Another huge – and generous – collaborator in those early years lived in Richmond, Indiana, and – as it turned out – had worked in newspapers as a career. He’s quoted extensively in some of the chapters here.
As he related in one of our last exchanges:
No longer do I travel around the country doing research, instead I have concentrated in the past several months completing the compilation of genealogical material collected since 1980 or earlier. One of my older brothers once asked, ‘Why don’t you look up our ancestors?’ That is why I eventually began my research. I started first by looking, with success, in the several county histories and found in them several ancestors who had come to Wayne County from North Carolina in early 1800. It was not long after that that I was amazed to discover William Wade Hinshaw’s Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy and was amazed by the scores of ancestors found therein. It was then that I later began to travel about the country seeking more information, and with great success.
For many months I have intermittently been compiling all the material collected: genealogy, history, anecdotes, old pictures, articles from old newspapers, libraries, state archives, and more. It is taking much longer than I had expected or hoped, but I enjoy doing it. … Continuous editing and the addition of new material never ceases. Some materials are photocopies of original documents. When those documents are impossible to make clear and readable photocopies, I make copies of signatures and add them to my final typed copy; that, I think, will make the material all the more interesting to the rest of the family, although my sister has no interest at all.
Arthur Hodgin, 2008
Orphan George 