I think it's important to have some documentation of the past.
I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.
In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.
Century-old records are the closest thing we have to a time machine. To listen to the voice of Theodore Roosevelt or the piano playing of Claude Debussy is to feel the years falling away like autumn leaves from a maple tree.
It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.
Usually, historical revelations come from days of legwork, ploughing through piles of letters and papers in archives or even private homes, looking for the telling phrase or letter that someone else has missed.
I read round the subject, I make a skeleton outline, and then I start work in the relevant archives. During the marshaling of the material, I copy the material from each archive file across to the relevant chapter in the skeleton outline.
For a brief time in the 1850s, the telegraph companies of England and the United States thought that they could (and should) preserve every message that passed through their wires. Millions of telegrams - in fireproof safes. Imagine the possibilities for history!
History's a resource.
I kind of embarked on a fruitless search to find information about my character, Frederick Aiken. And it was fruitless, unfortunately, because there's so little about him.
