Talk:Fortescue Cuming

Did you know nomination

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An engraving of Cuming by Saint-Mémin

• ... that after traveling down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, Fortescue Cuming (pictured) apparently never returned to his wife in Connecticut?

• Source: "These were the occasion of the trip taken in 1807–09 down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and through Louisiana and the Floridas" ... "Cuming seems not to have returned to his wife, who was buried in New Haven in 1821." — Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 4 (1930), p. 592.

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Operation Spring High and Template:Did you know nominations/Chantal Jaquet

Created by Alekjds (talk). Number of QPQs required: 2. DYK is currently in unreviewed backlog mode and nominator has 31 past nominations.

Alekjds (talk) 18:12, 29 August 2026 (UTC).

• What's dyk worthy about this? Spousal abandonment used to be pretty common. (t · c) buIdhe 01:35, 30 August 2026 (UTC)
  • In my opinion the fact that he went off on a two-year journey and never went home to his wife is striking to a modern reader. Other editors are welcome to weigh in on that point. But I'll add an ALT in case I lose the fight:

ALT1: ... that Thomas Clark judged Fortescue Cuming (pictured) to be "reasonably sane"?

(Source: Thomas D. Clark, "Travelers' Accounts as a Source of Kentucky History", The Filson Club History Quarterly, vol. 14 (1940), p. 212: "His observations are reasonably sane, and the information which he has preserved for the historian is definitely valuable.")

Alekjds (talk) 05:25, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

The article is fresh and sufficiently long. QPQ is done. Sources are cited. There is quite a bit of close paraphrasing, but it comes from the 1930 Dictionary of American Biography, so I imagine that's not a big problem. I would be more intrigued by the original hook than by ALT1, but I think there is potential in the article for something better still, perhaps something humorous. Surtsicna (talk) 13:46, 27 September 2026 (UTC)