Eleven years ago today I was finishing up a Sunday afternoon shift on the reference desk at my job in the archives at Smith College. There wasn’t enough time left to start on something new, so to keep myself amused during the last 20 minutes, I typed “Grace Greylock Niles” into one of the library’s newspaper databases and started clicking through the results.
Most of what was there was familiar to me after more than a year of searching for information about Grace. As usual, it was primarily reviews of her two books, Bog-Trotting for Orchids (1904) and The Hoosac Valley, Its Legends and Its History (1912). But there were a couple of items that caught my interest. A chill ran down my spine when I clicked on an article titled “Book Chat” from the New York Observer, and this emerged on my screen.
After all those months of looking, we hadn’t yet been able to find a picture of Grace. Was that top knot on my screen possibly sitting on Grace’s head? I took a deep breath, scrolled down the page, and there she was at last.
As I rushed to forward this new find to Allison, I was floored when I realized it was December 9th, Grace’s birthday. Historical research usually involves a fair amount of serendipity, but then there are days when it seems downright magical.
–Maida Goodwin