The Ingersoll Chronology  Doing Research

To find ads and reviews of lectures, when we already know the date and city:

This is the easiest situation, and is fairly common.   By looking this up, we can learn what lectures were delivered, as well as how some clue as to the community reaction.  Often reviews include other tidbits of information, such as details of recent or pending lectures in other cities. This will help increase the chronologies' coverage.

In any case, a trip to your local public library or historical society is what is needed.   You're looking for any surviving newspapers of that era, which usually will be microfilmed at this stage.   (We're fortunate that the National Endowment for the Humanities has been funding and organizing the preservation of old newspapers via microfilm.)

Let's assume that you know the date of the lecture in your city.  What you need to do is ask your librarian if there are any local newspapers for that date, and if so how you could look them up. (If your community library doesn't have any, there's still another way)

Usually, these will be on microfilm.   If you've never used a microfilm reader, the librarians will usually be quite helpful in showing you how to use them.

In any case, your next task is homing in on ads and reviews of the lecture. To search for an ad, I suggest looking first at the date of the lecture, and then the day before, and possibly a day or two earlier.   Ads are usually pretty easy to find (they're designed to be seen, after all)  Reviews won't show up until the issue after the lecture.  I generally look at the day after, and possibly the day after that.

What to do if you find something:
If you find any information, please note the newspaper's name, date and city (page numbers are nice, if you know them). This citation information is the life blood of historical research.  If you can make a copy of the material, that is even better (some microfilm readers can also make paper copies).  Please email any information to:  chronology@funygroup.org
You can also mail information to Ingersoll Chronology, Box 22,  Blossvale, NY 13308

If you have never submitted anything to the chronology before, we will be contacting you on how you wish to be credited.

What to do if you don't find anything:
This useful information too.  It would be quite helpful to record the misses as well as the hits.  Perhaps I goofed.  Or there was a rescheduling.  Or one of my sources had a mistake in it.  There's also the possibility that the newspaper's editor was biased against Ingersoll and never reported it.  But in any case, sending a report of negative findings will help others to avoid duplicating your efforts.