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Teamster vs. Shoemaker: Correcting Henry Sheridan's Occupation

rawpixel Ok. It's a "make a choice" moment.  Earlier this year I spent many hours researching the lives of Mary Jane Sheridan and her family. I gathered many sources, analyzed the evidence, and crafted her life narrative. I was really proud of the four-part series I wrote. Except for one little fact: I got her father Henry Sheridan's occupation in Buffalo partly wrong. In Mary Jane's story, I based Henry's occupation on one city directory I'd found from 1851, where he was listed as a teamster in Buffalo's Hydraulics neighborhood. But the directories I found over the summer showed that from 1837 to 1844 Henry worked as a shoemaker/cordwainer. He was a teamster from 1848 to 1851, but that wasn't his whole story. Even when I noted Henry's sudden occupation change to shoemaker when the family moved to North Evans, Erie Co., New York, about 1851, I didn't really question it. People can make a career change, right? Well, that was a little bit of ...
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Behind the Stories: A Peek Behind the Research Curtain

Do you want to peek behind the genealogical curtain? 1

Have you ever wondered how I come up with information for my blog posts? It should come as no surprise that the stories all flow from research discoveries.

Genealogical research can be as simple as ordering a vital record, like a birth or death record. Or, it can be as complicated as researching multiple generations of a family line for a lineage society, or looking deeply at a person or event—and take several months to complete.

The constant in all my research? I invariably find many interesting stories along the way to answering a specific research question, and these stories beg to be told.

I recently focused on my Croatian great grandmother for a two-part blog series. The information I uncovered was the product of the "Research Like a Pro," research process I use, created by genealogists/podcasters Diana Shults Elder and Nicole Dyer. They kindly asked me to write about my project for their FamilyLocket blog.

So, if you'd like to peek behind my "genealogical curtain," dive into the blog post, "Identifying Reasons for Emigration Using the Research Like a Pro Process."2

Until next time...

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NOTES

1 Sir John Tenniel, Alice in Wonderland illustration, Project Gutenberg (https://bit.ly/2JNrG8s: accessed 6 April 2020). This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net.

2 Diana Elder and Nancy Gilbride Casey, "Identifying Reasons for Emigration Using the Research Like a Pro Process." FamilyLocket, 11 March 2020 (https://bit.ly/2JIvbx7 : accessed 6 April 2020).









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