This first paragraph in the notice about Langston that has begun this
conversation reads:

"LOUISA, Va. -- Planted in the lawn at the courthouse on West Main
Street here is a gray historical marker that draws little attention. It
proudly proclaims that the country's first black elected official was
native son John Mercer Langston, born in this central Virginia county,
the son of a wealthy white planter and an emancipated slave of Indian
and black ancestry."

I think that there's merely a keyboarding mistake at fault here in the
form of an erroneous "r." The second sentence should probably begin, "It
proudly proclaims that the county's first black elected official," not
the "country's."

$0.02 worth from

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
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