I have hand-written letters composed by my mother, where she wrote to get family information, birth records, or simply writing to distant relatives for information. The date stamps show weeks and months passing as letters traversed the country through the mail. Likewise, I have my own correspondence from 40+ years ago that show the same pattern.
In those days there was first the search of who to write, waiting for delivery, waiting for response, and starting the process over again with replies. Months might go by before finding the answer to only one of the questions you might have about your family.
Last night, via email, I wrote a distant stranger affiliated with a museum, received an answer a few hours later, and the reply contained a single clue which opened a cascade of information. And that was just one question among nine separate lines of research I am conducting. The digital age, for whatever else you think about it, provides unprecedented tools for researching history and your family.
So broad is the available information that we find ourselves completely awash in detail. Deciphering where to search, how to discern fact from fiction, how to substantiate claims, and how to synthesize all the information into a cohesive body of work can seem more burdensome than the wait for that old snail mail to arrive in the post.
As someone who is paid to research family history for others, in addition to my own research, it is critical to have a suite of resources to draw from. I cannot waste client funds while floundering in a digital morass. After many years I have a collection of sites I use and wanted to share one of them with you.
CLICK ON IMAGE TO GO TO JSTOR
A relative wrote the other day and asked if I’d seen a particular book. I noticed that the screen shot she’d sent included the logo for JSTOR. JSTOR is an online source of scholarly work across a breadth of topics and currently offers more than 12 million academic journal articles, 100,000 books, and millions of images and primary source materials in 75 disciplines.
As a member of JSTOR, I was able to search for the article she’d referenced in her online searches and found The Fisk Expeditions to the Montana Gold Fields. The name “Fisk” of course, is the same name as my 3X grandfather Nathan Fisk who traveled the Oregon Trail and settled in the John Day Valley of Oregon. James Liberty Fisk led a number of wagon trains across the Trail and up the Northern Route (also known as the Fisk Route) from 1862-1866. Researching his lineage, I found a common ancestor for both James and Nathan, and hence, added an entire line of Fisk history to my family tree.
Instead of weeks and months of snail mail, in a matter of an hour or so I had added this new line of Fisk’s and revealed more sources describing the expeditions he captained as more emigrants sought the West. I discovered an index of wagon train emigrants from Minnesota to Montana which includes all the family surnames of those emigrants across the four expeditions he had led. I found the James Liberty Fisk and family papers, 1856-1968 located at the Minnesota Historical Society (see link above for the depth of material that can be found in such collections). I discovered some rather unique and rare promotional material that advertised his fourth expedition, describing the journey and the costs (click link below photo to read).
Literally a cascade of history and family connections have fallen into my lap in less than a day of work. I still marvel at the wealth of information that can be found in this digital world and am hopeful stories like this inspire you in your own research. The importance of creating your own database of source material cannot be overstated. Over time, I’ve created my own database of websites like JSTOR that I keep organized and updated. No matter what questions I have, or lines of inquiry I pursue, I have a “go to” list to begin that research without floundering aimlessly down rabbit-holes of disconnected links.
For those of you who are interested in Trail history, the history of early Montana and Idaho mining, and the life that our ancestors lived, I hope you enjoy the five links above to Capt. James L. Fisk and his expeditions. I’ve also added the book, Ho! For the Gold Fields: Northern Overland Wagon Trains of the 1860’s to my online Store for an in-depth look at the subject. For those of you who need assistance with your own research, I hope you visit my Services page where you can contact me to help discover your own family connections.
