|
|
Dutch Creek is where Hotle grew up; where his family is from; where his great-great-grandparents, Michael and Hannah Augustine, settled and helped build Washington County (their tombstone, in White Oaks Cemetery, a mile south and east of Dublin, declares them the first settlers in Washington County). Though he has much personal knowledge of Dutch Creek, Hotle says that is not enough to write history.
Hotle draws a big, clear line between stories and histories. The histories he's written, including Our Local Heros and Crimes of Slaughter (now Washington) County, are factual, with multiple sources cited.
"If I call it history, it's gotta be accurate," said Hotle. "If you tell it as a story, it should be a story."
This means that unless he gets his information from journals, newspapers or other written accounts of the time, Hotle precedes unverified stories with, "According to storytellers..."
Hotle spent three months putting Dutch Creek together. While organizing his own thoughts, he says, he also did interviews with half a dozen people with "old-time connections." Hotle spent a lot of time in the genealogy room of Washington Public Library, and credits the rich resources there with much of his success.
This library will likely be very useful in Hotle's next project, he says, a history, "The Towns of Washington County." This idea came from the Henry County Historical Society, which recently finished a book documenting the abandoned towns of that county in a large volume of pictures and stories.
