Tag: Research
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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…
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Great Expectations
When I first learned that the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library had digitized the daily account of the first superintendent of The Children’s Home, I got very excited. I just happened to be in the process of writing the chapter on The Children’s Home for Murray Shipley’s biography. (He is generally credited with being…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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.…
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The Write Way Forward
For my husband’s birthday, I got him a subscription to MasterClass online courses. It was a two-for-one deal, so I was able to set up an account for myself as well and take various classes on writing. Recently, I watched a series of lectures by James Patterson, who among other things talked about the value…
Sabrina Darnowsky 