Books, Blogs and B.S. (Better Sources)

Episode Overview

Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping researchers build stronger family histories through better sources and smarter research methods. In this episode, host Kathleen Brandt shares a curated summer reading list for genealogists, featuring nonfiction books that demonstrate how historians use original records to reconstruct real lives.

More than book recommendations, this episode explores how accomplished nonfiction authors approach research—and how genealogists can apply those same techniques to break through brick walls and create richer, evidence-based family stories.

Episode Discussion & Key Moments

Kathleen explores why some of the best genealogy lessons come not from genealogy books, but from well-researched works of narrative history. These authors routinely uncover forgotten stories by combining original documents, archival collections, maps, correspondence, government records, and local history into compelling narratives.

The episode highlights several recommended books, including Obstinate Daughters by Denise Kiernan, The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, and The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, demonstrating how each author reconstructs lives through careful documentation and thoughtful analysis. 

The discussion also introduces the show's blog on reform school identification projects, illustrating how ancestors often appear in unexpected record collections:
11 Overlooked Records for Children Sent to Reform Schools.

Obstinate Daughters by Denise Kiernan

• The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Additional Resources

•  Behind the Uniform (Missouri Humanities-supported project) 
•  Reform school identification:
  11 Overlooked Records for Children Sent to Reform Schools.

Why This Episode Matters

Excellent genealogy depends on more than finding names in databases, it requires understanding the historical world your ancestors lived in. This episode demonstrates how reading well-documented history can sharpen research skills, expose overlooked sources, and inspire more accurate, engaging family histories.

About the Podcast

Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping listeners discover overlooked records, understand historical context, and develop research strategies that bring family stories to life.

Transcript

Welcome And Summer Reading Setup

John 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of the sweltering, fetid, and humid heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty muddy mow. Welcome to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen, the Do It Yourself Genealogy podcast with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be discussing a summer reading list for every genealogist and every lover of books. Now let's start Hittin' the Bricks.

The Surprising No-Books Statistic

John 0:28

Okay, so we're three minutes in and have said absolutely nothing, so I'm gonna start this off with some really, really disturbing uh news because I love to start things off with disturbing news. Because this is we're talking about our summer reading list here. Um I think it's good to understand that nearly half of all American adults did not finish a single book last year.

Kathleen 0:58

So maybe we should be more optimistic, John. Maybe we should ask how many of them started a book.

John 1:04

Oh, that's funny.

Kathleen 1:08

We're gonna turn this a little more positive. Luckily for those people, Hittin the Bricks with Kathleen is going to share some great summer books that they'll finish. So, John, I love reading, as you know. Yes, even when I'm busy, I managed to get some reading in.

John 1:26

Right, because um, and and being able to uh use audiobooks uh is really helpful. That's how I get most of my reading done, so you can multitask on it.

Kathleen 1:40

And you also can do it in bed without a light on.

John 1:42

True. So or without without your phone blaring in your face or your husband's face, right?

Books Blogs And Better Sources

Kathleen 1:49

So I I called this particular podcast books, blogs, and BS. BS stands for better sources.

John 1:58

Oh, that's so witty.

Kathleen 2:01

I am witty like that.

John 2:02

You're witty like that. Okay, so why? Okay, what are we looking at here? I know you have three, are these historical? These are nonfiction historical books. Nonfiction.

Kathleen 2:15

I I know that our genealogists and those who are historical enthusiasts will love these options. They have been properly researched and sourced. The stories are true, just like in our book, Behind the Uniform. The goal is to tell the full story. Well, there are great authors out there that do just that and bring these people from history into life where you are walking with them on their journeys, you're understanding their thoughts.

John 2:51

What's the first one? First off, how did you find out about it? And what is it about?

Revolutionary War Women In Archives

Kathleen 2:56

Missouri Humanities sponsored a book signing in St. Louis, and I decided at the last minute to hop on a train and go to it. That particular book signing got me started on this whole nonfiction novelist and how great they are. Because I was able to listen to Denise Kiernan, who has a new book out called Obstinate Daughters, that came out maybe about a month ago. It is so well resourced, John. She spent eight years researching women in the Revolutionary War and their role. And what's fun about it is she chooses also women that are not just the famous ones that we all hear about. She chose women that are everyday people that we haven't heard about, but have done remarkable things toward their war efforts.

John 3:51

Okay, so she's writing this story, this nonfiction story bringing this person to life. So we're talking about sources. What did she use in order to build this character that she would be able to represent?

Kathleen 4:03

So Denise Kiernan is not a genealogist. She is an author. I mean, she has written like eight books or so. And as an author, she does what a brick wall researcher does. She gets off the internet and starts hitting those archives. Big and small, she looked at diaries and letters. She recreated their story through all of the documents that are out there. Some of them are online, but many of them are not. So she did the hard work, the good genealogy work. And, you know, she looked at government petitions. She looked at these obscure references, which is why I really wanted to talk about our summer eating. It is what we all should be doing for our old ancestors to give them a rounded story.

John 4:57

So when she's digging through this, obviously she's she's approaching it from a historical author standpoint, but you're saying that she's using techniques that genealogists use.

Kathleen 5:09

And so exact techniques. Yes.

John 5:11

So I'm assuming that you're recognizing brick wall research and what she's doing, and that's why you've kind of keyed on this. Is that correct?

Kathleen 5:20

I fell in love just listening to her research process because it is exactly what it is exactly what I preached and what I tried to teach the interns in our programs here at A3 Genealogy and the way I practice it. It's a matter of being a researcher, not just a person who's going on a friendly database, because you're limited then. You can't come up with a real story. You don't know about the community. You don't know about their petitions that are out there, or some of the more personal parts of them. But they are in letters, they are in diaries, they are in government petitions because they're pleading a case in court records.

John 6:07

See, I th I imagine that one day they'll be sifting over an old program that used to be really popular called Facebook, and people's commentary and how they felt about political issues and things like that will will come to surface when they are using the Wayback Machine and uh scrubbing through the data from a hundred years before uh to find out why was this done or how did people feel at the time. So you we would really be able to rebuild those. But she, of course, is going back and doing, or these authors, I assume, because she's not the only one, are doing doing this on a little bit more difficult level, visiting the archives and digging through the dust, right?

Kathleen 6:48

Yes, but you mentioned a wonderful uh parallel there. In the future, that's how we will get our community information. I mean, we'll still have court records, we'll still have certain records, but who they were was not necessarily in a long typed letter. It's gonna be on the internet. It's gonna be through text messages or posts on, like you said, social media. It's still the same part. If you're just listening to me on every episode, you don't learn about my other loves, my cooking, or my political view. This is how we make the person. I'm more than just a genealogist.

John 7:29

Okay, so that's Obstinate Daughters by Denise Kiernan. Yes. I see you also there's a note on The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown. And what is that one there? Because it's an intriguing title as well.

Donner Party Diaries And Mapping Routes

Kathleen 7:42

Okay, so Daniel James Brown takes a journey with a person by the name of Sarah Graves in the Donner Party.

John 7:50

Oh.

Kathleen 7:50

So I wanted to make sure I had something for those who are more into gruesomeness and tragedy.

John 7:58

Angie Rodesky call your office.

Kathleen 8:03

I wanted to make sure that I did have a variety, and that too is a great research book. He used the trail diaries that we talked about, the octa trails. He used historical maps. I mean, he actually mapped out some of these routes for you in his book. As he's going through these small towns and historical societies, he's really sharing communities with us and making us understand the path. Maybe the wise. Maybe people will have more of an understanding while you're still learning about the people. We all know if I say donor party, you say cannibal. But there's something about the people themselves.

John 8:46

Well, there's a larger discussion to be had in the Donner Party. It that always catches people because I think of the extremes. But that was an unfortunate part of an ending of their trail.

Kathleen 8:59

That does bring me back to my last point on that particular book. As you're reading these books, one of the things you're getting out of this is you might have a desk full of scattered records. And it's all about your ancestors. But by understanding paths and their day-to-day, it's very difficult to make sense out of it. But if you lay it out like he did with the routes and the information on the routes and the journeys and the talents they passed, you understand their decisions.

John 9:32

The last one I saw is The Warmth of Other Sons by Isabel Wilkerson. And that just sounds like a fantastic sci-fi novel, but I'm assuming it isn't.

Kathleen 9:44

It is not a sci-fi novel. Okay. The warmth. But thanks for trying. I'm sure Isabel Wilkerson will love to hear that.

John 9:53

It's a great title for a sci-fi. But go ahead.

Great Migration Research That Verifies Stories

Kathleen 9:56

So The Warmth of Other Suns, she tracks the great migration of the African Americans fleeing the South. So this covers like millions of people moving over decades. And she somehow managed to ground a story with all these real sources. And it was fabulous. I mean, the whole idea of it, even. She took oral histories from about 1200 people, and she found three main subjects that she wanted to follow, and she verified their stories, their oral history, with documents. So we know it's nonfiction. She actually was able to validate and verify all of this information. And as you know, I love the word validify.

John 10:46

Validify. Validate and verify.

Kathleen 10:49

And so she did though by using newspaper archives and railroad records and city directories, especially the southern city directories.

John 10:59

What I'm noticing too, what I find interesting is the titles are so intriguing.

Kathleen 11:03

And I like the fact that you'll want to pick up that particular book, the warmth of other sons.

John 11:09

Yeah.

Kathleen 11:10

But and you're not expecting an African American genealogy where Jim Crow laws and incomplete official records create these brick walls, and she goes in and finds answers through her research, records it, and creates the true story.

John 11:28

So again, uh one of your favorite pet peeves is that it is a findable history.

Kathleen 11:35

It is a findable history.

John 11:36

If not on every individual, the history of the groups can be well known. Yeah, that can be well known.

Kathleen 11:44

And sometimes that that community is a unit of one, like a family is a unit of one. I really want our listeners to not just do research but share the story of their ancestor, whether that ancestor was in a community, a family, or an individual subject.

Reform School Projects And Finding Ancestors

John 12:02

Now I got I have a note here, but of course, I I'm assuming this is just a uh self-serving plug about community projects on the blog.

Kathleen 12:11

No, it is not. So as I was talking about books, blogs, and BS, better sources, and we're all talking about summer reading. I have a blog that I put up recently, and I hope everybody reads because this particular scenario is going on across the nation. It's about the projects of people trying to recreate and identify the history of boys who were in reform schools across America. As early as the 1800s, maybe even earlier on the Northeast side, there's a big one in Maryland that they're working on. And we're even starting one here in Missouri. And I talk about how to research, and I did this, John, the Missouri group who's starting to identify bodies that were found in a burial ground at the Missouri Reform School.

John 13:08

Lovely. As usual, there's a wonderful twist.

Kathleen 13:12

You never know where you might find your ancestors.

John 13:15

Well, I the first place I might check would be Reform School.

Kathleen 13:18

Um there's a reason for that. If you weren't so old, I'd put you in one.

John 13:26

Okay, so that sounds very interesting as well. Now, um, you want to uh thank somebody because I think uh you've received some uh uh financial relief. Is that true?

Grant News For Behind The Uniform

Kathleen 13:40

That is true. It's not me myself, but tracingancestors.org is always doing our fundraising so that we can keep helping others in the community projects. And we just received a grant from the Missouri Humanities. It will help us with the production of the Behind the Uniform book.

John 14:01

Fantastic. And that is so thank you uh to the Missouri Humanities covering some of those costs. So is there anything else?

Kathleen 14:09

No, I don't think so. Good, goodbye.

Bibliographies As Your Research Roadmap

Kathleen 14:12

Okay, so John, I want to make sure that our listeners get this out of the podcast today. These authors that I talked about, including the Reform School one, which was me. But these authors are just master genealogists who write really well.

John 14:29

Okay, master genealogists? They just don't know that master genealogists. I don't know. They just don't know they're good genealogists.

Kathleen 14:36

They don't necessarily claim that, but these nonfiction books is everything we talk about. This is what we want people to do with their ancestors. I hope everybody who's listening in will grab one of these books and flip to the back of them and look at the bibliography in the notes section because that's their roadmap.

John 14:57

You were you ate along a lot in high school, didn't you?

Kathleen 15:01

Yes, I did almost every day.

John 15:04

Okay, so there's your reading list. You have your assignments, check the back bibliography, and um get to work, folks. Been lazy all summer long. It's too hot anywhere in the country to actually be outside, stay inside, turn on the air conditioning, read a book. Anything else on?

Kathleen 15:22

Is that the best you can do on closing it out?

John 15:25

Yeah, I

Thanks, Closing, And How To Reach Us

John 15:26

think so. Well, congratulations, you made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. Thanks to listeners in Serbia, Cincinnati, and San Francisco, and thanks to the Missouri Humanities. And of course, thanks to you for tuning in, downloading, and subscribing. The theme song for Hittin't the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fisknuckle and the Validifies. Watch for the next appearance at a portmanteau near you. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know.