Digging Deep and Discovering Joy
One of the things I struggle with when I'm writing up a profile of an ancestor is tiptoeing along the line between history and historical fiction. Each new record provides a window into a person , not just a list of facts. I find myself wondering why a person did what she did or how she felt about it -- but no record can tell us that. Take, for example, my great grand aunt, Mary Ann (Davis) Tabor , and the hints about what kind of person she was that can be found in her census records. I know -- census records?!?? Aren't those boring lists of who lived where on what day? But there is a fascinating story that can be unearthed if you dig into those records and see who lives next door . . . the relationships among household members and neighbors . . . who had joined the household and who has left (and why!) In Mary Ann's case, she was born to a large and prosperous family in Macon County, North Carolina. (Digging in to the census, you see that her fathe...
