The old adage is that an author should “write what they know.” While this is great advice, it creates a bit of a sticky situation for writers of stories that take place in historical time periods or imaginary worlds. I admire my fellow craftspeople who can create magical worlds out of thin air, but I’m glad to have a plethora of historical resources available to help guide my work.

In my debut-novel-in-the-works, Collar City Gorge, I split the narrative between two historical time periods: 1860s and 1960s. Given that I was not yet born at those times, I’ve had to rely on archival sources to help me understand what life was like during those periods. I have visited museums, heritage sites and libraries—all of which are locations where I can seek out the manuscripts, photographs, artifacts and newspapers I need to piece together the storied-past.

Collar City Gorge’s narrative is also split between two locations: Troy, NY and Chicago. That means I get to visit twice as many cultural sites! During the spring of 2025, I focused heavily on the history of Troy, NY and took two trips to this small Victorian town on the Hudson. The itinerary entailed visits to three museums and two libraries; it also included interviews with multiple historians and people who could provide first-hand-accounts for events-of-interest that occurred in the 1960s.

To make this type of study a success, the researcher has to be meticulously organized and, in order to read historical manuscripts, must be able to understand cursive. There is a great deal of variation in penmanship and reading dip-pen calligraphy, which has faded over time, is no easy feat! My strategy has been to focus on one collection at a time. This allows me to take notes about each person’s style—how they write a capital T or a lower-case Q for instance—which makes it easier to read through the material. When starting on a new collection, the first few documents are the hardest to decipher but, once I learn the idiosyncrasies of a person’s penmanship, the process accelerates.

By sorting through archives, I learn a number of things that can better inform a historically accurate narrative: speech patterns, common cares and concerns, weather and political climates, social practices, actual events, etc. It’s amazing how these details can help bridge connections in the plot of a novel. As I learned the history of Troy, I felt as though the book were writing itself, as if I were merely uncovering a legend that already existed there. It seemed as though these voices from the past had been waiting for someone to discover their story.

In an effort to write a first draft for my acknowledgements…just kidding…in sincere gratitude, I give thanks to the following people and institutions for sharing their time, knowledge and resources with me. Without them, there would be nothing to write.

Burden Iron Works Museum; Hart Cluett Museum; Kate Mullany National Historic Site; New York State Library Cultural Education Center; Troy Public Library.

Steve Anderson; Tom Carroll; Paul Cole; Michael Oatman; Dr. Susan Ouellette; Patrick J. Quinn; Don Rittner; Kathy Sheehan; Amy Wanner Jeansonne.