She began with McAleenan. The name “McAleenan” seemed relatively unique, at least in the United States. Upon searching “Joseph A. McAleenan” and “Joseph McAleenan” online, there were immediately promising results, including listings of rare booksellers auctioning and selling other books someone with the same name had written.
Wondering if any published books (not necessarily by him) mention his name, she searched in Google Books and, sure enough, there were a number of results–a few contemporary books and many from the early twentieth century, including in the Explorers Club Journals, bulletins from the New York Zoological Society (NYZS), and Fordham University. One of the results, a 1916 Journal of American History, volume 10, listed a Joseph McAleenan as being a lifetime member of the Sons of St. Patrick, an associate member of the Explorers Club, and a member of the New York Zoological Society.
From the contemporary books, which made portions of the text available, she could derive that a Joseph McAleenan has been on hunting trips led by Jimmy Simpson and was accompanied by Harlow Brooks, John Murgaroyed, Robert Frothingham, Carl Rungis (?), Ambrose Means, and E. Sanborn, who would prove to be compelling characters (CITATION). There was also mention of the Campfire Club, which would prove significant. “There’s something to all this,” she thought to herself, and, like the explorer in Kipling’s poem, she would be compelled to go further and “look beyond the ranges” to find that what this “something” is is a story of a time, a place, and a culture….. Collecting sources like trophies
Of course, she has to answer the question: Is this all the same Joseph McAleenan she was looking for?
She went to the New York Times (NTY) historical database to find his obituary, having learned that the McAleenan she has discovered was from New York. There, she discovered that a Joseph A. McAleenan died in 1926. He was described as being “an example of Catholic manhood,” having played a major leadership role in “the organization and development of the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York” and mentioned that he was a member of the Sons of St. Patrick, an alumnus of Fordham University, and, most notably, a very important name appeared, Patrick Hayes, who was mentioned as the president of the Board of Trustees of Catholic Charities (NYT 1926).
Name Joseph Austin McAleenan
This very much seemed to be the Joseph A. McAleenan she was looking for, especially given the Hayes connection. Additional searches in the NYT and discoveries made in other sources confirmed she was correct. Some of those sources were at the Explorers Club archive; she found not just McAleenan’s membership information, but also two of his hunting trip companions, Harlow Brooks and Robert Frothingham.
What the Explorer would come to learn from a wide range of sources was that McAleenan and his hunting party friends would hunt with both rifle and camera. The latter being a move toward conservation and an indication of the growing popularity of photography in the early twentieth century, including for scientific purposes. There was no greater evidence of this point than what she would discover to be one of McAleenan’s published works, Hunting with Rifle and Camera in the Canadian Rockies (DATE), which she would see while conducting research Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies archive. How she found the archive, and the many other archives she visited is its is part of …. story.
Google search for Canadian archives → Archives Canada → Whyte Museum → Jimmy Simpson family fonds & La Cassa? fonds
ArchivesGrid search for H.S. Nichols → Huntington Library → Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890
New York library catalog search for Joseph McAleenan
New York library catalog search for H.S. Nichols
Google search for New York Zoological Society archive →
Smithsonian archive search
Google search for the New York archdiocese archives
Library of Congress search for Robert Frothingham
Library of Congress search for Ruth Brooks
Library of Congress search for Gloria Hollister
Google search for Explorers Club archive
Brainstorm with …→ Morgan Library