A fact from Warren Angus Ferris appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 November 2016 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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I removed the following information from the page. It wasn't cited, and it looks like a conversation best left on a talk page.
"As payment for his surveying services, Ferris was granted the land upon which now lies most of downtown Dallas. At his death, no family members came forward to claim this land and it was then reclaimed by local government. Several of his descendants, many still in Texas, have attempted to regain legal possession of this valuable land, but all attempts have failed. This is inaccurate, at his death his children were run off the land and it was claimed by the state. Several attempts have been made to reclaim the land but we have been told there are no records to prove we ever owned it. - a descendant" Amgisseman(BYU) (talk) 16:39, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This article seems full of errors with regards to Ferris' activities in Dallas. See http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffe11. At the time of his death, he owed debts to the Caruths and their general store and his debts were settled from his land holdings. The land was never reclaimed by the government. Ferris had acquired the certificates for the land through his work, but law prevented him from claiming the land in his own name. He put the surveys in the pseudonym of his half-brother, C.A. (Joshua) Lovejoy, with whom his relationship soured. Because he feared attempts by Lovejoy to claim the land, he put it all in the name of his wife or children. His wife predeceased him and her will stipulated that the land not be distributed for five years and only to the children who remained on the farm for that time. Ferris did not lay out the streets, merely the land surveys which, when later subdivided, established the alignment of the roads. I understand that this information needs to be put into the article, but in lieu of having time to properly edit the article, I am mentioning it here and will come back in the near future to revise.208.180.241.48 (talk) 22:30, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
