Research Frenzy and the Boys in the Basement

I’ve been in a research frenzy recently.

18 months after beginning work on this book, I’ve suddenly turned up information I’ve sought a long time.

How many times have I sifted through the depths of Ancestry.com hunting details?

Apparently, not enough.

I spent hours redoing searches I thought I’d done before.

But this time, the information I wanted was there.

Boys in the Basement at Work

The concept of letting the “boys in the basement work,” is part of the writing experience.

I learned of it from James Scott Bell, but other writers have used it as well.

It’s allowing your subconscious to work on an idea, rather than try to push through to what you seek.

I think that’s what happened to me.

I stepped away long enough for my mind to look at the pieces from a different angle.

When I finally returned: frenzy.

What it’s like

It’s crazy!

New ways of looking at old information spring to mind.

As I hunt one person’s information,ideas for where to hunt another pops up.

It does feel like a frenzy as I try to investigate so many different people, in different ways, all at once.

The research frenzy finally calmed enough for me to be logical: I wrote down the new ideas of where to look.

(I know, but you can’t think completely straight when you’re like this.)

I then proceeded in a calmer way–still moving quickly but not worried about forgetting something.

Feeding on itself

Except, the more I found, the more enthusiastic I became about finding other information I lacked.

I moved back and forth between Ancestry.com, Google and Google Books.

Things I should have seen suddenly appeared.

I couldn’t help that a book I needed a year ago wasn’t published until four months ago, but now I saw it!

Genealogists know this feeling well: a breakthrough on one line appears and you can’t stop yourself.

A Past experience

The most glorious time research frenzy happened to me in public was at the DAR Library in Washington, D. C.

I was several years into my family history quest and I had four hours at the library before a family trip continued.

I plodded through old books, musty pages, cramped indexes hunting anything about my family line.

Where did this strange name Ballard come from? How was Duval connected to Waddy?

Fifteen minutes before I had to leave, I stumbled on a notation referencing  “Waddy’s Mill.”

And there I saw it.

Catherine Bibb Waddy married William Jennings Duval in 1830.

She had seven sons, whom she apparently named with a first and middle name.

Including Ballard Smith Duval.

And as my eyes grew wide, I realized she had given each of those boys two family names from her genealogy.

Eureka!

Talk about research frenzy?

I pulled every book I could find, passed them on the librarian to copy and watched as the clock ticked down.

(At that time before a phone and portable scanner, the librarian had to photocopy everything for a dime a page.)

(I didn’t care about the money–I needed the information pronto!)

In that remaining fifteen minutes, I broke open my entire family line back to, basically, Jamestown.

My hands shook and I read like a madwoman on the Metro all the way back to my family.

Every time it’s happened to me, in my office, in a library, on the phone; research frenzy is glorious!

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