Research Process

As I read historical books and articles about Transylvania County and Brevard, I often wondered how authors discovered so many interesting things. Where did they get the information, what were their resources, and how did they put it all together and make sense of it? I thought that it would be good to share the things I’ve learned about this, and to go into enough detail to encourage others to not only create their own projects, but continue the work of others (like me!) when we’re no longer around.

We’ve covered resources, deeds and software tools. Now let’s talk about the process of researching history and eventually combining the data into an article.

If our goal is to create a new article with the history of a particular building, we need to do quite a few things - and they won’t be completed overnight.

Although you can go back and forth quite a bit between these things, here’s the process:

1. Identify the building or property. Give it a number or something to distinguish it from other properties. A business name, street address, lot number, building owner or parcel number won’t be good because these things change over time. In my case, I established a system to identify the buildings (see Identifying Buildings). In our example here, let’s use WMN15 (West Main street, North Side, 1st block, 5th building) to identify the building we’ll be working with.
   
   

2. Create a OneNote page in the WMN1 tab. This tab contains all pages for buildings in the first block of West Main street North. Title the new page WMN15 - Kilwin’s. This shows the building ID and it’s current occupant - for quick reference.
   
   

3. Go to the County’s Tax and Land records site (see Resources) and find the aerial image of the building. Obtain the current owner’s name and the current deed/page reference.  Enter this info in OneNote.  Date and source all OneNote notes.  For example:  20260330 Deed book 111 pg 222 - property transferred from John Doe TO Sam Smith.
   
   

4. Now we want to create Timeline for the building. There are three ways to do this: 1) in Excel, 2) in Scrivener or 3) in OneNote.  All you’re doing is creating a table. Since I write in Scrivener, I would create a Research Folder in Scrivener and then create a subfolder called “WMN15”. Inside of this WMN15 folder, I’d create a document called Timeline where the timeline will go. You can make this table anywhere you want, though.
   
   

5. The Timeline table has the following three columns:  EventDate, SourceDate, and Notes.
   
   

6. Follow instructions in the chapter “Understanding and working with Deeds” to trace the deeds as far back as you can go.  For each one you find, make an entry like this in your Timeline:

19400312      DB 111/222      Property Transferred from John Doe TO Sam Smith.

This shows the event date (date of the deed), the source (deed book and page) and any notes about what you’ve found.  TIMELINE ENTRIES SHOULD BE KEPT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

7. Now that you have a chronological order of property ownership in the timeline, it’s time to find out more about building occupants, things that happened there, and the building itself.  Go to DigitalNC.org’s newspaper search page (see Newspaper Articles in the Resources chapter), change the county to Transylvania, and enter the current business name in the “exact phrase” field. You’ll (hopefully) get a search results page with many newspaper page images that each contain your search phrase. By default, they’ll be sorted in Relevance order. Change this to Date order. Clicking any page will allow you to zoom in and read the page. When you find something, can use your computer’s screen snipping tool to copy what you see.  Go to OneNote, type in the date and source (like 19401222-TT, where TT is your “code” for Transylvania Times) and paste the screen clipping beneath it. Finally, add the basic info to your timeline by putting in the date the event happened (or approximate date, like 19401200), the source (19401222-TT) and a description of what you found.  Be sure you insert the new row in the Timeline in the proper place to keep event-chronological order.
   
   

8. The newspaper search work is tedious - and fun. You’ll sometimes see clues to the information you’re looking for, but saving the clues will help you later. For example, if you know that Kilwin’s is in the building now, you’ll search for Kilwin’s.  If you’re lucky, one of the first (in date order) mentions in the paper MIGHT say something about their move-in - and mention the former occupant. Once you know the former occupant, through this method or interviews, you need to search for that occupant. And so on and so on.  Sometimes, you’ll be searching for the name of the building. You may see that an article mentioned that a certain business moved from the Erwin building the the Weilt building. Now you know that the business moved, but which building is the Weilt building?  And now that you know the building it’s in is the Erwin building, you can search for “erwin building” to possibly find more occupants.
   
   

9. Once the timeline is robust with owners, businesses and some stories, you’ll have a good chronological history of the building. Writing just became a lot easier because you only need to begin at the top and write about what you see in the timeline. The notes you keep, and the pasted articles you saved, in OneNote provide a place for you to go re-read things without having to go through exhaustive newspaper searches again.
   
   

10. While researching a property or business, you’ll want to find photos of it. There are two main sources for these: the library’s NC Room or the Collections search within DigitalNC.org. This is available at https://www.digitalnc.org/institutions/transylvania-county-library/.  Paste in your business or building name and you’ll probably get things like photographs, telephone books, or other resources that mention it. Along the way, you’ll see that other things of interest will pop up. Search for “Commercial Buildings” or “West Main” to see a lot of interesting photos.
    
    

11. By keeping your timeline, you now have an excellent source of references. As you incorporate a row of information into your chapter or article, mark it somehow (I highlighted the Event Date in green). Later, when building the list of references, just scan the timeline for highlighted events (meaning that you used the information) and then include the source in your reference list.  I also highlighted the Source cell in green when I included it in the References so I could verify that the reference was made. In the end, I know that everything was properly included when lines (rows) had both Event and Source highlighted. It was also easy to spot things that weren’t included in the article because nothing was highlighted. Maybe it was put into the timeline only for background information.
    
    

12. If this isn’t enough (it’s a lot to do, isn’t it?), I created something that was even more detailed: a spreadsheet. I used this to allow me to quickly see everything that happened in a particular building over time. Each row had a Busines Name in column 1, then Event Date, Source (which was a date/source combination),  Building, street name (abbreviation), address (if one is mentioned), notes, two additional business name columns (in case other businesses were mentioned in the source) and two additional building ID’s (in case it was possible that this reference MAY have been to another building, not the primary one).  Confusing?  I know. But it works. If I saw an old article that said that Joe’s Auto Repair was next in between Sam’s Bakery and Betty’s Beauty Parlor, then I’d put the event date, the source date and source (like 19510227-TT), Joe’s Auto Repair as the business, and list the other two businesses in the other two business fields. That way, if I never figured out where Joe’s was located, I could have the spreadsheet show me all rows where ANY of the three businesses were mentioned. In doing so, I might see a clue (perhaps because of another article that only talked about Betty’s) that would tell me where Joe’s was.
    
    

13. The Sanborn Maps can also prove very useful. For example, there was a mention that, in 1922, a business moved to the framed building between the Erwin building (WMN13) and Clement’s Jewelry Shop. I wasn’t sure where Clement’s was at the time, but had seen some references that made me believe that it was in WMN16. Looking at the Sanborn maps, I saw a frame building in WMN14 (today’s location of Hunter and Gatherer’s) and nothing in WMN15.  By 1924, the frame building was gone. Even though I wasn’t sure at first where the business went, I learned several things from this:  1) it HAD to have moved into the frame building shown on the 1916 map, 2) Clement’s HAD to have been in WMN16, and 3) even though the business moved into the frame building in 1922, it was gone by sometime in 1924 because the building was no longer there.
    
    

14. The lookup of the original deed (in step #1 above) can also produce some additional information about a building in the form of Appraisal Cards. See the Resources chapter for more info about that.
    
    

15. Books and articles can provide a great deal of information. Just follow the basic process of snipping what you may want to use and pasting it (and the source reference!) into OneNote. If it’s a dated event, add it to the Timeline.
    
    

I’m fully aware that this is a lot of information to understand. If you do any historical research, find your own methods and tools. Hopefully, these techniques and tools gave you some good ideas to consider!