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Leonidas Merritt

Title: Response by Merritt to the Pamphlet
Type: Document
Date: 1912
Source: Minnesota Historical Society

Description: Leonidas Merritt wrote this paper to express his family's side of the court case and to respond to Gate's accusations.

Transcription:

Broken, for the time being in health and almost in spirit; despairing of ever being able to do anything else until the litigation was off our hands; Lawsuit was over. aware that our attorneys were anxious for their pay; fully believing, that even if we could by any possibility stand the strain of another two or three years of litigating, at the end of which we were likely to find our case returned again for another hearing, Will face continuing delays. by which time most of us might be dead, we faced such propositions Offers. as these, with what courage we could muster, and in the end listened to the more or less Doubtful. authentic reports that Rockefeller was willing to settle, and through the advice of all of our attorneys (Washburn, Baldwin and the Harrises) proceeded to open negotiations looking to a settlement of all of our difficulties. To this end, To reach a settlement. Attorney Jed L. Washburn, was empowered to negotiate, and if possible come to some satisfactory accommodation with the then record owner of our Missabe holdings. The person who is legally the owner of land Merritt is claiming. A settlement was finally agreed upon. Such as it was, you have before you an alleged Claimed to be the same as the one signed, but not proven. copy. We signed, whatever we did sign, Doubts that these documents are the ones they signed. under the advice of our attorney Washburn, and with his positive assurance that in nothing did we, who were witnesses, stultify Make useless or invalid. our evidence. In other words, we signed a paper (of which Appendix "B" purports Suggests. to be a copy), and not Appendix "A" and "B", as the Gates Reverend Gates wrote this pamphlet supporting Rockefeller's company. with his usual rat-like cunning Trickery. in the arrangement of his copy Documents placed on the page so as to appear that the Merritts' witnesses had recanted their testimony. might lead one to suppose.

We have now heard the Rev Gates, in defense of a Rockefeller, to the bitter end.

We have also heard the answer of that "Guiltless woodsman", who seems to have opened wide the flood gate of the Reverend gentleman's righteous (?), if vitriolic wrath.

Those, who still believe in the disinterested parity of a Rockefeller, and the truthfulness of his almoner, are perfectly