You’re right that the Southern Loyalists Claims is a neglected resource for better understanding Unionism in the South. I found several useful claims related to West TN while revising my book “Hurst’s Wurst: Col. Fielding Hurst and the Sixth TN Cavalry.” I look forward to reading your series on the Loyalist Claims.

I am direct descendent of John Simpson Emerson. My grandfather was Charles O. Emerson who was the son of Edwin Arthur Emerson and EA died at my grandfather’s home.

I would love to hear from you soon - we dont know much about our branch of the family from the Shenandoah. There is probably a lot of interesting information we could share with each other.

I also am in touch with a direct descendent of Henry Clay Emerson, who was related to Edwin Arthur.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Sue

You give a good description of a webpage as a rhizomatic system - entry into it by a reader being made from potentially any page and yet the reader being able to grasp the data no matter the entry point. However, I don’t see the Web as merely a digital resource and a set of threads. It is “all that and more.” The potential is there for historians, but I think they need to think differently in their approach to it as an educational tool and a way to convey their perspective in, as you say, smaller bits and pieces (as opposed to the greater download via a book). Not to say that the book has gone the way of the dinosaur, but working in harmony, the Web and the book are an incredible powerful team.

Like I said, I think by commenting, I’m not doing my explanation justice, so this will probably roll over into a larger posting.

The digital resources are intended as a set of threads. One *should* be able to browse through and hit the information that is most relevant to the “quest at hand.” A well designed web resource has a taxonomy reinforced with sound meta-data. Users can enter the resource from any perspective and view the body of information from their unique perspective. The stars in the sky depend on where one stands.

The traditional book is challenging in that a producer (writer) must form a coherent discussion of a topic for a hundred plus pages. On the other hand, the web resource may allow for smaller bites of the content, the producer must consider the reader may well come from any point of entry and may wish to see the information arranged in arrays unknown to the first person perspective.