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- November 2001
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Achsah Sherman, daughter of Isaac and Abigail (Arnold) Sherman, was born in Adams, Massachusetts near Greylock Mountain on 6 October 1807. At the age of seven, Achsah's father died while helping a sheriff in an arrest, leaving her mother to take care of the family. Now fatherless were four children-Laura, the eldest (1803-1876), Achsah (1807-1893), and two boys, Joel (1810-1867) and Isaac (1814-1841). Eventually, different members of the family had to take the children, as Abigail was unable to care for them herself.
The two boys, Joel and Isaac, were sent to live with their grandfather, Elisha Arnold, who had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War. By the time the boys had been sent to live with him he was "well along in years," and as he "was of an irascible nature" the boys caused him much irritation by their play. Dr. Jenks states that "the Sherman blood in them made them experts in mechanics so they built dams in Grandpa Arnold's trout streams and ditches for their water wheels. Grandpa always destroyed such structures when he came across them, but they only built others until they naturally became millwrights."
The two girls, Laura and Achsah, lived in the families of various aunts and uncles. In 1827, after attending the common school and working for a while, Laura Sherman married Samuel Dean. Achsah also attended the common schools and was then trained in "domestic life."
According to her son, Achsah Sherman "could sew, spin, weave both linens and woolens and could cook well." She taught school for a while, but when the first cotton factories came to Adams, her "mechanical mind" was attracted to them instead. She secured a position in one of the first spinning mills erected in the locality and became very expert at her job. In fact, Dr. Jenks states she was a "great help to her inexperienced foreman, Lindon Jenks, who eventually realized he couldn't get along without her, so she took the job of helping him through life." They were married 17 July 1828.
After the War of 1812, textiles had become New England's main industry. New England and especially western Massachusetts had advantages for this type of manufacturing. Because the area is mountainous and has many swift-flowing rivers and waterfalls, it was perfect for the new steam-powered machinery used in the textile mills. Raw materials were also easily available and factory owners found a good source of labor in New England farm girls. For these girls, like Achsah, factory work offered an opportunity to make money and enjoy some independence before they married and raised families. Later, immigrants, who would work for less money, replaced the girls in the mills and soon mill towns, such as Adams, became overcrowded and conditions in the towns themselves worsened.
By 1824, a few residents of Adams decided to move westward in search of a better life. Achsah's uncle Peleg, his wife Lucinda (Shelden) Sherman and their children were among the first from Adams to become pioneers.
Pioneering was always a difficult endeavor, but travel to the West in the early 1820's was especially beset with difficulties. Our early highways were few and poor, and travel over them was costly. As such, most people were reluctant to travel far inland and leave their comfortable homes and towns for the unknown. Fortunately, there were families, such as Peleg's, who risked their personal safety, wealth, and comforts to venture into and settle the unfamiliar territory of the West.
Eventually, Peleg and Lucinda settled in what is now Mayfield, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Mayfield is situated about sixteen miles east of Cleveland where the Chagrin River winds its way to Lake Erie. Isolated settlers had been coming to this area as early as 1805. According to a history of Cuyahoga County most of the early settlers were Methodists and by 1809 they had formed a small church of that denomination. For many years their meetings were held in private homes and in the woods as there wasn't even a schoolhouse for them to assemble in. There were no roads laid out and for a number of years there were few newcomers. Those scattered few who had settled in the area kept busy clearing the land around their respective cabins and defending their property from the many "annoyances" such as bears and wolves that caused many depredations. These predators would often come to the very doors of the settlers in search of food or kill their sheep and other stock. The settlers had to keep a fire burning near their cabins at night to prevent the bears and wolves from killing them or their livestock.
The War of 1812 stopped what little progress had been made, but by 1816 the village had begun to grow again. By then a log schoolhouse had been erected that could be used not only as a school, but a church and town hall. Roads had begun to be laid out and by 1819, the settlers began a new township called Mayfield. The first town meeting was held in June of that year, twenty voters being present; of those, thirteen were elected to various offices.
With the growth of the area and the beginnings of a local government, businesses also emerged. One of the most basic businesses of the time was the mill. According to "A Pictorial History of Gates Mills, 1826-1976," the mills provided for almost every necessity of living. The mills dealt with food and shelter, the production of barrel staves, axes, cider, salt, and linseed oil, to name a few. Small units turned out cheese, tanned leather, and other simple necessities.
Peleg's House and Sawmill
Peleg's House (click to enlarge house) |
Peleg's Sawmill |
The miller, particularly of the sawmill and gristmill, was
usually a
builder, a businessman, and a leader. When Peleg settled in the area,
he
became one of the first to establish himself as a businessman by
erecting
a sawmill. As of 1976, Peleg Sherman's 1843 sawmill was the only one
still
standing on the stream on Willson Mills Road. It had been moved in 1867
north across the road to be converted into a steam mill where it also
had
the first circular saw blade in the valley. When Peleg Jerome Sherman
(grandson
of Peleg & son of Benjamin) died in 1927, it was moved behind
the old
Sherman homestead. In 1976, it became the property of Hadley and
Nanette
(Sherman) Kline who have restored it. Nanette still lives on this
property
and is the granddaughter of William Penn Sherman, Peleg Jerome
Sherman's
brother.
William Penn & Nellie Sherman |
Peleg Jerome Sherman Family |
Gates Mills (click to enlarge) |
Because the economy of Adams, Massachusetts had been in decline for some years and coupled with the opening of the Erie Canal, some members of Peleg Sherman's family decided to join him in Ohio. Samuel and Laura (Sherman) Dean, her two brothers, Joel and Isaac Sherman, went to Ohio next to establish new homes. Joel and Isaac later returned to Adams with glowing reports of their findings and encouraged their friends and relatives to join them.
The brothers told them of their two adjoining farms of one hundred and fifty acres each fronting the Chagrin River above Gates Mills. To further entice them, they described their houses, the churches, the mills, and other enterprises. Excited by the prospect of a new start, Lindon and Achsah (Sherman) Jenks, who was expecting her third child, and their two children decided to join other members of their family and friends and move to Ohio. To make the move they went with a team to Albany, New York and over to Buffalo via canal boat, and then to Cleveland on one of the first steam boats on Lake Erie. Although the trip from Massachusetts to Ohio was now easier than it had been for Peleg and his family, travel on the Erie Canal was still not comfortable. The packet boats that were used to make the journey along the canal were small and crowded. They were about 80 feet long and could be no wider than 14 feet in order for them to fit through the locks. (Some boats of this size carried nearly 100 passengers!) Mules usually pulled the packet boats, although horses were sometimes used as well.
At the back of the boat was the kitchen area and in the room next to the kitchen were long dining tables. The sleeping cabins were about ten feet by eight feet and had small canvas cots hanging down from the walls. About thirty people slept in each cabin with a curtain separating the men from the women and children. It was difficult to sleep on the boats, especially if you had a top bunk, because of the heat and humidity. Many chose to sleep on the floor or on top of the dining tables rather than take a top bunk.
During the day, some passengers would climb to the roof of the boat, as it was more enjoyable than the humid dreary sleeping cabins. Although it was more enjoyable to be on the roof where you could get fresh air and watch the scenery, it could also be dangerous. When approaching a bridge, the helmsman would blow a horn and yell, "Low bridge, everybody down!" Clearance under a bridge was only 5 ½ feet, so those on the roof would have to lie down to avoid being knocked off.
Tedium often plagued the passengers due to the four-mile per hour speed limit and the sometimes-long waits at the locks. To relieve the boredom, passengers were encouraged to get off of the boats and walk the towpath to see what the merchants had to offer that were set up at the lock.
Once Lindon, Achsah and the others reached Buffalo, they transferred from the Erie Canal to one of the first steam powered ships on the Great Lakes, the "Walk-in-the-Water." The Lake Erie Steamboat Company had been operating their ships since the early 1820's and had taken many settlers west. The Jenks and Sherman families were some of many who sailed from Buffalo Harbor to Cleveland. Once anchored in Cleveland their journey was almost complete. To reach Gates Mills and Mayfield, it was now necessary to travel the last sixteen miles by ox-carts.
When Lindon and Achsah reached Gates Mills, they purchased with cash a one-hundred and fifty-acre farm fronting the Chagrin River with part of the $2000 they had saved while working in the textile mill in Adams. The house, a small-unpainted frame house, had five rooms and a lean-to on the West Side.
In the interior of the house was the "living and dining room and parlor all combined in one room where the cooking and all general housework was done." Dr. Jenks explains that the most important structure was the chimney with its fireplace, crane, and a brick oven in which the baking was done. "The oven had an iron door (and) a big flue connected (it) with the chimney. On baking days a fire of light-wood was made in the oven. When the wood was consumed, the ashes were swept out into the fireplace and the 'baking' was put into the oven and the door closed. By the time the oven was cooled, the baking was done." Two bedrooms occupied the rest of the first floor. A stairway beside the fireplace led to the attic which was "floored but unfinished."
The outbuildings consisted of a granary, a shop, a woodshed, and a cheese house. On slightly higher ground, several rods away stood a Yankee 30-x-40-foot barn "without which no efficiently managed farm could get along." Several apple and cherry trees grew near the house comprising the orchard. There was a meadow and low land on the river with pastureland and forests on the hills that Lindon had cleared to add another 80 acres.
From time to time enough timber was cleared off to afford sufficient plow land for crop raising and pasturage for the live stock, but for the most part, the regular farm work went on in routine manner. Every day had its times: "getting up time, chore and milking time, breakfast time, work time, dinner time, afternoon work time, supper time, evening chore time, and finally bed time. Times for reading, writing of letters and social amusements were considered of as much importance as carrying on the work."
The social amusements that were in vogue in the years that this family was growing up were according to Dr. Jenks, "quite favorable." Society, he states was divided into two classes: those who danced and those who did not dance. He says, "Those who danced, danced; and those who didn't had kissing parties and kissed!"
Apparently some of the churches of the time allowed dancing, but many others didn't. Those who attended churches that did not permit dancing and who were caught partaking of the sin, were "churched." But, Dr. Jenks explains that if a person was "churched" or excommunicated, the other denominations would gladly accept them.
In June 1851 the Chagrin River flooded. All the low-lying land and the house were surrounded by water. In the fear that the house would be swept away, Lindon and Achsah decided at three in the morning to take refuge in the barn which stood on "somewhat higher land." A big wood rack that was near was used as an "ark" to float those of the family who were too small to wade. Achsah "with her youngest child in her arms (who would have been Dr. Jenks), tried to go to the rack through the back door, stepped on a board that was floating in the lean-to, and down she went into the water. She was pulled out but she did not drop her baby."
On the first trip, the "ark" was pushed through water waist deep. Lindon and his eldest son Frank, who were both six feet tall, pushed the rack carrying Achsah and the baby by "touching their toes on the ground 'once in a while.'" Fortunately the current was sluggish and the morning found the family tucked away in the scaffold over the cow stable.
The muddy water finally subsided, but it left an 18-inch deposit of silt everywhere. All the members of the family, except the baby, remembered the hard labor cleaning up after the flood. No buildings floated away, but this incident brought about the thought of building a new house that would be situated high enough above any future flooding. When this house was built, three gateways through well-built fences had to be passed before it could be reached. The house when completed in 1853, was called a "story-and-a-half" and it was built to endure most any challenge.
In an account of a "Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve" published under the auspices of the Woman's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission in 1896, edited by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, several articles contain the details of many of the early settlers. Achsah Sherman is described as "one of the active and useful women of her time. She was active in church work (Methodist) and had great decision of character and energy. After sixty years of age she took woolen rolls, spun and colored the yarn, and made a suit of clothes for each of her sons. A typical pioneer woman and a worthy helpmeet, she endeared herself to the whole community in which she lived and her children rise up and call her blessed."
Achsah died in 1893 at the home she and Lindon had built on the Chagrin River. Lindon preceded her in death in the year 1880.
Sherman Family Reunion June 1898 (click to enlarge) Click HERE for key to names |
A Pictorial History of Gates Mills 1826-1976
"Cuyahoga County History: Mayfield," USGenWeb Archives, 07/05/2000 http://searches.rootsweb.com/usgenweb/archives/oh/cuyahoga/history/Mayfield.txt
Jenks, Dr. W. O., The Memoirs of Lindon and Achsah Jenks. unpublished.
"Life on the Erie Canal," 02/01/2001 http://syracuse.com/features/eriecanal/story/page1.html
O’Connor, John R., Sidney Schwartz, Leslie A. Wheeler, Exploring United States History, Globe Book Company, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1986, p. 260-261.
"The Story of the New York State Canals," 02/01/2001 http://www.canals.state.ny.us/history/finch/
Editor’s note: This story is the family of several known living descendant lines, including Eileen Gillette, whose ancestor Joel B. Sherman was one of Peleg’s sons. The story of her search for her "circus" connection was detailed in our May 2001 issue. I have numerous other photos stored of this family.
Hon. Samuel (imm.), Benjamin, Job, John, Ezra, Elias Huntington, (him)
In Marge Burwell's article about her great grandfather, Linus SHERMAN in the September 2001 "Clippings", she refers to Linus' brother Alvah Francis. After that issue was published, she sent a copy of a document she had located in the special collections of the University of Vermont. Entitled "Memorial of Alvah Francis Sherman" "Prepared by a friend who knew and loved him", it is an wonderful writing about Alvah's life. An excerpt of the introduction is repeated here, and I will be happy to provide a xerox copy of the entire paper to anyone interested.
"Men like Alvah F. Sherman are the solid foundation which the honor, the business integrity, the genuine home and social life, and the righteousness of the nation stand secure.
His life, which was to develop so much strength and usefulness, began on October 30, 1827, when he was born in Fairfield, Vermont, the second of six children of Elias H. and Clarissa Willmarth Sherman, but one of whom, Mrs. Marion P. Hopkins, now survives. The Sherman family is of straight English descent, the ancestry having been traced back five hundred years." [??] [and he then mentions some prominent Shermans] ---- "Thus, the subject of this sketch came of good, creditable stock. His boyhood was spent among the beautiful hills and mountains of northern Vermont. With other boys and girls he went to the "little red schoolhouse," he worked on the farm, and for a taste of higher education, he went some time to Bakersfield Academy, one of those modest but fine old time country academies whose thorough training gave the country lad the power to think and act for himself in the ways of life."
The writer's name is not given, but there is considerable info about Alvah's life, and numerous anecdotes about he and his family - some of genealogical import.
I have often wondered about the motivations of Philip Sherman (1610-1687) and 80 other families, followers of Anne Hutchinson. They signed a petition in defense of her, knowing the risk was to be certain banishment. What was it about this woman and her lack of orthodoxy that would beguile these men and their families into what was to be called seditious behavior toward the status quo? Women at this time were regarded as inferior and lacking in intellect. The Bible defined the state of women, (1Tim. 2:11-12), "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. I permit not a woman to teach, neither to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."
The Puritan religion was deeply rooted in Calvinism and they had been persecuted in England and deprived of their pulpit. It was a sly group of prominent Puritans who devised the plot to buy out the then defunct commercial entity known as the New England Co., and a new charter from Charles I authorizing settlement of an area known as Massachusetts Bay. A year later they organized it as the Massachusetts Bay Co. The Puritan stockholders had gained control and had no ideas of commerce!!
The charter gave them full authority to govern the ways in which they lived. The "select 100", solid Puritan stockholders, went to New England in 1630, and brought with them about 1000 other mostly Puritan families. The stockholders elected John Winthrop as their governor. By 1631 they would change the Mass. Bay Co., from a holding company to a commonwealth, and admitted the 100 Freeman. This is an old English term, which generally meant a voting member of a business, corporation or town. In the colonies, it came to mean a man who had the right to vote for a representative to the assembly in his colony. Only members of the Puritan churches could be freemen. The ruling body met, made laws and governed. This was a self-governing commonwealth… A Puritan Republic.
They had churches and a government to enforce God's Commandments. They were free from all the religious pollution of the Old World and now they could build a society based on Biblical law. Surely no one would object to this divine goal.
All was not perfect and disagreements followed from England. One controversy was that of Antinomianism. Put simply, it means "good conduct was no sign of salvation and bad conduct no sign of damnation." This implied that moral law was not binding on a person. John Cotton, a prominent minister of Boston, was one of the teachers of Antinomianism. Mrs. Hutchinson was to take it further.
Anne Hutchinson was born in England in1591. Her father, the Rev. Frances Marbury, was a strong, opinionated minister. She was highly educated for her day, and strongly familiar with scripture and dogma. After his death in 16ll, she married William Hutchinson, a successful merchant. They lived in Alford, England for 22 years, and raised 14 children.
Anne found another influential Puritan minister who would replace her father. Rev. John Cotton, a man also very involved in Antinominaism, was to become her guiding force.
In 1634 the Hutchinson family moved to the Mass. Bay Colony. William prospered as a merchant and was later elected selectmen and deputy to the General Court. Anne did as she had done in England. She devoted her time to caring for the sick and acted as a mid-wife. It was during her forays into the homes of the sick that she spoke her mind, often recounting the sermons of ministers around Boston. She often spoke of her brother-in-law, the young Rev. John Wheelwright, whose preaching was similar to the Rev. Cotton's.
The colonist had a heightened longing for grace, and it made for exaggerated piety and resulted in anxiety about their salvation. How would one know if he were saved? Cotton warned them "that good behavior itself, or waking in the ways of God, was a work that any hypocrite could perform. In short, Reformation is no assurance that God hath made an everlasting covenant with us." One had to have a personal revelation from God to become a member of the church and the ministers would judge eligible for membership.
Anne grew bolder as her audiences grew. She accused the ministers of preaching untrue doctrine by emphasizing morality. Deluding their congregations into the false assumptions that good deeds would get them into heaven. She based this on the belief that since Christ had died for our sins then it would follow that all men would ascend to heaven without regard to his earthly deeds. She denied the belief of a vengeful God who would punish while all knowing at the same time, but preached a loving God. She taught that anyone could come to know God and the sanction by ministers, etc. were a farce.
Thomas Shepard, a Puritan minister of the day, dismissed Antinomianism as simply a way for the "slothful sinner to escape the demands of the law."
Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers now threatened the very roots of Puritanism; that there was one truth, and one truth only, as revealed in the Bible. If one could have personal communion with the Holy Ghost then this would encourage or condone indolence and loose living. In the communion described by Mrs. Hutchinson, the believer was passive. If he falls into sin he is not disliked by God, nor is his condition worse off. Her dogma destroyed most of the reason for the church’s existence; they and their ministers were no longer needed. God would deal directly with His children. It was purposed that her view might well have done away with the state as it existed.
The strong statements made by Anne and her followers were not mere religious or philosophical opinions - they were a direct threat to the powers that be. So it was believed that these outward breaches of the law required punishment, or all would suffer at the hands of the Almighty Himself. It was with these beliefs in mind that the magistrates of Mass. began the trial of Mrs. Hutchinson. The trial was based on the charges that Anne had broken the Law of God.
It must be remembered that before the trial she had never publicly stated that she personally had revelations, or had she openly professed any doctrine that would sanely be regarded as contrary to the Law of God. It was obvious that others had been urging such views of her privately, for the synod of ministers had found 82 followers to condemn.
It was October of 1637 when Mrs. Hutchinson, now in her forties and far along in a pregnancy, was forced to remain standing before the General Court. Gov. Winthrop who would act as judge and prosecutor headed the tribunal. Anne would stand most of the day, until later, when her condition was finally noticed and she was allowed to sit down on a hard bench. She wore a white scull cap as women of her day traditionally did, and she stood bowed before them.
There would not be an indictment or information about the charges, no lawyer, and the denial of a jury trial. It was charged that she had entertained others who had subsequently been convicted of sedition; she had broken the 5th commandment, and she had dishonored the fathers of the commonwealth.
Mrs. Hutchinson was a formidable and learned woman. Her wit often put her judges to shame. She knew scripture backward and forward and at every turn put Governor Winthrop at logical impasse. He was forced to take refuge in dogma and told her: " We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex but only this; you do adhere unto them and do endeavor to set forward this faction and so you do dishonor us".
She was called upon to justify her weekly meetings. She quoted from Titus II, 3-5, which indicates that the elder women should instruct the younger. They rebuked her still. Undaunted by the failure to prove the first two counts, the court moved to the final and most serious charge that she has insulted the ministers.
The basis of these charges came from a conference held the previous December between Mrs. Hutchinson and the ministers. The conference was private, but now the ministers were about to testify against her falsely. Anne recognized the information, and on day two of the trial she demanded that the ministers be made to give their evidence under oath.
This created a crisis, as the ministers feared lying under oath. John Cotton began to back down about what he had heard her say, then the others followed suit to avoid taking the oath. Without Cotton's testimony the case had collapsed. It was observed that Anne was overjoyed and asks the court for "leave to speak". She then revealed to them that the spirit had come to her. They ask, "How do you know that that was the spirit?" "How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the sixth commandment," she answered. "By immediate voice." was the reply. She answered, "So to me by an immediate revelation." At this point the Deputy Governor sneered: "How! An immediate revelation!" Anne further warned them, "to heed what they did to her this day and how you proceed against me for God will ruin you and your posterity and this whole state."
Some historians argue that it this was a women having to have the last word syndrome and that her outburst had turned an obvious win into her loss. Others would argue and that so intelligent and brilliant a women as Anne could not let her win become her loss.
This women had taken care to not expound her theology publicly but spoke only in private meetings. Even Winthrop expressed this in speaking of her skill as a legal tactician, "it is well discerned to the court that Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to hold her tongue…"
Her performance at the first day of the trial showed that she was clear-headed, and not prone to outbursts of emotion. Her seeming blunder at the end of her trial would appear to be more of a conscious effort to transform a foreordained legal ritual into a personal stage to vent her beliefs. It was at this point that Winthrop claimed "immediate revelation as the grounds for banishment."
Martin Luther said, "I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Here I stand; I can do not other wise." By openly declaring her position on immediate revelation she does not change the outcome of her trial; she accepts it. Because of her condition Anne was kept in prison until the spring when she was banished along with her followers to what is now known as Rhode Island.
Within a year her husband William died and Anne never really regained her former vitality. She took her remaining six children and moved on to Pellham Bay, then the Dutch New Netherlands. She lived outside the village on what is now known as the Hutchinson River in the Bronx. In 1643, Indians murdered her and her children except for a four-year-old daughter, whom they abducted and raised as their own.
Those that went with Anne to Rhode Island continued their less tyrannical religious beliefs. Many became deeply involved in the Quaker movement of the time, as did Philip Sherman, who became a devout member of the Society of Friends. Rhode Island welcomed Quakers, unlike the Mass. Bay Colony, who ran them out and hung several.
The Puritan intolerance erupted again with the Salem Witch trials, as well as other intolerances of the day, before it all but dissipated 10 years after it began.
One of Anne's followers was Henry Bull, first governor of Rhode Island and a Quaker. His great granddaughter, Rebecca Jenkins (parents Job Jenkins and Content Bull), married Thomas Sherman (1735-1830) in July of 1761. Jenkins Sherman, b. 11 June 1762, g.g.g.grandson of Philip, became a Baptist Minister. Anne's grandson became governor of Mass. in 1772. He supported the outcome of the trial and the States position against his grandmother; but-then again-he also supported Imperial authority over the colonists in 1772.
Anne and her followers (Philip Sherman)
had opened the way for
an individual to have their own relationship with their God. They had
joined
the growing movement of separation of church and state - as well as the
right of women to think and have a voice in affairs of the community.
The National Experience - A History of the United States
Blum, Catton, Morgan, Schlesinger, Stampp, & Woodward
Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion
Krieger Problem Studies
Going to Palmyra; Sherman Deeds
Margaret Sherman Lutzvick
The Americans - The Colonial Experience
Daniel J. Boorstin
The Jenkins Family of RI
The Hon. Steuben Jenkins - Genealogies of RI Families
Job Family
Genealogies of RI Families.
Early Rhode Island Settlers
Lucy Rawlings Tootell
New England Historical and Genealogical Register
Vol. 24, pages 324-329
[Ed: Jean’s line is: Phillip (imm.), Eber, Elisha, Thomas, Jenkins, Barnett, William, Oscar, Gerald, (her).]
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