Skip to main content

Featured

Jane's Illness: What Did Acute Mania Look Like in the 19th Century?

A woman diagnosed as suffering from hilarious mania, colour lithograph, 1892, after J. Williamson, 1890. (Wikimedia Commons) Since I began writing about Jane Darragh, my great-great-grandmother, whose cause of death was noted as "acute mania," I've heard from several readers with various theories of what might have happened to her. There are certainly many different angles to consider. More than one reader suggested that perhaps Jane's diagnosis was a case of her being deemed "hysterical" as a catch-all for any number of ailments. Others thought her diagnosis could have been an easy way to "get rid of her" if she was being troublesome to her husband or family. Another reader suggested that physicians of the day—being male—dismissed women's complaints as being imagined or that her symptoms might not have been seen as remarkable if displayed today. All are excellent points. There's much I don't know about Jane's situation, as her deat...
2 comments
Read more
Labels

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...

Subscribe to "Leaves on the Tree," to receive more family history stories, right in your email box. Click the green Subscribe link above.



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).









Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment