An Introduction

How to begin?  Many of you who find this early on will already know that I've gotten hooked on historical research.  I've been telling family and friends about this hobby for a while.  I have no formal training in this, it's just something that I'm figuring out as I go along.  My approach is to start with family history and use that as a point from which to dive deeper into local and world history.

My first major project actually started with a stamp collection.  During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), individual towns on both sides of the conflict created their own stamps.  My great-grandfather, Marshall H. Williams, Sr., created a highly specialized collection of the Spanish Civil War Locals which were also Madonna Stamps.  That collection was passed on to me when I was young.  I tried to learn about it at the time, without much luck.  I took it out again a few years ago and started investigating all over again, and this time learned quite a bit about the stamps and the war.  I also learned more about my great-grandfather and other ancestors, and began to dig into other topics.

My current project, which I have been working on for almost a year already, is a study of the Yale Mobile Hospital (Mobile Hospital No. 39, A.E.F.) in World War I.  Marshall Williams enlisted with this unit and served with it for the entire sixteen months that it was in France.  Despite its number, it was actually the first mobile hospital in the American Army.  They went through some difficulties in getting started, but were ultimately successful and served as a prototype for other units of the same type.  I've found all of this quite interesting - learning about the hospital unit, my great-grandfather's involvement, and more about the war as well.

My hope with this blog is to share some of the things that I come across, as I work on these types of projects.  A good portion of that for the foreseeable future will be about the Yale Mobile Hospital, but I don't intend that to be an exclusive focus.  I've enjoyed sharing things about this work with others so far, and hearing feedback, and I hope this can be a place for more conversations about these topics.  Whatever brought you here, I hope you enjoy what you find.