Talk:Amy Tanner

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2018 and 17 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kyrah1026.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Date of birth

I'm not sure the year of birth of 1877 is correct, despite it being in two sources. I think they both copied it from a bad source. Digging around in U.S. census/genealogical records for an Amy Tanner 1877-1964 leads to an "Amy A. Tanner" who is buried in Pennsylvania, which is almost certainly a different person. Library of Congress says she was born in 1870, see here. If I can dig up their source, I'll fix it but just wanted to leave a crumb trail here. --Krelnik (talk) 16:12, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

That is a very good observation. Robert Carroll lists the 1877 birth date [1], which he probably took from this [2] as cited on his article. But the correct date is probably 1870. Two sources list her birth date as March 21, 1870 in Owatonna, Minnesota. (John William Leonard. Woman's Who's who of America, 1914) and Durward Howes (1935). American Women - Volumes 1-3 - Page 673. HealthyGirl (talk) 00:31, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I have a photo of Tanner I want to add but there appears to be a few problems uploading it right now. Hopefully I can get it sorted in the next few days. HealthyGirl (talk) 03:43, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Cool, I noticed that photo was from 1896 and therefore out of copyright, glad you got it posted. I'm going to go ahead and change her birth date. I can't find any reference to her actual date of death, we should keep an eye out for that too since if 1877 was wrong, 1964 might also be wrong. --Krelnik (talk) 12:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Additional: on FamilySearch the latest U.S. Census that includes her is the 1940 one, living in Worcester, Mass (consistent with her position at Clark). So she may have died or left the country earlier than 1964. --Krelnik (talk) 13:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

The 1870 birthdate appears to be correct, not sure about the death date. There seems to have been a few mistakes when it came to Tanner's name or birthdate, for example some references describe Tanner as an "Amy B. Tanner" (Gordon Stein's The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal p. 537) but this is obviously a mistake. Her middle name was Eliza. HealthyGirl (talk) 16:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

This is strange, this source lists her middle name as 'Kliza', I am guessing this was a typo, but more information:

"TANNER, Amy Kliza, Clark University, Worcester, Mass. Research In psychology; b. Owatonna, Minn., Mar. 21, 1870; dau Rev. George Clinton Tanner (D.D.) and Emma (Campbell) Tanner; ed. Univ. nf Mich., A.B. '93, cum primo gradti (Phi Beta Kappa); Univ. of Chicago fellowship, 1895-98 Ph.D. 96. magna cum laude. Assoc, in philosophy, Univ of Chicago, 1898-1902; prof of philosophy, Wilson Coil, 1902-07: president's research ass'n, Clark Univ. Interested in various forms of social service work, trips among Ky, mountaineers and Pa, miners, management of free children's camp etc. Favors woman suffrage. Author: The Child-His Thinking, Feeling and Doing: Studies in Spiritism, articles in psychological and educational journals. Mem. Ass'n Collegiate Aluronœ, Nat. Child Weifar, Ass'n, Worcester Public Education Ass'n, Mass. Soc. for Prevention of Cruelty to Children."

From the book John William Leonard. (1914). Woman's Who's who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada. American Commonwealth Company. p. 801. HealthyGirl (talk) 16:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

According to the above, and this "Born in Owatonna, Minnesota, USA on 1870 to George Clinton Tanner and Emma Campbell" [3] we also have information about her parents. HealthyGirl (talk) 16:53, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Willing to bet "Kliza" is an OCR error. According to the Feminist Voices profile she quit psychology in 1918 and bought a cinema. Census still shows her living in Worcester in 1930 and 1940, but I bet she died sometime between 1940 and 1950. Perhaps she married late and changed her last name? That would explain why I can't dig up a death notice. The parents names agree with the census records I've dug up, interesting that her father was a Rev. --Krelnik (talk) 19:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: I contacted the Worcester History Museum and the archivist of Clark University and they've supplied me with several good sources for the article, including confirmation of Tanner's correct date of death. I'm at work right now but in my lunch break later I'll update the article. --Krelnik (talk) 13:47, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Nice work thank you Krelnik, it is interesting how the 1964 death date came about, it is well out. HealthyGirl (talk) 23:30, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I also relayed the updated birth/death info to the authors of the two web articles that were repeating 1877-1964 and they've both fixed their articles too. So hopefully we won't get random editors coming in here telling us this article is wrong! --Krelnik (talk) 02:10, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Expansion underway - revamping references

I'm working on a big expansion of this article, enough (I hope) to get it a mainpage DYK. I've found PDF copies of the Diehl and Pettit papers so I can reference them directly in footnotes. But I wanted to warn anyone watching this page that I'm rearranging the citations at the bottom into the style I used at Rose Mackenberg. This is such a small article I don't think anyone will object much, but per WP:CITEVAR I don't want to go against consensus. My rearrangement goals include:

• Moving the Young and Carroll web profiles of Tanner down into the further reading at the bottom to call more attention to them (and renaming that section Bibliography).
• Removing the redundant reference to Studies in Spiritism in favor of the one reference in her publications. In the footnotes I will reference it as "Tanner 1910". I will also be referencing other Tanner writings that I have added to the Publications section. I've found a bunch of her writing in archive.org/JSTOR.
• Moving all the "cite" templates to the bottom where they stay out of the way of editing the body text. I always find it a pain to have to search a long article to find where a multiply-referenced note was first defined.
• Using a reference format that lets you go directly from the footnote to either the Publications or Bibliography sections in two clicks (using the sfn template footnotes to Publications/Bibliography and ref tags for smaller items directly in the notes).

You can see what I mean by all this in my sandbox copy of the article here. Try clicking the Tanner, Carroll or Young footnotes. Speak now if you have objections to this rearrangement. --Krelnik (talk) 16:51, 12 June 2016 (UTC)