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From:
Subject: Re: [APG] genealogists and historians,was Re: Working in Archives - Blog series
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:38:22 -0600
References: <49A0F9C2.7961.534517C@hhsh.earthlink.net>
In-Reply-To: <3350d6230902220649r660fc1e2r58d6f6b7f44a1747@mail.gmail.com>


Interesting story, Elizabeth. When you get a minute I am curious what reasons
if any the graduate director gave...if it was the sort of conversation where
you could find that out, that is!

Harold

>
> Great point!
>
> While I was discussing my anticipated thesis topic ("something to do with
> western
> North Carolina") with the graduate director in Clemson's History program in
> early 2004, he vetoed it when I mentioned that I had family in that area. He
> would not okay anything to do with personal genealogy, so I proposed my
> doing a thesis on early Middle Eastern immigration to both Carolinas. He okayed
> that with two provisions: one was that I had to find enough people (subjects)
> to
> make it workable and the second was that I had to find enough peer-reviewed
> literature to back up what I had to say.
>
> I had thought I was going to have to write about both Carolinas, at least part
> of Georgia and, possibly, Virginia. Instead, I found more than enough raw
> material (census info, newspaper items (mainly obituaries), other records)
> in South Carolina alone to do not just a thesis, but a book. And I know where
> to go for more material on early (pre-1965) Middle Eastern immigrants to South
> Carolina. (You do a thesis, you do it on your own nickel, unless it's in a
> science.) I also found that an older part of Greenville, South Carolina, had
> been
> where almost every immigrant in the city had lived before the early 1930s --
> just
> from sitting down with census records and some city directories from the time
> period.
>
> Elizabeth Whitaker
> in Alexandria, VA, since early 2007
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 8:07 AM, <> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> As you say, there are intelligent ways to do this. If you've been hearing for
> an hour about how farmers generally supported William Jennings Bryan on the
> free coinage of silver (cheap money) in 1896, and your farmer ancestor not only
> didn't back Bryan but actually named a child after William McKinley, then a
> reasonable question might be, Has anyone done any work on those farmers who
> didn't go for Bryan and why they didn't? Recognize that the world is various,
> that there is probably a literature on every single thing you wonder about, and
> that this is a great opportunity to tap into it.



Harold Henderson
Research and Writing from Northwest Indiana

home office 219/324-2620
http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com

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