{"id":16541,"date":"2016-09-09T11:07:41","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T15:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=16541"},"modified":"2017-01-31T11:44:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T16:44:23","slug":"moral-of-the-story-use-the-right-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/moral-of-the-story-use-the-right-tool.html","title":{"rendered":"Moral of the Story: Use the Right Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or \u2013 a scythe is not a hoe.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: a scythe. Credit: Richard New Forest; Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you walk into a hardware store you see rows of different types of hammers, saws and all kinds of handy tools, each one with a different purpose.<\/p>\n

According to Wikipedia: \u201cAbraham Maslow\u00a0said in 1966, \u2018I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I used a scythe to clear hay fields as a kid. I was pretty good at it \u2013 with each swing I could cut the grass as close to the ground as I wanted. Within hours, fields that stretched across the property were cleared. These fields had been kept mowed since the days of the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

I know the sharpness and danger of a scythe, so it\u2019s hard to imagine that this could happen to anyone \u2013 but it was reported in 1860 that:<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Stamford Advocate (Stamford, Connecticut), 17 August 1860, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GenealogyBank, with over 2 billion articles and growing, is your best tool for searching America\u2019s old newspapers. We add millions more articles every month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article about an astonishing accident that happened with a scythe, as reported in an 1860 newspaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[6889,2020],"class_list":["post-16541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-accidents","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/illustration-0909-2016-featured-graphic-scythe.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}