History
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Sunday, December 18th, 2011I’m taking a break from thinking about the nature of research this week to think about something else. Where do things get there value? Part of the value of something clearly comes from the value of the raw materials and the cost of the labor that went into making it. Part of the value of [...]
Ancestral Steampunk
Sunday, November 13th, 2011In the attic I have a small metal device that I inherited from my grandparents. It is a square box, open above and wider than it is tall. On top, there is a cage on hinged rods that run from the middle of the box to one side of the cage that allow the cage [...]
Times Change
Sunday, October 30th, 2011Purely by coincidence I happen to be researching a family connected to the Salem Witch Trials. Honestly it has nothing to do with the approach of Halloween. I’ll confess that I’m writing about them now rather than later because of Halloween but that is another matter. I’m not going to write about the gory details [...]
September 11
Sunday, September 11th, 2011Today we look back on a moment when America and much of the world went into shock. Just about everyone old enough to have understood remembers what they were doing and where they were when they heard the news. I was living in Sweden then. Because of the time difference it was late in the [...]
A Visit to the Old World
Sunday, August 7th, 2011A neighbor and I just took a small herd of kids to one of my favorite living history sites, Old World Wisconsin. I’ve probably been there more than a half a dozen times over the years and like any good bit of living history, you learn something new every time if you keep your eyes [...]
Interview with Dad
Monday, May 30th, 2011Back in March, I wrote about a wonderful conversation I had over the phone with my dad. I was looking at a Sanborn map that showed the neighborhood where he was born. I had a few questions about it for a presentation I was preparing and thought I would give him a quick ring. I [...]
Reconstructing the Post-War World
Monday, April 25th, 2011This is the last of a three part look at the Civil War 150 years after it began. The first part was The Census Goes to War the second part can be found at Seven Score and Ten. The aftermath of the war brought a wealth of genealogical information in the form of pension applications. [...]
Seven Score and Ten
Sunday, April 17th, 2011(This is the second part of a three part series. You can find the first part at The Census Goes to War.) I admit that I am fascinated by the Civil War. The scale was so far beyond anything America had known before. In the two days of the Battle of Shiloh, more Americans fell [...]
The Census Goes to War
Sunday, April 10th, 2011As the anniversary of the start of the American Civil War draws near, I thought I might write a post or two about the traces that war left in our documents. Why exactly the war was fought is, like many historical questions, more complex than people generally assume. Yet it is hard to escape the [...]
A Measure of Confusion
Sunday, March 13th, 2011One of those bits of reverse culture-shock that I have experienced since returning to the U.S. after twenty years abroad has to do with measurement. After years of only needing to think about the metric system’s factors of ten, it was time to try to remember all the factors of 3, 4, 6, 12, 16 [...]
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