Trust. That’s such a comforting word. It relieves so much stress. It lifts the burden of being always vigilant, the angst of worry whether something or someone will betray you, or the fear of making a wrong decision.

In historical research, the reality we deal with is 183 degrees different from the rose garden we’d prefer to work and live in. For us, trust is naïve. Trust creates problems of its own. Today’s three images demonstrate that, using an 1800 census record from Greenville County, SC.

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Help! wrote the student. “EE is a big pool to swim in! Is there a wading pool where I can just get my toes wet?” Should I start with one of the laminated QuickSheets?”

Yes and no. 

Oh, how we love records that are neatly typed and nicely indexed. Sure, we've heard all those admonitions about consulting original records rather than derivatives. But let's get real. When somebody lived in thirteen different counties in 5 different states, that's a lot of records to plow through. When the records have been "processed" and published, we're going to use those published versions, right?