Books vs. Articles

Slowly I am learning that writing a family history book is not anything like writing an extra-long article. A book is more like infinity  -- walking in a flat desert with no landmarks. The horizon stays in the same place no matter how long you walk.

On the positive side, once done, books are much roomier than articles. I can find out how relatives interacted -- how California cousins took in a Wisconsin relative whose doctor said she would die if she had to go through another winter; how my wife's 20something grandfather, on his way from Wisconsin to graduate school at Yale, stopped by to see an aunt in eastern Kansas (a sizeable detour); and some less reputable exploits. I can also find out how they didn't interact, as when a Civil War veteran died claiming he had no relatives, when he had at least two. (I count him and many like him as casualties of the war even though they lived for decades after.)

And a book has room for diversions and distractions, even though it cannot be as consistently entertaining as  Sharon Hoyt on the many marriages of Ida May Chamberlain (National Genealogical Society Quarterly 106 [September 2018]: 217-38), or John Coletta on anything.

Easy online availability of deeds, probates, and newspapers makes it easier than ever to enrich the story -- and lengthen it (1216 footnotes but who's counting?). Even so, because so few write biographical or autobiographical sketches there are still many gaps. And when the task is to render the formatting consistent over many dozens of pages, it also helps to have the smooth drone of a Cubs game in your ear.

What Aaron Goodwin Just Said

The brand-new NGS Monthly for September leads with editor Aaron Goodwin on writing. He puts the arrow right in the bull's eye. 

You'll need to join the National Genealogical Society to read the whole thing, but even the public part makes the point clear: are we trying to create something for posterity, or are we just fooling around?

Genealogical summaries and family chronicles

These days I mainly work on putting together 3- and 4-generation "downstream" accounts of my wife's and my less-documented ancestors (what are called "genealogical summaries" in the journals, and often closely resemble the "kinship determination projects" required by BCG). These give me much better family perspectives on the whole family than just researching upstream for direct ancestors does.

They also sometimes produce problem articles too. Just now there was a young woman who married into my father-in-law's father's mother's Mozley family. Nobody has parents for her, and it now appears that she at least has siblings and was not born in North Dakota but likely came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire around 1903.

Article about problems (as in NGSQ) are tough to write -- the writer has to show how logic is applied to bring conclusion out of confusion. But I'm finding these family chronicles are not as simple as they look. They pose their own writing problems.

The good news is that often it's possible to drill right down to day-by-day or month-by-month accounts of fortunes and misfortunes, thanks especially to the increasing numbers of digitized newspapers and land and probate records. The interesting news is that a pile of facts, no matter how high, does not a story make.

Often I will go back to the work-in-progress and find that I never wrote a topic sentence (usually because I was  just listing what happened without trying to pull it together or make sense of it somehow), and the story and maybe even the most fanatical reader gets lost. The paradox here is to find ways to be both thorough and concise.

Don't get me wrong -- a pile of facts is a lot better than nothing. But the more we (or our editors!) can see and communicate the stories in their lives, the more likely they are to be read and remembered.

The Gedney family of Illinois, and why writing is still compulsory for genealogists

Suddenly more than one-third of 2017 is history! Two other articles of mine have seen the light of day:

“Yes, Writing Is Compulsory! Here’s How to Make It Work,” Federation of Genealogical Societies Forum 29 (Spring 2017): 18-21.

I hope this will inspire others to turn their research into readable and documented stories, and not leave an indigestible lump of disorganized notes (which is generally what I start with!). It is not enough to leave a database or a stack of papers. Thanks to FGS's Julie Cahill Tarr for making sure I got it done.

“From Fens to Farms: William and Rebecca (Wright) Gedney of Cowbit, Lincolnshire and Lebanon, Illinois,” Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (Spring 2017): 30-34.

Thanks to ISGSQ editor Terry Feinberg for helping nudge this into the right length and shape (William and Rebecca and their children), and for instituting footnotes instead of endnotes in the quarterly!

This is my maternal grandfather's mother's line; the bulk of the family came to the U.S. in 1842 (John Tyler was president), sailing from Liverpool to New Orleans and then traveling up the Mississippi to St. Clair County, Illinois, opposite St. Louis. Some children arrived earlier; it was a chain-like migration. William and Rebecca's twelve children, born 1805-1832, had a total of more than two dozen grandchildren. Seven of the twelve lived to have children, and married into families surnamed Green, Wilson, Flint (twice), Lord (twice), Sims, Frost, Eastwood, Barton, Thornton, and Sowers.

I need to figure out the best way(s) to publish the much longer four-generation story, as many family members spilled into Missouri and Kansas while others stayed rooted in Illinois.

Fall 2015 talks

In between the sloth of summer and the hibernation of winter are the seasons where it's actually fun to get things done. This fall I have five speaking engagements coming up.

Tuesday evening September 8, La Porte County Genealogical Society, La Porte, Indiana:
"Probate Will Not Be the Death of You" (digest version).

Saturday September 19, Willard Library, Evansville, Indiana:
"Why We Don't Write and How We Can"
"Indirect Evidence: When Perry Mason Isn't on Your Side"
"Probate Will Not Be the Death of You"
" 'Are We There Yet?' Proof and the Genealogy Police," a case study

Saturday October 17, Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society, Valparaiso, Indiana:
"Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without"

Tuesday evening October 20, Marshall County Genealogical Society, Plymouth, Indiana:
"Ten Commandments for Being a Good Genealogy Client"

Tuesday evening November 17, Board for Certification of Genealogists public online webinar:
"Do You Have the Reflexes You Need to Become Certified? Fifteen Things Your Grandfather Would Tell You . . . If I Were Your Grandfather"

#



 

Three ways to get your genealogy material out there without actually publishing

A recent discussion on the Transitional Genealogists Forum got into the question of how we can get our research findings "out there" without actually publishing them. I myself am a big advocate of getting stuff published, but it's worth knowing that there are alternatives. The first two came up in the discussion, and the third didn't occur to me until it was over.

(1) FamilySearch accepts various kinds of record donations.

(2) The Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center has a "photocopy exchange" program, where if you send them a manuscript, they'll bind one copy for you and one for their shelves.

(3) National Genealogical Society writing contest winner gets published in the NGS Quarterly, but other entries can end up in the NGS book loan collection at the St. Louis County Public Library. I was surprised and mostly pleased when I heard from someone who had located and read my non-winning submission on a Wisconsin family from back in 2008. "Mostly" pleased because that work had some deficiencies that I've always intended to fix . . .

The good thing about publishing in journals, instead of the above, is that some of them have editors who will help us improve our reasoning and writing. (And all of them need more material!) So I'm still a big advocate of that; the only way I'll become a lesser advocate would be if I went on a diet.

What all these options require is that we Actually. Write. Something. Do it! It's the best method of preservation.

The perfect is the enemy of the good . . . and of the getting published

From my new talk, "Why We Don't Write and How We Can" (which is a larger first cousin of my 2012 blog post of similar title):

We genealogists are already trained to be more picky and more detail-minded than normal people, but this good habit can turn against us and strangle our own work if we're not careful. Eventually we have to learn that a "reasonably exhaustive search" that the Genealogical Proof Standard calls for is not the same as an [impossible] "exhaustive search." Similarly, a "soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion" is not the same as an [impossible] "irrefutably reasoned, perfectly written conclusion." In both cases it can take a while, but we need to realize that we are looking for something that is good enough to meet standards, as opposed to perfect.

If you want to hear the rest, show up at the Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, Indiana, tomorrow afternoon, or at the New England Regional Genealogy Consortium in Providence, Rhode Island, Friday, April 17, 2015. (And if you're wondering, yes, it was proposed for NGS in May 2015, but not accepted.)



Harold Henderson, "The perfect is the enemy of the good...and of the getting published," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Top three posts since March

By definition, if you're reading this post, those listed below are probably familiar. But in case you're an outlier, the three most popular posts on this blog in the last six months:

(1) "Cleanup in Aisles 1-1000"  (10 April). This one was controversial, too!


(2) "What I would have liked to know as a newbie" (19 June).YMMV but I'm sure you know the feeling.


(3) "Methodology Monday with Elizabeth Shown Mills, the FAN Club, and DNA" (3 August). Part of my ongoing series to showcase some of the best work being done in genealogy. Includes a list of NGSQ articles using various forms of DNA.




Harold Henderson, "Top three MWM posts since March," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Autumn 2014 presentations! Bloomington, Kalamazoo, Terre Haute, Indianapolis

All four of my presentations this fall are in the Eastern time zone, even though I myself am in Central. Check your calendar and join in the fun if you get the chance!


Wednesday 15 October, 3 pm -- "Why We Don't Write and How We Can," Monroe County Public Library, 303 E. Kirkwood, Bloomington, Indiana (advance registration required before 5 pm 8 October: http://mcpl.info/calendar/2014-10). Plus a second hour of discussion and examples.

Short version: If we don't write, we won't need to wonder what will happen to our genealogy stuff when we're gone. New.


Monday 20 October, 7 pm -- "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You," Kalamazoo Valley Genealogical Society, Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane, Portage, Michigan. (I spoke on property records here last spring: these people ask good questions!)

Short version: Everybody dies. Most have probates. Few make wills. Good genealogists will not stop with wills. Previously given at 2013 Indiana Genealogical Society conference in Bloomington.


Monday 10 November, 6:30 pm -- "A Case Study: Are We There Yet?" Wabash Valley Genealogical Society, Vigo County Public Library, One Library Square, Terre Haute, Indiana.

Short version: Follow the Chilcote trail from the 1900 Chicago census to an unmarked Ohio grave – and decide when there’s enough evidence to prove that George and Edward are two men or one man with two names. Previously given at 2013 National Genealogical Society conference in Las Vegas.


Saturday 22 November, 10 am -- "How Hoosiers Got Hitched," Indiana Historical Society, Eugene and Marian Glick Indiana History Center, 315 West Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana (registration and entry fee: http://www.indianahistory.org/events/how-hoosiers-got-hitched).

Short version: Indiana marriage records have changed over the years. Between 1880 and 1930 in some counties more than one record was created for each marriage – some with different information than the others. A new naming system can help us tell them apart. New, based on the article of the same title that appeared in the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections.





Harold Henderson, "Autumn 2014 presentations! Bloomington, Kalamazoo, Terre Haute, Indianapolis," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Cleanup in Aisles 1-1,000

Last month on Facebook Dave McDonald admonished fellow genealogists to start sorting and weeding their stuff now. Or, in other words, don't wait until you're dead to get started.

He is so right. As an amateur I filled at least two four-high file drawers, and eventually I just quit filing and started shoving unfiled papers into a drawer of their own.

What did I think I was doing? I was caught up in the enthusiasm, and didn't fully realize how incomplete (read: useless) a collection of records can be if it is not linked together by a train of thought -- necessarily a coherently and clearly written train of thought. Putting the pieces in a database doesn't count.

These days I'm sorting and discarding and saving in a 10-minutes-a-day routine, so that the overall task does not become too onerous. The only reason I can do it at all is that I know there are gems in there for some collateral families that I may live to write up. But all that time and energy in the accumulation! -- I could sure use some of it now.

The point is not to clean house. For that I could hire three college students and a dumpster. The point is that there is no point in researching what we are not going to turn into a story of one kind or another. Nothing else is likely to survive. Raw materials for sure will get the dumpster solution. When I look at the raw materials now, I can usually (not always) recall which of my 4 grandparents any given surname connected to ten or twelve years ago. So they are retrievable and useable.

If there were only one portal through which people could enter into genealogy, and if I could sit there 24/7, and if I were allowed to say only one thing to every happy hopeful entrant, it actually would not be about citations or even standards. Just this: "Don't consume records faster than you produce written conclusions and stories."

If it's not worth writing up, it's not worth researching in the first place.



Harold Henderson, "Cleanup in aisles 1-1,000," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Top Eight MWM Posts All-Time

The eight most popular posts to date on this blog are not necessarily my personal favorites, but that's OK. I compiled this list, in the spirit of March Madness, after realizing that the "count" of all-time most viewed posts that Blogger offers on its Stats tab is thoroughly and inexplicably broken, i.e. its numbers are different from and lower than the numbers given for each post individually, and some posts are omitted from that list altogether.

1. Finding Ancestors in Fort Wayne, 31 March 2013.

2. Why We Don't Write, 6 May 2012.

3. State and Regional Genealogy Journals (joint post with Michael Hait), 20 June 2011.

4. Getting Serious about Genealogy, 3 June 2013.

5. Moderately Recent Blog Posts I Have Enjoyed, 15 May 2012.

6. Eight Tips for Those Considering Certification, 15 August 2012.

7. Nine Indexes and Finding Aids on the Web Site, 5 July 2013.

8. What I Knew About PERSI That Wasn't So, 22 February 2014.



Harold Henderson, "Top Eight MWM Posts All-Time," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 13 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Writing and building

A word of cheer to those writing for publication or portfolio: Sometimes it's like building a house. You know how fast the basic structure goes up? And then once it's enclosed, how loooonnnng the finishing process takes?

It's the same on the screen (or on paper, if you're stuck in the 20th century). Hunting down those last sources, honing the citations, making sure the format is at least consistent and preferably correct -- even rethinking a key paragraph late in the game -- is much like getting the molding and the surfaces finished. It may seem like forever, but you really will be done.

A related tip: If you have a citation that just won't work -- especially a complicated one involving an on-line image of material originally in print -- try browsing to the relevant page rather than reaching it by search. You may discover that there are more chapters, subchapters, sections, subsections, and parts in the original that may enable you to make the confusions clearer.


(Special to members of APG only: please feel free to drop in on an informal on-line discussion of writing and blogging Friday evening at 9 pm Eastern, 8 pm Central, 7 pm Mountain, and 6 pm Pacific US standard times; world times accordingly. I'll be there but I don't have a speech planned, so bring your questions and observations! Software limits the group to the first 25 who show up. Thanks to the Professional Development Committee for setting this up.)



Harold Henderson, "Writing and building," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 February 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Ten top genealogists in the best venue . . .

DNA, business, branding, writing, working for entertainment and corporate clients, and more: it's not too late to sign up at the early-bird rates for the Association of Professional Genealogists' biggest-ever Professional Management Conference, January 10-11 in downtown Salt Lake City, featuring D. Joshua Taylor, Judy G. Russell, J. Mark Lowe, and a supporting cast of seven (including me)!

APG membership is not required -- but if that is an option on your 2014 menu, this is a good place to meet folks and find out if it's for you. I understand there's a famous library nearby, too, and a famous institute the following week. See you there?


Harold Henderson, "Ten top genealogists in the best venue...," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

What to do with your family history

Yes, you're just writing it for your family, but your family is bigger than you think! Dr. James Ryan explains what to do over at The In-Depth Genealogist.

Recycle your writing!

One way to increase your writing output without adding a large amount of work time is to recast the underlying material into a different form. It occurred to me that -- in addition to news about the community (who got credentialed, which genealogy business has bought another), there are basically three kinds of genealogy writing:

(1) technical -- proving identities, relationships, and lineages. Usually this kind stands alone only when it's an especially difficult problem, or in a client report. But it is the foundation for everything else. Examples are in every issue of NGSQ, NYGBR, NEHGR, TAG, and The Genealogist. Each one may contain fragments of stories (#2 below), but they are only present insofar as they provide evidence to construct the proof.

(2) stories -- telling the life stories of ancestors and lineages. This is the stuff all genealogists and many non-genealogists crave, often even when the stories are terrible and sad. Without #1, the stories may get distorted or attached to the wrong people, but this is the payoff.

(3) instructional -- explaining how to accomplish #1 and #2. This is the meat of most popular genealogy magazines (the ones whose titles always start with a number), professional publications (like the APG Quarterly), many blogs (such as Kimberly Powell's at About.com, or Archives.com's expert series), and much of the traffic on genealogy mailing lists and social media discussions. Technology tips fit here too. (Theoretical articles, of which genealogy has few so far, are at the high end of this range.)

Of course all of these are far more valuable when they cite their sources.

Here's the point. Each family or part of a family provides material for all three kinds of writing. Years ago I found my Gedney ancestors on a New Orleans ship list from the 1840s, where their surname had been written "Kidney." That was a humble kind of technical finding (#1), and of course could play a part in an instructional article or talk (#3). But there are hints of stories there as well (#2): my recently wed great-great grandparents, William Flint and Mary Gedney, were on that cramped boat for two months with their extended family, and it seemed likely that her father bankrolled the emigration. Then again, I could tell those stories better if I did just a little more research . . .





Harold Henderson, “From England to St. Clair Via New Orleans: William and Mary Gedney Flint,” St. Clair County (Illinois) Genealogical Society Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2003):141-44.



Harold Henderson, "Recycle your writing!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

"I" and "we" in genealogy writing

This year's Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati sparked some good discussions, including one that came out of Ohio Genealogy News editor Sunny McClellan Morton's Friday morning talk. Like many of us, she's trying to encourage new writers to take up the pen or word processor as the case may be.

I admit to being a bit surprised that there was anything to discuss. There are many kinds of good genealogical writing, and the first person can be effectively wielded in most of them.

. . . Except at the top of the pyramid. In the five most scholarly magazines -- NEHGR, NGSQ, NYGBR, TAG, and The Genealogist -- the first person singular or plural is out of bounds, I think reasonably so. The focus there should be on the methods, the records, and the people being researched -- not on the researcher's false trails and travails. Having journals like this is one of many factors that will make genealogy more respectable as an intellectual endeavor and not just a harmless obsession of geezers. Also, once you get the hang of it, leaving yourself out of the picture actually makes it easier to tell one story, without having to shift back and forth from the story of the past to the story of your attempt to reclaim the past. Scholarly accounts deliberately suppress process details because the logic of proof is often very different from the travelogue of discovery.

But this is not the only way to tell these stories, and it is not always even the best way. For one thing, up-and-coming researchers have a natural hunger for accounts of how it went. A research find can look very different in the heat of battle (or more likely in the courthouse basement) than it does in a polished article. And nothing prevents such accounts from being well-written and well-documented.

So, pretty much everywhere else -- in commercial popular magazines, in trade publications (APG Quarterly), and in quality mid-level publications (such as NGS Magazine, Ohio Genealogy News, and many state publications) -- I would expect good editors to be open to the possibility of using first person to tell a solid genealogical story. (I blogged about a couple here; Sunny has been publishing research travelogues under the heading "Genealogy Journeys" in OGN.)

Many people may find it more natural to write in the first person at first, and I'm in favor of any approach that will get more of us writing (as opposed to dying with file cabinets full of uncommunicated discoveries). But writing WELL in the first person is much harder than it looks, for at least three reasons:

(1) All storytelling and all writing is about selection, and when you write about your own experience you have to do all the selection. You know too much. (In an interview-based article, for instance, both the interviewee and the interviewer filter the direct experience, so that the result of the interview has already been winnowed down considerably from the raw experience, making it easier to craft a readable narrative out of it.) It can be hard to see the forest because you know so much about each individual tree -- but if you tell all, the reader will quit rather than figure it out.

(2) First person can tempt us into careless writing. As beginners we often rely too much on adjectives and adverbs, and on general ones at that. First-person may make it harder to realize that we are emoting vaguely, rather than painting a clear picture.

(3) First person poses a special technical problem in genealogy. We then have at least two separate narratives going: our own research chronology, AND the life we are researching. It takes considerable skill and experience to keep both stories on track, separate, and memorable.

These caveats aside, I think first person opens realms of possibility. Some of the most memorable genealogy or family history books I have ever read use it: Leonard Todd's Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave; Martha Hodes's The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century; and (in a somewhat different and slightly less documented vein) Ian Frazier's Family. I found them impossible to put down, and well worth rereading and learning from. It's true, these are world-class writers. Few if any of us can use the first-person tool as well as they do, but that is no reason to banish it altogether from our toolbox.




Harold Henderson, "'I' and 'we' in genealogy writing," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Self-referential Friday with new web site intro

The old web site introduction seemed a little long-winded, so I'm trying the following on for size:

Welcome to Midwest Roots!

I have been a professional writer since 1979, a genealogist since 1999, a professional genealogist since 2009, and a Board-certified professional genealogist since 1 June 2012. Use the “Contact Harold” box to get in touch.
I hope this site will help your genealogy quest in at least one of the following ways:

(1) Use free resources here, including

• my guide to researching at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne,
• a selection of free lookups,
• a list of Family History microfilms already in the Midwest,
• a list of state and regional genealogy periodicals nationwide,
• lists of the above-average holdings of Midwestern city directories in Valparaiso and Indiana newspapers in Mishawaka, and
• my finding aids for small-city city directory microfilm reels from Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

(2) Hire research help. I can do lookups (flat fee) or research brick-wall problems (hourly rate). If you’re not sure whether this will help, check out my list of genealogy publications or use the form to ask for free advice. I am based in northwest Indiana, near Michigan and Illinois. I have researched in many areas but am most familiar with the Midwest and upstate New York.

(3) Hire writing or citation help. I can critique or edit your draft of an article or presentation. (If you’re not sure whether this will help, send me 5 pages and I’ll send you a free critique.) Or I can focus on bringing your source citations closer to Evidence Explained standards.

(4) Find a presentation that appeals to your society.

(5) Find a useful blog post at midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com.


Harold Henderson, "Self-referential Sunday with a new web site intro," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 April 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Most Viewed MWM Posts January 2013

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made here during January.

And once again the top finisher ran well ahead of the pack, my unsolicited advice to would-be revolutionizers of genealogy: "Practice first, preach later. Lay off the endless theorizing and pontificating (at least in public). SHOW US how your new approach is different and better by applying it to a specific family or problem, writing up the results, and publishing them -- in one way or another -- for others to analyze and evaluate."

1. So You Want to Re-Invent Genealogy? Here's How (January 11)

2. A Sad Day for Chicago Researchers (January 28)

3. More on the Toughest Genealogy Course (January 19)

4.  Some Good Words for Ancestry in General and Ancestry Trees in Particular (January 4)

5.  2013 Updated List of Paid Writing Opportunities (January 3)


Least viewed:

Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist (January 30)




Harold Henderson, "Most Viewed MWM Posts January 2013," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 March 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist

Included in the new Hoosier Genealogist: Connections (Fall/Winter 2012), published twice a year by the Indiana Historical Society, are Randy Mills on writing memoirs ("Give yourself permission to write that lousy first draft"), Christina R. Bunting on the old French Lick resort, more on John Wooden's boyhood, and Cathy Callen on mysterious relative (or is it relatives?) Allen H. Neff.

The Neff article is interesting in that the author still has questions about the fellow's identity, and a new on-line index from the Indiana State Digital Archives might help by making Marion County court records more accessible.

Meanwhile, west of the Wabash, FamilySearch now has on line more than 1.1 million images of probate records from 44 Illinois counties (none of the big ones unless you count Rock Island and Champaign)! These are browseable and include the print indexes, but the images themselves are not indexed, so it takes some work to get to the original images.



Harold Henderson, "Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Organizing Your Article: One Resource

One frequent topic of discussion (at least when I was around) in the Salt Lake City hallways and restaurants around last week's Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy was "How do I organize my article?" -- whether it's about people or best practices or hard-core genealogy.

Now, we weren't talking about numbering systems here, but about how we tell the story that precedes the genealogical summary and any needed proof arguments. How do we entice the reader? (Even expert professionals would rather be enticed than have to plod.) How do we make it as easy as possible for them to get into the story before we arrive at the technicalities and the begats?

In journalistic parlance this storytelling is more like feature writing than hard news, so we can't really look to most journalism for guidance. And in fact every story is different, and each individual story can be told in many different ways. Some leads are more engaging than others, some conclusions leave you ringing like gong.

There is no general answer on how to do it. But fortunately one of the great nonfiction writers of the last half-century, John McPhee of the New Yorker, has just published an article in said magazine describing his own struggles to organize narrative articles far more complex than any we are likely to attempt as genealogists. (It's paywalled so check it out in any good library or bookstore.) His frank and detailed account of his struggles may spark some ideas or inspire some experiments. And if you haven't read any of his books or articles -- that read so fluently and yet took so much angst to create -- you have many more pleasant surprises ahead as well.


John McPhee, "The Writing Life: Structure,” The New Yorker, January 14, 2013, p. 46 


Harold Henderson, "Organizing Your Article: One Resource," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 22 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]