Some Research Notes
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Some Research Notes |
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| May 3, 2003 All tour events have been removed from the events table, and a new "tours" table have been created. This will enable the listing of tours as related groups of chronological events. Currently, I've identified 95 start and stop dates for potential lecture tours. This number will undoubtedly fluxuate as various new tours are discovered, and as tours that are currently listed as two distinct ones are found to be a single longer tour. I've decided to designate each tour with a 2 digit year and a letter designation. Thus, I have tours 78A, 78B, 78C, etc. Technically, the tours table will allow rapid changes to be made to tours designations, and the association between events and tours. It should also make it easy to generate maps of complete tours. For the purposes of historical research, knowledge of these tours will help fill in gaps in the lecture schedule. As an example of this, I recently noted a gap of one day on Feb 26, 1878. Ingersoll was in Elmira, NY on Feb 25th, and in Wilke-Barre, PA on Feb 27th. Since Binghamton NY is between the two, and since I was passing through Binghamton recently, I stopped in and checked it out. Sure enough, I bagged another lecture and filled in that hole in tour 78C. |
| Oct 19, 2002 There's a link between the life story of Margaret Sanger, and Ingersoll's. Sanger was the early 20th century champion of reproductive rights. In her autobiography, she mentions that her father invited Ingersoll to speak in Corning NY while she was a little girl. Margaret was born in 1878. So far, attempts to find this Corning lecture have not been successful. However, several facts have emerged that should be helpful to discovering when the lecture was. 1) The lecture was supposed to have been held in a hall owned by the local Catholic priest. However, when the priest learned of who was speaking, he had the hall locked to prevent the lecture. From reviewing the records of the local Catholic church, the priest was father Colgan, and the hall was probably Columbus Hall (opened in 1872, and located at the corner of State and Second Streets) (From "A Century of Grace", page 62) 2) Michael Higgins (Margaret's father) was involved in having contraversial lectures, and on June 20, 1887 helped organize the lecture of a Dr. McGlynn, who apparently spoke against the Catholic church. This lecture occured at the "Harvard Academy". 3) The Ingersoll lecture took place during warm weather, because after being denied access to the hall by father Colgan, the Ingersoll lecture took place out-doors. 4) The lecture occured on a Sunday It seems likely that the Corning lecture took place in 1888 or before
(when Margaret would be 10 or less, and thus a young girl). Further,
it would have to be in the late Spring to early Fall, and on a Sunday.
Using information in the chronology, it should be possible to narrow the search
further (such as when Robert was already engaged in lectures far from Corning
and thus unavailable.) |