Using Prosopography to Raise the Voices of Those Erased in Social Work History

Abstract

In this article, we introduce prosopography, a valuable historical research method that can be used by feminist social work scholars. While feminists in various fields use this methodology to investigate background characteristics of women in history through collective studies of how they have established relationships and networks to influence change, our review of the literature suggests that it has been little used in social work. We provide a brief overview of prosopography, strengths and limitations, and an illustration of the method as enacted focusing on the roles of early feminists within the development of nonprofit human service organizations. It is our intent to demonstrate the possibilities of prosopography to identify and understand groups of women who have been erased in social work history.

Feminist history provides context for contemporary dialogue and serves the vital function of “historicizing the present” (Damousi, 2014, p. 200). Feminist historians have raised consciousness about the subjugated roles and relationships of women in the public arena (Leavy, 2011). Their work reveals untapped sources of data that could be accessed to raise the voices of women and minorities who have been erased and, thus, unrecognized in the early history of social work as a profession (Carlton-LeNey, 2001; Jabour, 2012; Kemp & Brandwein, 2010; Oakley, 2015). Social work researchers have always used methods drawn from multiple disciplines in order to study diverse population groups and social issues. Aside from developing methods unique to the profession, it is important that the specifics of how to use borrowed methods and the implications of their use continue to be documented in the social work literature.

In this article, we introduce prosopography as one of the most valuable research methodologies utilized by historical researchers (Bullough, Bullough, & Wu, 1992; Stone, 1971). Feminists in various fields have used this methodology to investigate background characteristics of groups of women in history through collective studies of how they have established relationships and networks to influence components of society and in doing so made a difference in their communities (see, e.g., Booth, 2004; Jones, 2016; Stoner, 1991; Weiner, 2008). However, we see very little use of this methodology in social work, in general, and feminist social work, in particular. In an effort to provide a remedy, we begin with a brief overview of prosopography, followed by the strengths and limitations of the method. An example of the enactment of a prosopography illustrates how the authors used this method to study women’s roles and relationships in the development of nonprofit human service organizations in Richmond, Virginia.

Prosopography

Prosopography, termed after the Greek word “person” (Bullough et al., 1992), was first used as a research method by a German classicist in the 19th century. The method provides a useful approach to gaining insight into a group of individuals as a collective and their contributions to society. Prosopography offers the ability to investigate the similarities within and between individuals with various background characteristics by systematically bringing together all relevant biographical data of groups of persons (Verboven, Carlier, & Dumolyn, 2007), particularly when specific information is difficult to attain about the individuals (MacLeod & Nuvolari, 2006). It is a method that can be used when the period studied no longer has living persons to interview and the researcher must find other data sources. Prosopography is similar to research methods such as collective biographies and other narrative approaches, which focus on the lives of living individuals (O’Connor et al., 2014); however, by extending what constitutes primary source data beyond oral histories, published biographies, and so on, it allows the researcher to delve deeper into a complex range of historical content in order to make data-based inferences grounded within a historical period.

Stone (1971) detailed the major contributors who developed prosopography and the different schools of thought that applied the methodology to historical research. Stone recognized that though a level of expertise was needed to conduct a prosopography, historical research has its limitations, given issues of obtaining accurate primary sources and challenges in interpreting data within the historical, political, and social context present during the time period being studied. Equally important is the recognition that even primary sources will reflect the biases of the writers of the time. Since early historical documents were often written and vetted by men, feminist scholars have determined that self-designated gatekeepers of official records often reflect male attitudes toward women and for balance and accuracy must be tempered by locating less public documentation such as diaries, letters, and minutes of meetings written by women (Bullough, Shelton, & Slavin, 2006).

Verboven, Carlier, and Dumolyn (2007) developed a manual to guide conducting a prosopography. They presented a different perspective on prosopography than other scholars, arguing that prosopography should be considered an approach, as opposed to a method, given that a primary purpose of prosopography is to organize limited data. We, on the other hand, see prosopography as a method with great potential to guide social work historical research.

Searching the literature reveals that prosopographical research has been conducted by scholars in multiple fields of study. For example, Bullough, Bullough, and Wu (1992) applied the methodology to analyze the history of nursing. Similar to other helping professions, the researched history of this very female profession was inclusive of information related to laws, organizations, and transitions in practice; however, the nurses who were pivotal within that profession had not been studied. Prosopography was utilized to capture the contributions of the women who became nurses in the early days of the profession.

Given that a prosopological methodology can be applied to gain insight into established professions, Burke (2010) applied the methodology to understanding the vision of a school among a network of individuals who founded an educational institution. In this study, Burke examined the influence of individuals and their personal journeys through education. In Europe, prosopography has been used as a tool to investigate topics ranging from assessing European leadership to understanding groups of individuals with limited amounts of information provided. For example, drawing on the results of an oral history, Cunningham (2001) proposed utilizing a prosopography to determine the foundations of progressive educators in England.

Feminist scholar, Booth (2004), brought her background in English literature to prosopography when she examined the richness of women’s networks in nonfiction writing as compared to novels and sermons of the same time period. Sociologist Jones (2016) studied the all-black, radical Niagara Movement in the early 1900s, which set the frame for the Civil Rights Movement but was subsequently reduced to a footnote in history. She used a prosopographical approach to dig deeply into understanding the networks of people associated with this movement. She wrote: “The small details recorded within a prosopography about the lives of a group of individuals can be pieced together to paint a more vivid portrait of the historical, social and political context under study” (Jones, 2016, p. 72). In reporting her research, Jones emphasizes the methodological importance of using prosopography to systematically arrange archival data in preparing for more traditional network analysis. The focus is on individuals about whom there is not enough recorded information to create full biographies of each person, thus the construction of probing questions becomes particularly important in identifying similar characteristics and affiliations (e.g., family, religious, club) across the identified group. This method allows one to construct the story of a group, an organization or even a social movement by studying individuals who are part of that unit of analysis. For example, Stoner (1991) conducted a prosopography of the Cuban woman’s movement for legal reform from 1898 to 1940.

In short, this method has been used by feminist scholars in other fields of study, but it appears to be underutilized in social work research. We believe it offers a systematic approach for feminist social work scholars interested in elevating the activities of women who contributed to the development of the profession, but who have since been lost in our received histories.

Strengths and Limitations of the Method

As with all rigorous approaches to study of social phenomena, prosopography does not represent the “perfect way.” A clear understanding of its opportunities and challenges is important prior to undertaking a study guided by prosopographical principles.

Strengths of the Prosopographical Method

Prosopography can be used to make inferences about groups in situations where individual information may be absent, missing, or destroyed. By engaging in the triangulating of information suggested by this meta-method, deeper information can be gained and better, fuller understanding can be possible, especially in difficult-to-research areas. The method allows for the voices of the unheard to be brought to the forefront. Groups that have a history of being marginalized or disenfranchised by being historically erased through document destruction and other means can have their experiences conveyed.

A strength of using prosopography as a method is its inclusivity of data sources such as oral histories. Oral histories provide a real-world context and use the in-depth experiences of an individual to convey history (Leavy, 2011), while also providing narratives of experiences that highlight an individual’s beliefs and values (Barclay-McLaughlin, Kershaw, & Roberts, 2007). In prosopography, oral histories can be integrated as one source of data in the same manner as other forms of data such as minutes from meetings or newspaper clippings that can often be found in archives. Clearly, oral histories have served as a mechanism to preserve the histories of cultures that have been disenfranchised; thus, oral histories can and, when available, should be utilized in prosopographies. Given the richness of the data oral histories contain, their usage in a prosopography offers another layer of complexity and enriches the authenticity of findings within a full prosopographical study (Clifford, 1995).

Another strength in using a prosopographical method is its methodological standards that require location and acquisition of far reaching historical primary resources as well as extensive analysis of those resources. Obtaining resources from museums, libraries, and other repositories of historical documents as well as discussions with historians, librarians, and archivists is necessary to contextualize the group being researched. Methodologically, prosopography also provides the ability to expand a researcher’s ability to be inclusive of a wide range of individuals (Rich, 2010).

Limitations of the Prosopographical Method

Conducting any historical research presents its difficulties because access to valid, thorough material is usually problematic. However, there have been other concerns regarding the prosopography technique. For one, when using the method, the researcher may only have access to a very small sample size (Rich, 2010), a frequent criticism of many qualitative research methods. This means that the method lends itself to open interpretation by the researcher (Sturges, 1983), so the results may have the potential to be misunderstood or misused.

Despite having the capacity to be used for an in-depth perspective regarding a group, prosopography has also been criticized as a mechanism for reductionism. Cunningham (2001) argues that mixed reviews of prosopography are indicative of its roots grounded in the ability of the method to transform complexity into manageable information. This, then, provides the possibility of reducing individual voices in order to gain a group perspective.

Another challenge is that locating data about the life of an individual, sometimes called life data in prosopography, has the potential to be incredibly difficult. Given that prosopography is a method that is grounded within a collective historical lens, usage of primary sources is an important component for ensuring the validity of the historical analysis. Primary documents can be difficult to obtain (Verboven et al., 2007). However, prosopography expressly recommends the inclusion of oral histories, photography, or other creative mechanisms in the development of an accurate portrayal of history. Another element that can extend the merit of the analysis when enacting a prosopography includes deep knowledge of the literature related to the topic, which can be used for triangulation and validation of the historical findings.

The greatest challenge of the methodology is time to complete the analysis. Historical research can be time-consuming. Locating and gaining access to documents, searching through the documents, and enacting analysis can be a cumbersome, time-intensive process. Since historical documentation rarely has been developed in relation to the particular research question being pursued through prosopography, a level of deep knowledge of the literature, even deeper thought and creativity is necessary to link the information from the primary resource to the research question in order to ensure its relevance and applicability to current research and practice.

As feminists with a macro social work perspective, we were extremely interested in the instrumental aspects of the workings of a particular group of women, lady boards of managers, within the context of post reconstruction human services. We wished to uncover what and how they operated individually and together. For us, the opportunities of prosopography were greater than the challenges the method presented. We realized, given that many narrative resources were absent, that the method might allow us to look at these women’s deeds in other ways to gain understanding about those unvoiced feminist actors whose un-touted work we wished to recognize. The following section details the primary design aspects of a prosopography, along with some details of how we enacted our study.

Our Experience With Prosopography

Our review of the literature suggests that implementing a prosopography method should include six primary steps: (1) identifying a target population; (2) constructing a questionnaire; (3) identifying exemplars, primary documents, or other historical sources of information; (4) applying the questionnaire to the historical sources identified; (5) analysis of the materials; and (6) synthesis.

Prosopography: An Illustration

Our focus was on the public roles played by women in a more general investigation of 100-year-old health and human service agencies still in existence in Richmond, Virginia. In this section, we discuss how our original study design led us to use prosopography in different phases of our research.

Initially, our inquiry focused on answering the question: “Why and how did many of Richmond’s human service agencies survive for over 100 years?” In the first stages of that investigation, we identified general sources and original historical materials along with literature on the topics of organizational change, capacity building, and sustainability. Our unit of analysis was the agency. Our initial task was to develop a sampling frame of centenarian agencies in Richmond. We identified 23 continually operating organizations that comprised the city’s early health and human service landscape and located primary documents in the form of board minutes, annual reports, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and a host of other documents used to answer the question about their survivability (see, e.g., Netting, O’Connor, & Fauri, 2011). In doing so, we came upon the concept, “lady boards of managers,” women who were founding and running most of these organizations (Netting & O’Connor, 2005). Further investigation indicated that this was a well-known concept in feminist historical literature (see, e.g., Scott, 1993) but totally absent from social work.

The surfacing of the existence of lady boards of managers in all but 2 of the 100-year agencies we had identified for study led us to recognize that a prosopography was needed as part of the investigation of these human service agencies. Another phase of our research would be desirable in which the unit of analysis shifted from the organizations to the women who appeared to play critical roles in the founding, managing, and daily governance of 21 of the 23 centenarian agencies. We suspected that a deeper look at members of lady boards, who they were and how they operated, was important to the understanding of why and how these agencies survived.

Prosopography gave us a useful way to study the social milieu and the contacts and relationships of the members of the lady boards of managers that we had identified. We had already engaged in a survey of source materials included in the holdings in several historical repositories as well as several of the identified human service agencies. Armed with this information, we moved to enacting a prosopographical design.

Step 1: Target population

Not all populations are suitable for a prosopography and it is important to explicitly explain and support the fit of the population identified and the research question chosen. We were mindful that one should clearly state and explain exclusion/inclusion criteria because every decision made will have a direct implication on later interpretation of the data (Verboven et al., 2007). Our Step 1 was determining and defining the target population of women who were members of lady boards of managers in surviving 100-year-old agencies in Richmond, Virginia. This placed the research on these women in the historical environment of postreconstruction Richmond.

Only one agency in our list had an all-male board. Another was the only identified agency that had a specific mission to serve African American clients. In addition, it was the only gender and racially integrated board among the agencies of interest. There was no lady board for this agency and, therefore, the women on this board could not be included in our sample. Our decisions about geographic, chronological, and thematic boundaries had important consequences for intersectionality in this work, especially regarding race and social and economic status and will be discussed more fully later.

To fully develop our population frame, we collected indices of agency boards and names of members. As much as possible, we included maiden and married names in order to track intergenerational connections and ties to men who were active in religious or charitable work. Agency annual reports, news articles, and other historical records including board minutes and other archival materials provided more information both on participants and on the agencies. The result was a chronology of historical events and agency name changes, as well as a lengthy list of lady board members and female founders for each year from 1866 to 1900 for each agency. We then searched the list of members to locate how many times each name appeared in any of the 22 agencies because it could be possible that a board member of the agency without a lady board could be a member of a lady board of another agency. This effort resulted in the identification of an unduplicated count of 177 women. We then identified women who played roles within more than one organization in order to narrow our population to those who were most active over the course of the post–Civil War years. This reduced our 177 list to a cohort of 41. The years served and roles played on each board were identified for each woman, along with relationships to others on the same or different boards. For example:

Claiborne, Mrs. John H.

President Sheltering Arms 1892, 1893–1894, 1895–1896

Treasurer Christian Women’s City Mission 1892, 1893–1894, 1895–1896, 1897, 1898, 1899

Wife of J. H. Claiborne on Board of Corporators for the Protestant Episcopal Home

Married women were always listed by their husband’s names, making it possible to locate their spouses in lists of boards of corporators (male boards responsible for investments and other money management outside the day-to-day running of an agency) for various agencies. Also, we were able to track the years each woman served on a lady board as well as the roles they played. We found, for example, that Mrs. Claiborne was simultaneously serving on two boards. Sheltering Arms was a rehabilitation hospital and the City Mission eventually evolved into the charity organization society in Richmond.

Step 2: The questionnaire

Based on working hypotheses, a questionnaire should be constructed. Questions may lead to systematically gathering information related to each individual’s background, religion, education, social status, age, profession, and affiliations.

One hypothesis for us focused on the idea that board business was conducted differently in their human service agencies. Another hypothesis suggested that board members were socially and religiously connected. A third hypothesis was that these boards found ways to maintain independence when, at the time, women were not allowed to own property or to vote. In addition to general characteristics about the women, these hypotheses were translated into a specific questionnaire, partially provided below:

What were the backgrounds, religion, education, social status, and ages of the women identified as lady board members or founders of these surviving agencies?

What roles did these women play?

How interconnected were the women on lady boards of managers among themselves as well as with members of male corporate boards?

Did these women work across the three traditions (benevolence, reform, rights) identified by Boylan (1984)?

What strategies did they use to build capacity and work toward sustainability?

Is there a cohort of the most active women to study in depth?

Step 3: Interrogating available documents

As the third step in prosopographical research, our questionnaire was applied to primary documents that had been identified earlier at Richmond’s Valentine History Center. These documents consisted of the lists of organizations, any information available on the organization, and the names of lady board members. In addition, we had searched the websites of each agency for any details of their history. Some agencies barely mentioned their history, whereas others were more detailed. Histories typically revealed connections to religious groups from which founders and board members had emerged, thus revealing many lady board members’ religious ties. We then searched the database at the Virginia Historical Society to locate birth and death dates for the women in our list in order to determine ages at the time they served on various boards. In the process of searching for information on specific individuals, family members’ names were identified, revealing how often daughters and nieces came onto lady boards as mothers and aunts left openings on various boards. Last, we searched the secondary literature written about Richmond’s history to locate any additional information about the women we had identified (see, e.g., Green, 2003, 2005).

The list of the 41 women in our target population and their affiliations and dates of service began a database that could be interrogated in terms of locating roles played and relationships with other women and male corporators. We then identified the original mission of each organization to determine which of Boylan’s traditions (benevolence, reform, and rights) would best describe its original orientation. This allowed us to see if the women were serving across traditions in response to the fourth question of our questionnaire. For example:

Nowlan, Mrs. Thomas (sometimes spelled Nowland)

President of The Richmond Home for Ladies of the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches in 1987, 1893–1894, 1897

President of the Lady Board of Managers of Spring Street House in 1898, 1897, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901

Mrs. Thomas Nowlan was president of a home for the aged, described as a benevolent organization, but she was also president of Spring Street House. The latter organization was a home for unwed mothers and former prostitutes in the reform tradition and often challenged by local Richmonders as an unworthy cause. Thus, Mrs. Nowlan was an example of a woman who was active in two traditions.

In the Step 3 database, we were able to begin answering some of the first four questions in our questionnaire. However, to dig more deeply in responding to these questions and move on to a focus on strategies used, we identified the need to expand our database.

Step 4: Creating the expanded database through application of questionnaire

Our efforts to locate crucial data for a successful prosopography were wide-ranging, because without extensive reliable documents to interrogate, a prosopography cannot be sufficiently complete.

When we had identified the women who had founded many of these agencies and who subsequently served on many of their boards, we located archives to which these centenarian agencies had donated their early records. For example, the Instructive Visiting Nurses Association (IVNA) had transferred all their materials to the university’s library. The Virginia Historical Society housed documentation of the early days of a number of agencies such as the Protestant Episcopal Church Home and the Richmond Male Orphan Asylum. We scanned the holdings of numerous archival sources within Richmond to locate minute books, newspaper clippings, annual reports, and correspondence. Once no new data sources were immediately available, we applied the questionnaire, thus, constructing the expanded database.

We spent many, many hours reading through primary documents, using our questionnaire as a guide. The minutes of lady boards were particularly informative since the names of participants were listed and actions taken were attached to the names of those who suggested that a particular strategy be used or policy established. Ultimately, our database consisted of hundreds of pages of narrative in which we recorded verbatim data elements that helped us answer the questions we had posed. Information that emerged in the process of completing the fourth step served as the basis of our analysis.

Step 5: Analysis

The fifth step in our process was the analysis of the material gleaned by the questionnaire from our data sources. It is from these data that a final case narrative based on the analysis of the results of the questionnaire can be constructed. We searched through narratives for the names of women in our original list, adding notes under their names that took us beyond the information we originally were able to identify in the city directories. For example:

Arents, Grace Evelyn (1848–1926)

described as “favorite niece” of Major Lewis Ginter, a philanthropist from whom she inherited a considerable fortune (Carlton, 1981);

never married, donated land/library to William Byrd Community Center;

supported establishment of IVNA;

established first kindergarten, night school, school gym, physical education during school day, nature study course, playground, public library, public housing build for workers, public baths, mission school, manual training classes, sewing school, dinner program for evening school students, hospital for children, and botanical garden in Richmond;

died of a heart attack and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery.

Grace Arents was on our original list because she had been involved with the IVNA, a benevolent effort. In addition, we found a newspaper clipping at the historical society that described her relationship with her uncle, a Civil War Major and railroad tycoon named Lewis Ginter. Inheriting his fortune, she was involved in educational reform throughout the city and founded numerous educational opportunities for children. She was also instrumental in funding the William Byrd Community House, a settlement house in which she founded the first public library in Richmond, which could be said to be within the rights tradition. It would seem Arents used what could be called a subversive strategy to found various efforts to improve the quality of family and children’s lives. Many of her efforts remained unknown until after her death. Indeed, she was seen at the time a very private person. When Arents died, she bequeathed her estate to her long-time companion, Mary Garland Smith, with the stipulation that when Mary died, the remaining estate would go to the settlement house.

In doing our research, we discovered only one centenarian agency that was founded by a black woman. Because this agency did not have a lady board, Lucy Goode Brooks was not originally included in our sampling frame. Yet Lucy Goode Brooks’ story was one in which careful attention to power and to working under-the-radar brought a focus on the plight of poor, orphaned Negro children. We were able to locate this information about her:

Brooks, Lucy Goode (1818–1900)

was a former slave,

convinced her Ladies Sewing Circle for Charitable Works and the Richmond-based Society of Friends to petition the Richmond City Council (1867),

founded Friends Asylum for Colored Children that opened in 1871.

Brooks worked in the household of a Quaker man who was willing to support her efforts to advocate for a black orphanage. Her ability to gain the collaboration of white people in the community led to the creation of Friends, the only continually operating centenarian African American agency that has survived in Richmond.

Others were more flamboyant in the strategies they used as documented in the life of Lila Valentine who cofounded the first suffrage unit in Richmond in 1909 (a rights perspective), while simultaneously serving as president of the Richmond Women’s Club, a conservative self-development organization representing a benevolent perspective (Taylor, 1962). At the turn of the century, she was also engaged in the integrated IVNA, a reform example. Valentine could be seen to have worked across Boylan’s three traditions from the base of being married to a prominent businessman who supported her penchant for change and admired her leadership abilities. As our database expanded so did our knowledge. It became clear how involved in, and in what capacity, the women in our original list contributed to the development of the health and human service sector as well as to educational reform within the city.

Step 6: Synthesis of the results

The sixth and last stage of a prosopography, prior to dissemination, is the synthesis of the results. Guided by the instructions to refrain from separately analyzing answers to the questionnaire (Verboven et al., 2007, p. 48), we combined and interpreted these data by also analyzing the original sources and the extant literature. Our goal was to provide a wider historical context for the story of those women founders and managers by offering an explanation of the “how” and the “why” of their influence in the survival of the identified older human service agencies.

In this process, we documented how women founded and managed these agencies within an environment in which men welded the power. Their style of operating was a choreography that combined rational and emotive elements (Netting, O’Connor, & Fauri, 2009). In addition, we identified an incredible range of strategies used by these women to economically support their work, engaging in a diverse set of fundraising tactics that parallel today’s human service development processes (Netting & O’Connor, 2012). We were able to focus on the gender differences in carrying out agency functions (Netting, O’Connor, & Fauri, 2012) as well as the organizational identity development that emerged over time (Netting & O’Connor, 2012).

In identifying the women who were engaged in multiple benevolent, reform, and rights traditions in Richmond, out of our list of 41 women, those mentioned above are part of a developing narrative regarding Boylan’s (1984) three traditions and how our interrogation of their lives suggests that the three traditions in Richmond are not nearly as separate as has been posited.

Implications of Using a Prosopography Method in Social Work Research

Certainly, there are examples of women who have told their own stories or been included in dominant histories, but some groups and individuals have been erased either by intentional or by subintentional subjugation. Feminist historians can use prosopography as one method to identify patterns within and among women’s networks, to bring to life the often invisible connections across a group of lives, and to reveal the contextual factors that give rise to and support these relationships. Stories of women who play important roles in weaving the fabric of their communities can be told, using this method. When their stories have not survived in the received histories written by the dominant gatekeepers of the time, prosopography is one method that can be used to tell those stories. Our understanding of the roles of women in human service and social work has been extended and deepened, as we learned important lessons in the process.

Thorough historical research of these groups is often difficult because archival information or primary resources are limited. Thus, the skilled prosopographer is one who digs deeply to locate nontraditional and fugitive sources that may not be readily available in archives. We found that creativity and serendipity led to identification of sources that could be used to recognize and uncover the contribution to history these women have made. The greatest result from our prosopography was its ability to integrate those ordinary women who have been subjugated out of knowledge about Richmond’s human service history. In the first step of our process, we identified members of lady boards of managers as our target population, and in doing so, we focused on only one aspect of the women’s leadership story and that story is almost totally white and middle to upper class. By choosing the sampling frame that we did, we limited our discovery of the roles of black women in the development of the health and human service sector in Richmond, even as we raised up the lost concept of lady boards in Richmond.

When we discovered that one of the centenarian agencies we had located in Richmond was founded by Lucy Goode Brooks, a former slave, we sought information about her, even though the agency did not have a lady board of managers. If we had rigidly stuck to our focus on lady boards (a structure that existed in the white community), we would have neglected to recognize black agencies that were structured differently. In fact, in 1872, the original board of Friends (the agency that Lucy founded) was composed of men and women who were members of Richmond’s black and white churches, only to be turned over to an all-white male board in the 1880s. In short, the story of this long-established agency’s board was originally gender and race-integrated, only to become all-male and all-white shortly after its founding. Clearly, the dynamics of race and gender in the founding and structuring of human service agencies warrants further research that seeks to capture the black experience in reconstructed Richmond.

Our concerns about this all-white database used in our studies of lady board members brought us to writing this article because we are committed to using the prosopographical method. We realize the importance of the emergent aspect of prosopography that allows us to know a bit of what we do know, while also becoming clearer about what we do not. Now we know that if the first step becomes exclusionary, the next steps will follow suit. In a method using an emergent design, the researcher must be willing to accept the notion that, generally speaking, one prosopographical effort will be, or at least should be, the first phase of a multiphased historical project. Thus, the next phase of our research is defining the targeted population differently as women who founded and participated in the development of Richmond’s human service agencies. By not limiting our database to women who served on lady boards and to agencies that survived for over 100 years, the inclusion of women of color, such as Lucy Goode Brooks, becomes possible and critical to our research. The three traditions in which both black and white women participated in Richmond require some deeper digging into historical documents and oral histories beyond those in traditional archives.

In addition, by limiting our research to agencies that have survived for 100 years or longer, we missed the full nature of human service development in this Southern city. In other words, we have only part of the story. There were as many agencies that did not survive, but nevertheless played important roles in meeting human needs that were after the Civil War. For example, a Negro Old Folks Home was mentioned in some of the primary documents we discovered, but we were unable to locate additional documentation in established archives. Casting a broader net to locate materials on human service organizations that did not survive over 100 years and that did not contribute their archives to historical societies requires locating oral history sources to fill in the blanks.

Given the nature of prosopography, it is essential to have a thorough understanding of the area of history being researched. For feminist researchers, this means accessing the work of feminist historians who have studied the era of interest and recognizing that these histories will include sources of information that are often not acknowledged by the dominant gatekeepers as important enough to include in their accounts. In our example, we found feminist historians who mentioned lady boards when none of the social work history books or nonprofit literature we were using in our classes did.

To be able to assess relevant research questions and then to identify a representative sample for a prosopographical study, a historical context must be known in-depth. This is primarily due to the method allowing for the uncovering of historical omissions or distorted accounts, as well as to accurately understand the findings of the study. It is difficult to uncover historical inaccuracies and to situate new found knowledge without the historical context to support such claims. Also, to accurately identify gaps in history, a rich knowledge of the historical era and the context of the local environment are needed. This component enhances the method’s relevancy to social work, as it places individuals within their context.

Prosopography allows for the acquisition of an in-depth perspective regarding the experiences of individuals through a rigorous process from the very beginning of the study. Consider how steps such as crafting the research questions and determining the nature of the question are crucial to the construction of the sample. For example, deciding what questions to ask so that inclusiveness and intersectionality guide questionnaire construction is a task feminists take seriously and has implications for which individuals within the group may fit the criteria needed for a strong feminist prosopography. It is also important to consider the historical, social, and political context of the time era that the historical study is grounded in when developing questions. Lastly, a researcher should clearly state and explain exclusion/inclusion criteria, because every decision made will have a direct implication on the interpretation of the data (Verboven et al., 2007). In conclusion, every step of the prosopography method has implications for feminist researchers. Depending on what boundaries one sets, certain voices may be raised, whereas others during that same time period may remain erased. This limitation must be acknowledged. In addition, creating a database about one group of women may be easier than expanding that database to include others. In our example, documentation of privileged white women was available in Richmond’s historical societies and archives because during their time, these women were visible even though that had been forgotten in history. The actions of black women who had to work under the radar were rarely publicly visible during the time of reconstruction. Therefore, locating documents to expand the database beyond lady boards of managers requires incredible diligence in locating oral histories and family records. Documentation of their actions rarely got to the recognized archives, were kept in church basements that had long since flooded or were lost in fires, or were otherwise destroyed.

The method offers promise for the historical researcher, but the feminist’s commitment to locate documentation on subjugated groups requires a deep curiosity and commitment to finding sources. We believe this is an important task for feminist researchers in honoring the mothers of human service delivery in communities throughout the United States. Conducting historical research is not a new methodological approach within feminist social work research. Utilizing historical techniques and using a historical methodology, such as prosopography, enhances the rigor of not only feminist historical social work research but also historical studies of other aspects of social work.