About midway through my dissertation preparations, I gave a paper and presentation on the challenges of historical research.

1. The Clue in the Diary Debates and Dilemmas in Primary Source Research

12. Early words

13. Bernice McNall Wright only taught school for a few years. Her diaries, part of a vast collection of family papers that ranges from 1835 to 1962, detail a brief period of teaching in a strangely telegrammatic fashion. Her teaching assignment posted her to Mallett’s Bay (“the Bay”), a hamlet outside Colchester, Vt., north of Vermont’s most populous city, Burlington. She taught in a building known as “South Beach School.” (Also known as Colchester Log Schoolhouse #4, this building has only recently been discovered in Colchester and is undergoing renovation. The photo below dates from 1927. The woman in the photo is unidentified.)

14. Grace, a young girl