Lennon on Temple in the Revolution

Genealogists talk a lot about historical context, but Rachal Mills Lennon does something about it. Her 19-page article on John Temple, a Virginian, in the March 2015 NGS Quarterly uses it as a major pillar of her research and analysis and correlation of the scanty evidence available on Temple's Revolutionary War career and pension. (Also, don't miss footnote 67.)

Having read this article, I hope that something similar will help with my Pennsylvania patriot problem.


Rachal Mills Lennon, "Context and Comrades Illuminate a Silent Southerner: John Temple (1758-1838), Revolutionary War Pensioner," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 103 (March 2015): 49-67.

"If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all." . . .

That's what everyone's grandmother said, and that's what prudent genealogists have taken to heart. Maybe too much.

Other academic disciplines thrive on controversy; most genealogists avoid it like the plague. We might even favor the plague! (And if you think genealogy isn't or shouldn't be academic, then compare other hobbyists: think about the endless arguments over baseball statistics.)

There are good reasons to go along with grandma, especially in a field with a never-ending influx of novices. It's just good sense to explain citations or military records or whatever in a friendly way, suggesting improvements rather than wielding a condemnatory red pencil. And at any given time, we might have to call on a colleague for advice or research help in a remote-to-us part of the world -- why risk being snubbed in your hour of need? (This is particularly an issue since there are relatively few "real jobs" in genealogy, defined as those that include health insurance or some simulacrum of a pension.) Besides, it's kind of nice to be in a situation where everyone pats you on the back whether you deserve it or not.

So when we come across a substandard book or article, a soporific lecture, an offensive blog post, or a genealogist disciplined for malfeasance such as plagiarism, we prefer to look the other way. That keeps things quiet and civil -- at least on the surface. But underneath, it's all whispers and innuendo, often with a wink and a nudge rather than even naming the supposedly offending individual, or the offense. Sometimes, worse yet, we sail along thinking we're doing fine because no one dares tell us that we're messing up. (Some friends and I set up a writing group a couple of years ago just to be able to receive and give substantive criticism. Now a few of us have been wondering where there could be a "lecture group" that would do the same.)

It's true that I come from an argumentative family, and an argumentative "other life" before genealogy. But is there no middle way? Can we critique the substance constructively and specifically in public, without getting into personalities, or devolving into the all-abuse-all-the-time mode of many political blogs' comment sections?

This all came to my mind when I saw that Rachal Mills Lennon had reviewed Harold E. Hinds Jr.'s recent book, Crafting a Personal Family History: A Guide Plus a Case Study of the Hinds Family in New York's Adirondack Mountains, in the April 2012 issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. I subscribe to the magazine, have admired Lennon's articles and web site, and own a signed copy of the book, purchased last fall at the Minnesota Genealogical Society's North Star conference. So I was curious how the review would look.

Guess what? It's critical. It's substantive. She takes issue with many particular items in the book -- nothing personal. It's an aspect of genealogy that I haven't seen enough of. What do you think?


Harold E. Hinds, Jr., Crafting a Personal Family History: A Guide Plus a Case Study of the Hinds Family in New York's Adirondack Mountains (Elizabethtown NY: Essex County Historical Society, 2011).

Rachal Mills Lennon, review of Crafting a Personal Family History, in New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol. 143, no. 2 (April 2012):155.


Harold Henderson, "'If you can't say anything nice...,'" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday with Jonathan Turner's widow

This month's feature for the Transitional Genealogists article study group is Rachal Mills Lennon's 2004 National Genealogical Society Quarterly article, "The Wives of Jonathan Turner: Identification of Women in Pre-Twentieth-Century South Carolina." Don't turn the page because you don't have SC ancestors. The message is for all researchers everywhere: when the going gets tough, the tough research families, not individuals.

Lennon describes "a task many researchers fail to undertake: investigating the widow to find out if she can supply additional information about her husband. ... if a propertyless widow 'disappears' from the census or if evidence suggests she was not the mother of the child on whom a researcher is working, the genealogist may be tempted to drop that widow from the research plan."

As they say in the horror movies, "Don't do it!" In Lennon's case study, she found: "In 1894, fourteen years after her last census appearance, the seventy-seven-year-old Preshey applied for a widow's pension, identifying her late husband, Jonathan, as a veteran of the 'Florida War,'" and identifying Turner's preceding wife and the mother of three of his children. There's more -- join the National Genealogical Society and read it all in PDF format on line: NGSQ 92:245-255.