Seeking Mary Smith…in the library archives
My next attempt took me to the Anderson County Library in search of Vandiver’s 1929 book, a library card, and an introduction to the archivist. I succeeded in getting all three in a couple of hours of work!
I’m a little ashamed to admit that I have lived in Anderson for six years without visiting the library. It’s big and beautiful, and it reminded me of all the things I love about public libraries! There were elderly people relaxing and socializing, a homeless dude using the internet to look for a job, and kids everywhere. Adorable: Why haven’t I been hanging out here all summer?
I swallowed my social anxiety and made a beeline for the reference desk to introduce myself to the librarian for the local history archive. (Taking this step, I also realized that social anxiety is the main reason I haven’t started researching Mary Smith in earnest before now. Research is more intimidating when you can’t find all the answers through the impersonal experience of digital tools! I wonder how often students get stuck on projects because of emotional barriers like that one? I should carry this less on through to my teaching.)
Fortunately, I pushed thorough, and the archivist turned out to be friendly and nice. She gave me an overview of their collection and offered to help me find what I needed in my future visits. They have microfilm copies of the land deeds that Mary received, as well as some published genealogies for neighboring families that might help me trace Mary’s descendants.
That’s the thing about doing humanities research: you really need other humans. For instance, I’ve benefited hugely from the help of your classmate Donna Knight. Donna has a history degree and a much stronger background in historical research than I do. She found the records of Mary Smith’s land grants, and she has brainstormed with me about approaches to gathering info!
While at the library, I also checked out a pile of other local history books that aren’t available online. That’s an important lesson for me to remember: out-of-print books are often great sources for research, and most of them are available to me through interlibrary loan. However, many of them won’t pop up in broad digital searches. A Library of Congress search, along with careful attention to the sources used by my sources, will help me identify sources that I would otherwise have missed out on.
Now I am home again and digging through my stack of books about Anderson County history. Although there are some useful descriptions of life among the pioneering families in the area, I’m also seeing a lot of inconsistencies in the details. It seems that there is very little consensus about the names, dates, and lives of Anderson’s early European settlers. As a matter of fact, even Vandiver’s account of who Mary Smith was—which seems to be the only published available explanation of who is buried in the grave—is phrased as a guess rather than a certainty.
From a novelist’s perspective, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The less we know for sure about Mary Smith, the more creative license I have to tell her story the way I want to. However, seeing her name in documents has helped her seem like a real person to me. It has helped me imagine her as an actual person, not a figure of local lore. And that’s what I needed.
So, even though I’m at the beginning of my research, I felt inspired to start writing. This is how I see my historical novel beginning:
CH 1
Mary Smith clutched at her children’s small bodies—the infant wrapped to her chest, the toddler pressed into the rank fabric of her skirts—and she closed her eyes. She did not want to watch the men who eased her husband’s body over the side.
She could not avoid the sound of it, though, even with the wind. Muttered prayer. Thudding. A dull splash. She pictured his moment on the water’s surface, his slow decent. The darkness below.
The women tutted, too exhausted for keening or words of consolation. John had been the third to die. Half the children were feverish. “Ship’s sickness” the captain said, and at least a week before landfall.
Mary returned to her accustomed sitting-spot and wrapped the tarp around them, her fragile little family. This bench and drafty tent of fabric, this was home for another week. And then what? A forest. Endless, empty, fathomless. Or worse yet, teeming with savages. And they were to scrape out a life from that wildness?
None of it seemed real. It had been John’s dream, his chance at land. Men like John Smith would never be landowners in Ireland, and the Ulster rents were crippling. If you were going to starve, John said, then starve on your own land.
For Mary Smith, it was a nightmare…