A Hazelton Book Review
By John Cardiff
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21 Mar 2007 we received Hazelton Family Matters: Documentation
and Comments by Paul Hazelton, a 12-page addendum to his book,
that goes a long way toward undoing much of our criticism in the
following review. Impressively, the author lists not only his
sources, but his sources' sources -- a boon to subsequent
researchers. The addendum, a Word document on both paper and
CD-ROM, is being mailed to all have the book. |
Paul Hazelton of Traverse City, Michigan, has produced a family history that is extremely easy to read.
Hazelton Family Matters: The Hazelton Family of New England, Canada and Michigan,
1555-1948, is a 220 page, nicely-illustrated, surname-indexed, soft cover,
self-published 2006 book, that includes a CD-ROM of the same pages in a series of computer-readable Adobe Reader-compatible PDF files.
The text is large, the 18 chapters are short, making Paul’s very accessible
effort one his descendants may well enjoy for decades to come. Too many researchers retire from their voyage of
genealogical discovery without ever publishing what they have learned. Paul did not fall into that trap.
True genealogists however will wish Paul had put less joy and more scholarly effort into this volume. It is hard to know what to say about a family history that starts with his earliest ancestor rescuing a Fair Young Maiden from the clutches of a Dragon, circa 1555. Fortunately that is about as far out as this effort gets, but it waves a well-deserved red flag of caution over the stories and remembrances that follow. For example, you
may wish Paul had documented his source for the exact marriage date of that Fair Young Maiden’s daughter: 22 Aug 1579.
Serious researchers hoping this book/CD will shed light on all branches the Hazelton family through the centuries will be disappointed that Paul kept the size of this project manageable by repeatedly jettisoning those not in his direct lineage. (It is pretty much a direct ancestry presented in a casual descendent format.) That disappointment will only deepen as readers discover even his direct line is so weakly documented most claims cannot be independently verified.
There are no footnotes to be found here, and only passing references to sources of any sort.
The limited bibliography conforms to no known standard, abridging most entries to the extent they are untraceable.
Some of Paul’s Norfolk County-based facts are appropriately credited to Robert
Mutrie. But nowhere in this book is there a clue how the reader might follow up with Robert or otherwise verify Mutrie’s publications independently. An apparent attempt to acknowledge this web site erroneously identifies it as a competing site which is part of US-based GenWeb. For better or worse, the incomplete web address provided takes the reader to neither this site nor the GenWeb site for Norfolk County. Other web site addresses are provided, but without any annotation that would provide perspective as to what or how they contributed to Paul’s research.
From the outset the author makes clear that this work is partly an attempt to compile previous researchers’ efforts into a single volume, which in and of itself is highly desirable. Unfortunately, for the most part it is not at all clear which bits are from others, which bits are the author’s, or where these two merge. Without evidence to the contrary, we are forced to assume Paul found all those
source documents to be error-free.
One of the nice things about publishing in PDF format is that it allows the reader to resize the text and illustrations as he or she sees fit. For example, I found it far easier to review the provided maps in resizable color on my PC screen than their black and white, size-reduced paper-bound equivalents. But Paul did not provide the entire book in a single PDF file (which readers would have been able to search for specific names, words, or phrases). Rather, for reasons I cannot fathom, he provided the entire book broken down into 47 separate PDF files.
While I appreciated Paul’s mostly consistent choice of typeface and size, justifying large fonts on short lines leads to excessive white space between many words and none between others, especially
with hyphenation turned off. Worse, the author apparently did not have spell-check or a careful proof-reader available to him. When words appear to run together just before a curious name spelling occurs, the reader is left to wonder about text that looks wrong, but may indeed be accurate. Net, the reader is left wondering how safe it is to assume accuracy within Paul’s prose.
As a Christmas gift to his children and grandchildren, the photo-laden breezy narrative of Paul’s book is sure to delight.
(The photos alone are a real find.) As a tool for fellow genealogy researchers, it is at best a guide to one branch of the Hazelton family tree, an inconsistent collection of facts still waiting for verification.
The author has generously donated a copy of this book and CD to the Family Histories section of the Archives at the Norfolk Heritage Centre, where it will
presumably soon be available for inspection in the Reading Room. You may email the author by
clicking here.
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