May 2009
Dan's Blog Archive | June 2009 | April 2009

UMass Library

06/05/09 14:39
Took the new Fit to UMass today, to look for more Erasmus Darwins. Found a few, and eliminated a few more towns. There’s probably a point of diminishing returns, looking for more of them. UMass doesn’t have ALL the Vital Records books, and it probably doesn’t make sense driving around to all the towns unless I have some inkling there’s a Darwin there.

When I put up the Darwins page (maybe tonight), I should make a list of the towns, in addition to the map. With population figures from around 1800. Seems like the Darwins are from small, newer towns, generally in the western part of the state. As I was looking in the Vital Records today (page by page, because I’ve already done the easy ones that are online and can be searched), it seemed to me that if there were lots of really old-fashioned sounding biblical names, I was pretty certain NOT to find a Darwin. There were also a few other people who had a lot of kids named for them. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, Luther, Wilberforce, etc. It might be interesting to try to correlate the Darwins with politics, demographics, Shaysite (as in Daniel Shays) towns, etc.

Oh, that’s the view out the 14th floor window I was sitting next to, and the Fit got better than 40 mpg.