RESEARCH THAT IDENTIFIED
ARTIFACT!!!! –
HISTORICAL & GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH RESOURCE:
Many collectors are fortunate enough to acquire a
firearm, sword or sabre, uniform or other historical
artifact that is identified to the person who owned and
used the artifact during the course of our nation’s
history. The efforts to research historically
significant firearms and other related collectables, and
the genealogical history and government held records of
the persons identified to a particular piece, certainly
can be rewarding if you are successful, but more often
those efforts will tax your patience, and become time
consuming and often frustrating at best unless you have
some prior experience in this type of project.
Several years ago I was
fortunate to meet a lady who is not only skilled in
researching historical personalities, but also has a
true appreciation for our interest in the history and
context of the collectables. Mrs. Miki Mangan is the
penultimate “man hunter” – I don’t care how long you’ve
been dead and buried, you can run, but you can’t hide
for very long. Miki not only has a dogged determination
to find the person in question, but she has an
absolutely uncanny knack of ferreting out family
relationships, anecdotal information from period
newspaper and journal reports, photographs, and
genealogical traces of the person’s antecedents and
descendants.
Miki has been successful in
research projects including military personages – both
officers and enlisted men, the famous and the unknown –
1840-1918; law enforcement officers and criminals
1860-1930’s; and Native Americans from the 19th Century,
as well as some detailed searches for family members
seeking information on specific relatives. Some of
Miki’s more notable accomplishments include the
following:
* Beginning with a unique,
circa 1840’s custom made sword bearing a brief
inscription, she was not only able to identify the US
Army Surgeon who owned the sword, but also located a
detailed description of the sword and an occasion when
the sword was used in self defense in an obscure journal
written by the surgeon during his service in the
antebellum West.
* While researching a shop
foreman employed at the Springfield Armory during the
Civil War, she located descendants of the man and
obtained a copy of the only known photograph of the
gentleman – as the leader of the Springfield Armory
Band, posed with the other members of the band. She was
also able to obtain photographs of the man’s residence
just down the street from the Armory.
* While researching A.D.
King, the famous Ordnance Department sub-inspector,
although unable to locate a photograph of the man (we’re
still looking – if you have one, please contact me), she
did obtain photographs of his wife, son, burial site and
an abundance of other previously unknown information.
And this is only a very
limited sampling. Many of her most notable successes are
simply too detailed and complex to trace out in the
space available here. In a world that has become
increasingly suspicious and guarded in allowing research
into a person’s background due to the concerns about
identity theft, Miki has the right personality and a
terrier like determination that repeatedly gets her
through doors normally closed to the public; secures the
trust and cooperation of family members who only minutes
before were absolute strangers; and wears down even the
most hardened bureaucrat.
Miki is very timely in her
research efforts and continues to keep your project
alive and working so long as there is any hope of
finding additional information. She does charge a fee,
dependant solely on the depth and breadth of the
research project and the amount of work involved to
include the actual fees charged by various agencies and
repositories, however the quantity and quality of the
results she is normally able to obtain renders the fee
relatively inconsequential and the valued added benefit
to your artifact certainly outweighs the fee.
Miki can be contacted via
her email at
amrmiki@aol.com . I am more than happy to share
this resource and this lady’s amazing talents with the
collecting world, but this is her venture alone. In
the interest of full disclosure, Miki has not only done
a tremendous amount of very satisfying research for us,
she is also a close personal friend and we want to see
her succeed in this venture. She has a friendly,
engaging personality and will bend over backwards to
accommodate you, but every willow has its limit. A word
to the wise is usually sufficient. Be nice.
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