Author's Journal: Websites As A Research Resource

I mention websites last in my list of resources because they are the most unreliable. Some sites are genuine to the same degree some books are reliable. Once you’ve gathered all the other information possible, it’s much easier to discern what you can trust. Otherwise, I’d suggest that you find one or two other sources which confirm the information to be found at that site. Where did the information come from? Was it found in letters which are established facts from records of an Army fort or an institution of some note? Did someone in authority by-pass regulations or established practice? I found this to be the case in one vital piece of evidence in my story. My character had to ask for a closed hearing to settle a matter when a general gave a private posse authorization to use federal arms against citizens who purchased stolen property. Such instances are rare, often hidden, but ultimately accessible if you are diligent in research.


More often than not, you will find that myth violates and taints facts in website research. Exaggeration and bluff were so much a part of the era I studied that I could scarcely separate truth and fantasy. Another well-known writer of my same era wrote a nonfiction account which passed as fact and misleads the reader by a long shot on his character. That character has been treated heroically for over a century and was actually a very simple and flawed individual. People often believe what they want because they need heroes. The frontier era in America is its heroic past. It is when a simple man, uneducated, somewhat frail, could go into a wilderness alone and make friends with savages and survive. This is the hero today’s average man and woman idealizes.