This is a contemporary review of The World’s Career from something called The Open Court: ” Mr Joseph Harter, a stone cutter of Tiffin, Ohio, who has reached the prescribed three score years and ten, has published this little book as an attempt to summarize former scientific theories in regard to the life history of the world, with additions of his own original interpretation as suggestions, in which he hopes the thoughtful reader will find the “seed that sprouts action.” Mr Harter does not agree with what he calls the “imaginary plan,” which scientists have termed the nebular hypothesis. Instead he considers the sun’s relation to the planets as that of a brooding hen, and carries out the analogy of the eggs so far as to imply that the ice fields at the poles may be part of the original shell of the world-egg. The author is a native of Baden, Germany, and spent the first eighteen years of his life there. It is plainly evident in this work that he is not a literary man, and is not accustomed to writing for the public. For this reason there is a danger that professional critics noting lapses in accepted grammatical and rhetorical rules may lay the book aside without the consideration which, at least, the author’s sincere attention and original thought would deserve.”
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Here is a link to a listing for him in A Centennial Biographical History of Seneca County, page 750, which if I were better at these things, I could’ve copied and pasted, but I’m not so you’ll just have to click on it and hopefully find yourself at the right place:
And, finally, the only other thing of interest that I could come up with on him with my limited resources (computer, internet, search engine, perseverance), is that he received a patent on May 8, 1883 (#277,029) for a combined harrow roller and scraper.
So there you go, another Tiffinite who wrote a book, and a little bit about him.
Gypsy Hollow Review 