#911, WWW Ohio

Years back, when I was a wee lad, my parents would often pull my leg. I don’t think they had any sicker a sense of humor than anyone else, there is just something unfortunately gratifying about pulling the wool over the eyes of the innocent and trusting.
Witness Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.
In any event, my parents told me a story about how my mother hadn’t actually been born in the United States. “Wait a minute,” I had replied, for at four I knew where she was from, “she was born in Ohio.”
“But it wasn’t a state then,” they replied and went off smirking to each other.
A few years later, we revisited the subject after I had missed an important question on a school test about Ohio being the 17th state. I had been confident Ohio couldn’t be the 17th as Louisiana was the 18th and it was admitted in 1812.
After all, my parents were my parents; they had to be smarter than dumb old teachers.
My parents explained that the teachers were indeed dumb in this instance, as a paperwork snafu of some sort had rendered Ohio’s earlier claim to statehood invalid and it was retroactively made a state in 1953, thereby making my mother, who was born in the “territory” of Ohio in 1930, a non-native born American.
Or at least on par with someone from Puerto Rico or Guam.
My teacher remained unconvinced and I suffered the blight on my grade and “permanent record.”
And this is why I thank Google and the World Wide Web. Some 50 years later I am finally able to put this conflict to rest. I Googled in “Ohio Statehood mistake” and there it was.
My parents were right—sort of. A bill to retroactively admit Ohio was introduced to Congress in 1953. One interpretation of the protocol surrounding Ohio’s first admission to statehood did cast doubt on it. Other saw it as no problem. And since various presidents—required by the constitution to be born in the United States—were in fact born in Ohio between 1803 and 1953, the tendency was to let sleeping dogs lie.
And now, thanks to Google, so can I.
After I email the link to that teacher.
America, ya gotta love it.