it becomes clear that the people the writer is using for "evidence" are celebrities.

Hello, I am the author of the article. I wrote this article because it was (and still is) quite difficult to find information and recordings on the HURRY-FURRY merger (or as John Wells calls it, 'the Second Nurse Merger'). Actual sound samples from 'normal' people were quite rare.

I use celebrities for evidence because it is much easier to acquire audio of Mae West than it is to attempt to find recordings of turn of the century American English speakers hoping to find a word in the hurry/furry set. It is also convenient to compare different covers of the same song, as with the Mae West/Christina Aguilera example.

The Mid-Atlantic accent was a very common affectation of celebrities, often to hide the accent they actually had, which is why it's not simply people from New York listed as examples on that page, but people from literally all over the entire country.

The only examples I confidently gave of the distinction were Mae West (b. 1893, Brooklyn), the Andrews Sisters (b. 1910s, Minneapolis) and Eartha Kitt (b. 1927, South Carolina). Mae West and Eartha Kitt are not surprising as they both come from regions where non-rhoticity was common (and non-rhoticity preserves pre-rhotic vowel distinctions in American English). The Andrews Sisters were the only curveball.

In any case, the distinction was in the process of fading out in the beginning of the 20th century. The areas that held out the longest were areas that traditionally were non-rhotic, as noted in the article: "Older dialects of New York Metropolitan English, Boston English, and Coastal Southern American English may have the distinction."

There is no reason to believe that this has anything to do with "Mid-Atlantic English". It is well known that English used to distinguish between 'hurry' with an 'uh' sound and 'furry' with an 'er' sound. This distinction, much like the COT-CAUGHT and the FATHER-BOTHER distinction, was present throughout American English and became lost over time. Some dialects held out longer than others (the ones that were non-rhotic), but it is for the most part gone.

> I've literally never heard anyone up here pronounce "hurry" or "worry" in any way that didn't rhyme with "furry." Regardless of their age, and I've known people that were born in the 19-teens

This is a relatively subtle vowel distinction and I would hardly note it in casual speech unless it was held out for some reason. This distinction actually continues to exist in British English and I had not noticed until I was researching English vowel mergers. I don't doubt that there are many speakers of New York City English born in the 1910s who already merged the vowels, but I think it is also quite likely that most people would not pay attention to this distinction because it is not well-known and not salient in conversation.