HENRY Ford said history was bunk, more or less.

Oscar Wilde thought it a duty to rewrite it.

And George Bernard Shaw wrote that, as usual, it would tell lies.

We're not sure what we started last week - but the phone never stopped ringing.

For last week's article on John Baronian's forgotten war memorial caused a certain amount of dissent among the town's historians.

"It's not true," said John Mottershead.

"It says here that this monument was built as a tribute to their only son John.

"He had three sons that I know of and one sister."

But local historian Joan Leach, who told us about the memorial, said it was important to fish for more details in stories like this.

"We do try to get things right," she said. "And with these discussions we are putting it in with the hope of getting information back."

And plenty were willing to do that.

Robert Redmond, chairman of the Knutsford and district branch of the Royal British Legion said the young man died in Mesopotamia, not France.

Amy Clowes, who has lived in the same house in Albert Street, Knutsford, all her life, rang to say the memorial was cast from bronze, not copper.

As the calls came in, it became clear that no single historian knew who John Baronian was - or what happened to him and his statue.

Or should that be Aaron?

"His name wasn't John at all," said Miss Clowes. "It was Aaron. I remember my mother saying it."

Miss Clowes' mother had worked as a nurse for the Baronian family - rich cotton traders of Armenian extraction - and knew about the three brothers and sister.

"Mr Baronian had it made for £1,000 so his wife could look at it in the garden," she said.

"But he lost all his money in the cotton slump."

Miss Clowes - nicknamed Miss Knutsford by some - said no-one should write about the town's history without consulting her first.

"Joan Leach doesn't listen, you see," she said.

"But when you report it wrong, I get it in the neck. It's because I know so much about Knutsford's history."

Mr Redmond, who recently wrote a history book about pirates, understood the predicament of those who committed history to the printed page.

But he did have some corrections to make. You have covered the story before, he said.

The statue is only a statue - not a war memorial, simply because it is dedicated to one man.

He said when Dorothy Baronian, the daughter, moved from the house she asked for the statue to be reinstated with Knutsford's war memorial - the Cottage Hospital itself.

Mr Redmond said we should have checked our facts with the Royal British Legion.

"I'm afraid the Knutsford Guardian has not helped," he said.

"The main thing is that there are not many people who think of it as the war memorial. They know the memorial is the building.

"But Joan knows much better than I do. She is the expert on Knutsford's history.

"Sometimes we can help on service matters."

Should we be more careful when we relate stories from the town's distant past?

"Possibly," he said. "The fact that I know he was killed in Mesopotamia was pure chance because this chap was with him when he was killed.

"He only told me because I thought he was in France as well."

Mrs Leach said committing words to paper was often the only way to get the information to complete the picture.

"Some things are in people's living memory," she said.

"But it's still not been written yet so you can't be certain.

"I look on it as a jigsaw piece. Sometimes you put pieces in and you don't know it's wrong until you get another piece."

Mr Mottershead said he thought the story needed immediate correction.

"I think it's morally wrong," he said. "Either people don't know or they do know."

But he didn't know if John Baronian was in fact Aaron.

Ken Carsley, who is also a member of the town's branch of the Royal British Legion, believed there was only one way of sorting out this particular argument.

"If you had asked 100 people in this town you would have had 100 different versions," he said.

He said it had at least stirred up interest, which is what writing history was all about.

"Even people who have lived in Knutsford all of their lives," he said. "You could sit them around a table and they would still manage to disagree about what's happened."

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.