Dr. Kukla,
You're welcome. However, you seem to take joy in leaping quickly to a long
negative commentary concerning the http://books.google.com search engine
when my example of its use was simply that. Using more imaginative search
words, including 'Dr. Thomas Walker' or others pertinent to your interests,
would certainly have gleaned more meaningful results. Like most on-line
search engines (but not many text indices) the first few results are usually
the most helpful by far. However, many results may indicate how
far-reaching is the subject matter. This is simply 'an additional' tool for
research when visiting a large library is not practical -- and it includes
'books;' it is not limited to 'journals' as are your JSTOR and Project Muse
sources, I believe. Besides this limitation, your normal sources require a
paid subscription for individuals having no affiliation with their membershp
entities -- and visiting a large library out here on the frontier must be a
planned pack-horse trip, not one we make on a daily or even weekly basis.
Dr. Kukla, I highly respect your knowledge, scholarship and your graciously
sharing these in your postings here. It just seems that, this time, your
title got in the way of objectively exploring how a new research tool can be
very helpful, especially to many of us frontier commoners.
While exploring your interest, I was surprised to learn how
'interpretations' of some extant personal files of Thos. Jefferson (he
burned many personal letters including correspondence with his wife) has led
to some surmising about Jefferson possibly philandering with young John
Walker's wife while Walker was attending the Fort Stanwiz conference in 1768
(with subsequent exaggerated accountings being touted as absolute fact.) I
was further surprised to learn that a few authors of the Hemings mess,
er...ah...research (I'm speaking of the 'jump-on-the-bandwagon' variety)
have claimed this 'proves' that Jefferson's bedroom door had a center
rotating shaft and spun much like a fan. Further, it seems that the
birthdate of John Walker's wife, Elizabeth Moore Walker, is lacking
credibility, with a supposed 1752 date meaning she was aged 12 when marrying
John Walker (b. 1744) and only 16 at the time of the Fort Stanwix conference
(when Jefferson, b. 1743 supposedly took advantage; Jefferson then was
single and had just completing his tutoring for admittance to the Virginia
bar, and enjoyed the social set.) Yes, older men taking teenage brides was
not uncommon in those times, but a child bride with both families of high
reknown....? John's father, Dr. Thomas Walker (b. 1715) of many fames, was
Jefferson's guardian when Jefferson's father died in 1757 and an intimate
friend of Jefferson during his lifetime.
This should be a sufficient soap opera fix for the list today, there's also
a Google image search for those lacking imagination.
A little more from Library of Congress concerning Jefferson's legacy: "Fear
for his reputation and public legacy led him to beg his closest friend,
James Madison, to "take care of me when dead." In his final letter to Roger
Weightman, Jefferson eloquently espoused the central role of the United
States and the Declaration of Independence as signals of the blessings of
self-government to the world."
And finally, all of this again from LOC:
"Time wastes too fast"
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite popular
authors. As his wife lay dying in September 1782, Jefferson and Martha
copied these lines from _Tristram Shandy_. [written by Martha] Time wastes
too fast: every letter / I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my
pen. The days and hours / of it are flying over our heads like clouds of a
windy day never to return.../ [and written by Thomas] and every time I kiss
thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which / follows it, are preludes to the
eternal separation which we are shortly to make/
For the remainder of his life, Jefferson kept this paper with a lock of
Martha's hair entwined around it.
With great regards,
and keeping this at hand for Valentine's Day...
Neil McDonald
PS - Please don't hang a Dr. title on me, that's my son.
Old Fart or Rural Retired Technical One having great
passion for many topics daily might be better identifiers.
PSS - 'Tristram Shandy' is a great comic novel of 9 volumes
written during 1759-69. Google this to obtain further
inferences about the intimacy of Thomas and Martha.
PSSS - I hope this thoroughly answers Kent's original
question that started this string...my apologies, Kent.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Kukla" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Virginia agents and the Indians
> Thank you. Very interesting and I can see how it could be a useful
> starting point - and I'm sure many of us will experiment further with
> Google's beta version search engine. Indeed this week's New Yorker has a
> fascinating article about the copyright/intellectual property issues
> inherent in Google's much larger digital library project that is well
> worth reading. But I digress.
> Traditional on-line library catalogues continue to have their merits,
> too, however - and resources for full-text searching such as JSTOR or
> Project Muse are well worth a trip to a major library.
> In this instance, for example, the Google beta version search engine
> turns up many titles that are not very useful for the initial query
> about Indian agents and that are of limited use even for the 1768 Fort
> Stanwix Conference. (This is not surprising: my research in JSTOR and
> other places suggests that sustained scholarship about the Fort
> Stanwiz conference is pretty limited, which may be why my short list
> had things published almost back to 1900.)
> In this regard, the Google search on "Fort Stanwix Conference 1768" for
> which Dr. McDonald provided the link resulted in 189 titles, most of
> which had perhaps ONE mention of the conference, and many of which are
> passing references...... Conveniently, of course, Google let's you
> look at each of these 189 pages - a great boon when away from a good
> library - at say a minute or two each, that's about 3 to 6 hours.
> Back when I was gathering information about the conference (among other
> things I needed to know exactly when it began and ended because
> Jefferson was accused of making advances toward Elizabeth Moore Walker
> while her husband was attending it) I found half a dozen useful things
> in the net in a regular Google search, but frankly it was traditional
> library on-line catalogues and JSTOR that got me most quickly to the
> really useful titles that I cited. (BTW I've already done what I needed
> on the Stanwix conference, I mentioned it just in recommending titles to
> someone else interested in Indian agents as an indication of the period
> - 1760s - for which these titles were most useful.)
> At some fundamental level all findings aids, printed or on-line, are a
> bit like indexes in one respect: a good index entry is based on
> informed judgment and will get you to the select information you're
> looking for. A less well edited index may provide dozens or scores of
> page numbers for every mention of some term or another (like a
> concordance), but those sought-after kernels of information are in
> effect buried in so much "chaff" that the result is very cumbersome....
> Sometimes, even outside of modern architecture, less is more.
>
> Jon Kukla
>
>
>
>> I have found Google's beta version search engine for limited-view and
>> full-view books, with their on-line digitized data, to be helpful,
>> especially when a large library is not readily accessible. An example
>> for
>> your topic:
>> http://books.google.com/books?q=Fort+Stanwix+conference+1768+&as%5fbrr=0
>>
>> Go to the basic '.com' URL for general info.
>>
>> Hope this helps.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Neil McDonald
>>
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