey Lee
• prepared his and other neighborhood boys his son and other neighborhood boys?
• education in classics, prosody and arithmetic wording or gloss prosody?

Service at Colebrook

• nearly twenty-eight years, and was most associated associated wording?
• Most of his works Lee published at Colebrook, including a poetic paraphrase Rephrase to Lee published most of his work (during his time) at Colebrook?

Marlborough and final days

• Connecticut finally disestablished term may be unfamiliar, consider rephrasing with a gloss

Marriages and children

• which caused Mrs. Abigail Sacket Stanton to disown her daughter This source is Chauncey Lee's son's account of his family history and may be better to reference this as reported by, given the close relationship between the reporter and the subject.
• and later claimed to have served as a Colonel in the Texas Revolution citation here?
• At the 1816 funeral of the latter, Lee preached who is the latter here?
• The Lees had three children, who were all living by 1878 Explain to say this is with Olive because he will go on to have more children in other marriages
• The following bibliography comes from Franklin Bowditch Dexter's Biographical Sketches. This is good to explain, but I'm not sure it's necessary to follow this. Are there specific works that you think are most relevant?

Source Checks

SourceNumber	Notes	Check
1		✓
5	Prose needs clarification	✗
13		✓
18	Do you have a stronger source for this? WP:ITSTERTIARY	✗
21	Could not find where the system was described as "distinctly American"	✗
22	Could not find where the system was described as "distinctly American"	✗
23		✓
25		✓
28		✓
29	Can't find quote. Maybe I missed it	✗
32	Where was this accessed? Hard to tell if this is a verified source	✗

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.