My First Encounter With Research for My Books

The first time I did any amount of research was for my historical family sage, Two Ways West. The story was woven around my father's family's genealogy.

Once I began writing, I knew there were many questions and I needed to find the answers before I started writing. The most important items were the history of the man different places where my ancestors, the Crabtrees,  lived, especially at the times they lived there. 

Once I learned the facts, I could imagine what it was like while they were there and what might have made them move so often. One most important location was Brownsville Texas. I knew nothing about it, and this book was written long before the Internet. I wrote to the Brownsville Historical Society and told them what I was doing. Amazingly, they lent me a huge book of the history of Brownsville. It proved to be the most important piece of research I had because the Crabtree family lived in Brownsville at two different times. 

Because the family traveled across Mexico from Monterrey to Mazatlan it was necessary to learn about what they might have encountered. I found some great accounts of other travelers who'd made the same trek. It was also necessary to find out what kind of food they took with them and how it was cooked. 

Some of the research came from older family members who had heard stories about how the family had traveled from Monterrey, Mexico to Monterey, California. And believe me, the stories truly came in handy.

After they arrived in Monterey, they traveled to Porterville and then Springville, and it was much easier to find older relatives who knew why they went there as opposed to the gold country like so many others during that time period.

With the book about my mother's side of the family,Trail to Glory, I did much the same as far as finding out the history of the places they lived. There is a thread of a plot about the Wisconsin Menomonee Indians and I used information from a wonderful National Geographic article. 

The closer the family came to California, the easier it was to learn about what they might have encountered. As for my grandfather's side of the story, he had given one of my nephews a lot of information about the time he spent in an orphanage and what happened after that. 

Though I spun a lot of imagination into both those books, I found out as much as I could about the places and times when my family lived in each one. These were the first two book of mine that were published. 

 Marilyn