Category: Research
-
Can You Trust Your Sources?
While I was researching my biography of the nineteenth-century Quaker minister Murray Shipley, I came across a newspaper article that described his wedding: Married in this city yesterday, at the Quaker Meeting House, on Fifth street; Mr. Henry Shipley of this city, to Miss Hannah D. Taylor of Neport. Well, the meetinghouse was indeed on…
-
What Makes the Cut?
One of the reasons that I decided to write a biography of Murray Shipley was because of the breadth of his life experiences. When you think about Levi Coffin, you associate him primarily with abolition—his work in the Underground Railroad and Western Freedmen’s Aid Society. Murray, on the other hand, took part in almost every…
-
Turn Every Page…Again
The title of the documentary Turn Every Page comes from advice that the author Robert Caro received when he was an investigative journalist. The gist of it is that, as a researcher, you need to go through every piece of paper at your disposal. Caro remembers this advice as he’s leafing through thousands of documents,…
-
When Facts Collide
My first sentence about an event in the life of John Carroll sounds simple enough: On an exceptionally hot day in June 1863, John Carroll’s mother told her five-year-old son that she would be back soon. However, this sentence has presented me with two conundrums. The first was his age. According to the records of…
-
What Have I Got to Prove?
As part of my research for Murray Shipley’s biography, I’ve been exploring the backgrounds of the members of the Trustees and the Board of Lady Managers of the Children’s Home, which Murray is generally credited as founding in 1864. According to contemporaneous newspaper articles, the Trustees included Murray Shipley, Samuel S. Fisher, and Obadiah N.…
-
A Quaker by Any Other Name
Many genealogists are thrilled when they discover that they have a Quaker ancestor–not because that confers any particular honor by association, but because Friends are such meticulous record keepers. Quaker meetings keep track of when a person was born to members of that meeting, along with the names of their parents; when and to whom…
-
A Tale of Two Bibliographies
Unlike Harry Burns in When Harry Met Sally, when I pick up a new book, I do not read the last page first so that I’ll know how the story ends in case I die before I can finish reading it. For non-fiction, however, I do sometimes start by taking a peek at the bibliography.…
-
The Writing on the Wall
These days all youngsters are taught how to print, but only 21 states require primary school students to learn cursive. Clearly we are not adequately preparing the next generation for 19th-century scholarship. Working on my book Sowing the Seed of Truth involved many mostly happy hours of transcribing the script in Murray Shipley’s handwritten journal.…
-
In Awe of Librarians
Seek and ye shall find, say the scriptures. They’re not talking about libraries, but I remain in awe of the knowledge of librarians. One of the target audiences for my book Sowing the Seed of Truth is libraries of colleges and universities with religious studies programs, as well as seminary libraries. So how shall I…
Sabrina Darnowsky 