Researching the Old-Fashioned Way

 

I am preparing to write a middle-grade historical novel about a German-Lutheran girl living in America during World War I. Germany was the enemy, and people of German ancestry living in the U.S. were often treated as enemies even if they were loyal Americans.

One of the most shocking cases of persecution here in the U.S. was the lynching of Robert Prager on April 5, 1918. It took place in Collinsville, Illinois, which is less than twenty miles from St. Louis, Missouri. The nearby Belleville Public Library maintains old copies of The Collinsville Herald on microfilm, and St. Louis is the home of the Concordia Historical Institute, which holds the archives of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Since many LCMS congregations were affected by the suspicions of their non-German neighbors, it made sense to travel to the St. Louis area to search through relevant documents.

That’s what I did last week. I had already done what Internet research I could and had read a number of non-fiction books about the impact of the war on German-Americans, but it wasn’t enough. So I checked into a hotel that would be my home for the next four nights and started at the Belleville, Illinois public library, which carried copies of the weekly Collinsville newspaper as well the daily Belleville News-Democrat. I had already read up on the Prager incident, and The Collinsville Herald gave me those same factual details but not much else. The Belleville News-Democrat carried less about the lynching but was a much better source for the mood and the atmosphere of the time. I was hoping for personal experience stories and didn’t get them, but my time at the Belleville library was still worth-while.

I spent the next two days at the Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis. Most of my time there was spent going through LCMS publications from 1914 through 1919. Again, I didn’t find much in the way of personal experience stories, but the archives were a good source of background information to help me understand the reasoning behind some of the decisions that my protagonist’s father would have made as pastor of a local German-Lutheran congregation.

Although I would have been happier if I had come away with some personal experience stories (memoirs, diaries, letters) or even cites to some I could look up later, it give me a better idea of the flavor of the times. Between that and learning more background, it was a good trip.

If I discover that a historical novel has the important facts wrong, I put it down and walk away. I’m not the only reader who does that, either.

Research is essential to a good historical novel, and I won’t write one without it..

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The image at the top of this post is a political cartoon aimed at German-Americans during World War I. I don’t know the creator or the original source, but it is in the public domain because of its age.