Tony Burroughs
Is a bit of a detective who digs deeply into the past.
Every Wednesday, the Sun-Times Business Section features a mystery occupation. See if you can guess the job before the end of the interview.
Do you actually bring the dead to life?
I would say yes. They can't speak for themselves. I research their lives, and then tell their stories for them by either writing about their stories or reciting them.
What do you mean about reciting their stories?
I give presentations at family reunions or public forums, educating their families about who that person was and what they did.
Where do you work?
I do my research anywhere and everywhere. In a library, on the Internet, courthouses, archives, cemeteries, attics, basements. I go wherever people were or where they left their marks.
What are the tools of your trade?
We use computers, tape recorders, still cameras, video cameras, pencil and paper, microfilm, tombstones, artifacts of all kinds.
You're a bit like a detective. What was your toughest case?
I am exactly like a detective. One case I worked on for probably over 15 years. I could not find a guy in the 1870s census. I searched for him twice for hours on microfilm, and then the third time around I found him in a few minutes.
The problem was I didn't understand the time period in which he lived. When I understood more, I used a different methodology, and found him. You have to persist. You can't give up. You have to try different strategies.
You are a professional in your field. There are lots of amateur hobbyists. What's the difference?
There are different levels of amateurs. I call some "name surfers." They plug a name into a search engine online and think they're doing research. Professionals take more of a scholarly approach. We document each and every thing we find and where we found it, just like a private investigator. We treat every document as a piece of evidence, and weigh that evidence, just like in a court of law.
ANSWER | Tony Burroughs is a prominent Chicago-based genealogist and author of Black Roots: a Beginner's Guide to Tracing the African-American Family Tree.