Chapter 9 - Interpreting the Evidence

I don't remember college term papers being this much trouble. However back then during the research phase I didn't have any preconceived ending in mind - and I pretty much uncritically accepted whatever was being said as long as it led me to some "logical conclusion" in exactly the prescribed number of pages.

So I decided to do some research on doing research and found the following on a site called dianahacker.com/resdoc/history.html.

"Research in history involves developing an understanding of the past through the examination and interpretation of evidence. Evidence may exist in the form of texts, physical remains of historic sites, recorded data, pictures, maps, artifacts, and so on. The historian's job is to find evidence, analyze its content and biases, corroborate it with other evidence, and use the evidence to develop an interpretation of past events that has some importance for the present. "Historians use libraries to * Locate primary sources (firsthand information such as diaries, letters, and original documents) for evidence * Find secondary sources, historians' interpretations and analyses of historical evidence * Verify factual material as inconsistencies arise "Many bibliographies can help you identify primary and secondary sources related to a particular topic or historical period. Be sure to examine bibliographies and footnotes in secondary sources as you find them, since they will often lead you to primary sources."

Except the only primary source I had found was an unverified signature and the secondary sources seemed not to have any bibliographical information on Thomas Hickey - and in some cases no list of reference books at all. In fact one of them actually took pride in this apparent lack of scholarly discipline



Page Smith, in his two-volume work A New Age Now Begins (one of the sources mentioning Hickey and Wethersfield), writes:

"The identifying characteristic or academic history is footnotes...[but] Systematic footnoting would, however, greatly extend the length and cost of this already long and costly enterprise, and it would serve little scholarly purpose. Beyond that I confess to a certain ingrained prejudice against footnotes.... Be that as it may, I can say for this work that the primary sources or the history of the era of the American Revolution are well known to historians familiar with the field."

However he did offer possible hope to this neophyte student of colonial history and amateur footnote backtracker.

"I would like to review here the primary source materials used in this work. For anyone interested in the American Revolution from the beginning of the resistance to Parliament down to 1776, one monumental work looms over all others, Peter Force's 'American Archives'. This work in nine large volumes is an extraordinary compilation of newspaper articles, public documents, and letters dealing with the period of agitation and the opening episodes of the wars."

Perhaps this one body of work contained all of the primary source material I would need to settle the question of Thomas Hickey's Wethersfield residency.

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