Annie
Walker Burns was a prolific self-publisher of genealogy
books, although nearly all were transcriptions of records
such as marriages, censuses, pensions.
In 1929, Annie wanted to join the Daughters of the
America Revolution as well as the National Society United
States Daughters of 1812. She wrote a series of letters
to relatives she knew or who were given to her as contacts,
and the book itself primarily consists of transcriptions
of the letters she received in return along with her
partial transcriptions of Edward B. Walker's Revolutionary
War pension and a few other documents.
Some of the letters included are invaluable as they
were written by people with first-hand knowledge of
various branches of the family. The book itself, though,
is quite difficult to read without pre-existing knowledge
of the family as Annie provides no explanatory text
and presents the letters in an arbitrary order and does
not include the letters she herself must have written.
Great care must also be taken in reading the book to
distinguish what each letter writer actually would have
known themselves and what, in some cases, the writer
seems to be repeating from letters Annie sent to them.
This book is not a polished history of the Walker family,
and people who do not seriously research this branch
probably would have little use for it. Serious researchers
probably should obtain a copy, but research has progressed
far beyond it at this time, and it includes only a little
source material that cannot be found in other places
today. Some of that material concerned Felix Walker
and Dr. Thomas Walker, who she wanted to connect to
the family, though she
never could and never claimed to do so. Because
of the organization of the book, among other things,
modern readers sometimes believe she did make the connection.
