Don't be fooled, even just a little e-quilting requires plenty of concrete studying.

Probably because the Quilt project was both the first time I was turning my literary journalism skills towards historical research and family tree and living resource documentary all at once, and, because this is MY family, too, I was giddy with excitement. Overwhelmed with the potential research and mind-tumbling, fingers fumbling with what to do first, and then next, and next!

...there were land owners and "squattors."

At my desk I wrestled with the either/or scenarios.  And I thought long and hard about placing my ancestors in the picture either way.  Whether they were the ones on the deeds or the "squattors"...they FIT.

They were there.


Due South of what is called Brave, Pennsylvania--my people journeyed through Miracle Run, West Virginia.


To make the case we had to do lots of reading, fact collecting, and connection-making.



In anything more than a casual mention, it's important to CITE sources and explain connections.

That's one of the very important suggestions in the book THE GENEALOGIST'S COMPUTER COMPANION by Rhonda R. McClure (Cincinnati, Ohio:  Betterway Books, 2002).  Keep lists of where we spy facts and stories.  And make good use of the tools on the computer that empower us to "bookmark" and remember as "favorites." 

This helps us "flesh out" the work from skeletal.

Since starting this project I've been doing a lot of research online.  Although I personally learned about cursory computer programming in grammar and high school, computering seems to have advanced at the speed of light and being out of school for some time, I'd fallen away from even thinking about computer-doing as a technical skill set.  So, I was thirsty for a tutorial like McClure's work which directly links computering to having a specific research in a field like genealogy or history.

From using genealogical sites, to reading Census, and finding local histories posted online...the ability to do research from afar is something people of the past were unable to perform.

Without all the work of people putting things online, there wouldn't be much of depth to discover online.  To these people we owe a great amount of gratitude.


Just like doing research at a library and in archives of newspapers, journals, and other print matter there is always the on-going need to "double check facts" and to try and ascertain the best truths in research.

For the purpose of blogging a family tree project, it's better to be clear about the currency of research (Is the project still happening?) and it's good to just be honest about where the content is derived from...cite everything!  This will help a researcher/family "connect" with others by explaining what you've got and where you're trying to go with the work.

Better to keep it simple than to rush through the work and make errors...errors which may then be passed along further and make more disparity between actual and legendary.

It's perfectly okay to be unclear about things along the journey of studying, but to be clear about being unclear is what makes a regular scholar, a master scholar!



The more research a person does, sometimes, the more obvious it is when something looks like the truth but may not be the whole story...

So, really any information we get to put into a form like a blog should be "cited"--some sort of indication as to where the information came from so it can be found again, it can be compared to other information, and so it can be an intelligible part of the total presentation.  For proper historical and genealogical research there is no way around citation.

New materials for research are even making it a challenge to connect contemporaries and descendants back to turn of the 20th century genealogies.  Just cite whatever you find so that people can sort out proper and mistakes!

Katherine Scott Sturdevant does a good job of explaining different styles of citation in her book ORGANIZING AND PRESERVING YOUR HEIRLOOM DOCUMENTS (Cincinnati, Ohio:  Betterway Books, 2002).  I didn't find this book until years after I started doing the Quilt project because at first mama's quilt was just a hobby for me.  So I have my work cut out for me, retrofitting and re-doing the Quilt project in a more professional quality.  Fortunately, many of the skills I've learned in my life and education for documentary field work and literary journalism are interdisciplinary skills, so it's not an impossible task to apply my experience to different topics and edit the project with a more critical eye.

~Lara Lynn Lane
Project Manager and Blog Moderator--A QUILT FOR MAMA
Fairfield, CT
2010/2011/2012/2013

Please send comments, suggestions, corrections, et. al. to the email addresses:
aquiltformama@gmail.com
or
nanasgoldenphone@gmail.com

To make the e-quilt pieces we started with a rather random set of clues that leads us to a geographical area and/or a genealogical connection.  From there we track down the facts using family tree research tools like Family Search.  Armed with dates we've traveled back in time through Censuses, County Records, and collections of photographs.  This is how we've developed the research and became more familiar with the names and dates relevant to our searching.  These family names allow us to swim around a bit in the depths of what's available.  Very often we've found out something about a direct ancestor via going off in the direction of a sibling or a neighbor or some other relative in the past who was also interested in genealogy.  Taking the long way around has helped us cool frustration and come back to a topic refreshed and with another iota to add to the story.

Pearl by pearl.

When we first came to West Virginia and met Mammy and Pappy we didn't know that they were not really all that far, physically, from where and to whom they'd been born.



From our transcript of Sherry and Lara talking we find out that:  Grandma Pearl had siblings.

Sherry:  D-E-L-A-N-E-Y.  And they also had, I don’t know names or anything but they did have some Cherokee because Grandma Pearl had the black hair and beautiful big brown eyes, blackish brown eyes and I think they were a sixteenth Cherokee but I don’t know the names of the family tree of that part.


L:  So, do you know about Ida’s parents?


Sherry:  I don’t know their names…Their names were Delaney but…Grandma Pearl’s mother raised her brothers and sisters because Grandma Pearl’s grandma died when she was quite young and they were like, you know there was Ida and some other brothers and sisters so Ida had to raise her brothers and sisters like a mother from the time she was like sixteen or seventeen...



Once we pinpointed Ida Mae as Elias Fox's wife on the Family Search then we had some dates to work with, so to our information gleaned from an oral account we were able to make some inferences, like:


                                            Ida Mae would have been sixteen in 1893.


Sherry:  And then she, when she married Elias she had Grandma Pearl and she had Anna, whom we called Aunt Anne and she had Willie, Willie Fox and I guess that would be William, I’m not really sure.  So Grandma had two, she had one sister Aunt Anne and she had one brother, Willie.

Lara:  And was Pearl the youngest?

Sherry:  Pearl was the…youngest…Aunt Anne was a little older and Willie was the oldest boy.  He was the oldest, Aunt Anne was in the middle and Grandma Pearl was the youngest.  I think.  I’m not sure because I have a picture of Grandma Pearl with Aunt Anne and it seems like Grandma Pearl is holding Anne…so maybe Aunt Anne is the baby sister…

Our talking was taking place in the car on a road trip so we didn't have the photographs with us.  As a recorder of oral accounts I can tell you that uncertainty comes up a lot.  One trick is to have extra recording space (an extra tape, fresh batteries, more bytes or whatever you call digitalis like that) and to just go along with the telling at the time.  Even if it's the only interview you are going to have with someone, giving space for the unfolding of the mental maps is a better way to get the most out of an interview.  If you're question script is too tight you might miss out on the grains of sand that add up to real information.  Or if you "lead the witness" as they say, then the interviewing becomes something else.  Just relax and know that part of the purpose of recording the "blah, blah, blah" is so that as producer of more whole story you will have plenty of material.

Of course, time is money in the professional sense so an interviewer can't be afraid to firmly re-direct the interviewee back on topic if there is drifting.  Plus, most people who are dispensing information of any sort want the process to have some purpose.  People are more inclined to start talking in the first place if there is some benefit to their participation and/or if their help is needed on a specific task.


It wasn't until some time after the interview and I was back at my desk that I could match up the clue--Delaney--to a name on one of Ida Mae's vital records.  And at that, it wasn't a simple connection.

Ida Mae's people were back and forth over the State Line living in BOTH West Virginia and Pennsylvania.  Plus the spellings of Ida Mae's maiden name range from DELANA to DULANEY to DELANEY.

And we couldn't place common names as "relatives" until we found numerous connections and a string of pearls.

Once we found Ida Mae's siblings we had better luck finding Ida Mae as a toddler!  Turns out, Ida Mae was born in Pennsylvania just like her parents--John and Rebecca (Blaker) Dulany.  That means Ida Mae just made the Census of 1880 like her daughter Anna just made the Census of 1900.