Walker, Joseph Rutherford, 1798-1876

found: ECIP change request from publisher to LC, June 15, 2015(According to Mr. Stine: Joseph R. Walker's full name is known from only one pre-mortem account. Written by journalist and longtime friend of the Walker family John C. McPhearson, it gives Joe's middle name as "Rutherford" (Oakland Transcript, January 15, 1873). As Walker biographer Bil Gilbert (1983) pointed out, that name was common amongst Joseph's ancestors; moreover, at least two boys who are known to have been named after him were "Joseph Rutherford ..." (one of those boys had a double middle name--he was Joseph Rutherford Walker Adams). There can be little doubt, then, as to Joe's middle name. But a brief announcement of his death in the Contra Costa Gazette on November 4, 1876, gave the middle name as "Reddeford." Like the Yosemite claim itself, this mistaken middle name has taken on a life of its own. Of the dozens of works on Walker published after his death, nearly all perpetuate the Gazette's erroneous "Reddeford")