The ethnic superlatives: "second in size in the State," against "~300 families"

1880 and the 2000s · PAIRED COUNTS THAT MEASURE DIFFERENT THINGS, PRINTED AS SUCH

Two numbers face each other across this section's ethnic record, and the test is whether they may be compared at all. The first is Chapman's, at first hand, of the Good Templars' Olive Branch Lodge No. 149: "From Nov. 1, 1878, to Aug. 1, 1880, the membership increased from 95 to 143, and the lodge is now the second in size in the State." The second is the parish record's: St. Stanislaus Kostka grown to nearly 300 families in the 2000s, under its pastor from July 2007. The checklist's discipline for paired counts is to print what each measures — and these measure different things in different centuries: a temperance lodge's enrolled members in one township in 1880, against a parish's families a hundred and twenty years later. Neither tests the other. The Templars' superlative stands as its contemporary carrier gives it — Chapman, 1880, a county history with the lodge's own officers named — untested against a state lodge table in any record reached, and plausible or not it is a claim of its moment, printed as one. The parish's figure is not a superlative at all but a count, carried in the religion file at parish strength. Verdict: the comparative test returns a category finding — this ground holds one ethnic-era superlative, a lodge's, at its carrier's word, and one parish count; any sentence ranking the township's peoples by these numbers would be measuring members against families, and the leg declines to write it.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), Olive Township chapter, pp. 768–769 and the lodge passage's completion (part 76) — Olive Branch Lodge No. 149, organized 4 January 1875; the membership figures and the superlative verbatim; read at the page for this section.
2. Churches & Religion — St. Stanislaus at nearly 300 families under its pastor from July 2007.