Archives – Page 2 – Public History at UMass Boston

Tag: Archives (page 2 of 2)

Historic New England, Library and Archives

Transparent Faces & Hidden Mothers: Processing Tintypes at Historic New England

By: Caroline Littlewood

This portrait of a woman and child contains white lines. Note the oval mark where a frame or mount used to be. Historic New England, Library and Archives.

She found them at flea markets. Hundreds of painted tintype photographs—colorful portraits of anonymous Americans—caught Dr. Diana Korzenik’s eye, and, over the years, she amassed an impressive collection. The tintypes range in size and vary in appearance. Some are so thickly coated in color that the original photographic image is obscured. Others have one or two pigments to make a face blush or a necklace sparkle. But each tintype is evidence of another time, when photography was young. Invented in the 1850s, tintypes preserved likenesses of working class Americans who could not afford daguerreotypes. Whether once hung on a wall for all to see, or sent through the post as a token of affection, these historical artifacts are important records of a time past.

Only within the last couple decades have collectors come to value painted tintypes. For years, they were more interested in the antique frames that encased them. But Dr. Korzenik saw value where others hadn’t and sought to preserve them, along with smaller, unpainted tintypes of working-class women and children. To promote the continued study and appreciation of tintypes, Dr. Korzenik recently donated her substantial collection to Historic New England.

I began by surveying the collection. At first, the tintypes looked very similar.

Historic New England, Library and Archives

As the Historic New England intern responsible for processing Dr. Korzenik’s donation, I sought to convert this personal collection into an archival collection that would be accessible to researchers. I began by surveying and researching my materials. I dove into classic works like Taft’s Photography and the American Scene: A Social History which helped me to understand what I had before me and formulate a processing plan. I researched rehousing and preservation recommendations then tallied the contents of the collection to order the appropriate sleeves and boxes. When I had these archival materials in hand, I set to rehousing and describing each item. By the end of my internship, I had processed over 520 individual tintypes at the item level, produced a finding aid and helped digitize a portion of the collection.

The experience was thrilling and rewarding, but it was not without its challenges. I hit my first obstacle early on as I surveyed the collection. Dr. Korzenik had numbered and grouped her tintypes, but I had no understanding of her organizational schema. The collection was an indecipherable mix of subjects, painting techniques, and plate size. Some categories described the physical manipulation of the tintype: “thick paint, white lines, black lines,” “hand-painted tintypes powder/gold jewelry/white lines/black lines,” and—my favorite—“transparent faces”.

This portrait of a young woman was categorized as a “Transparent Face.” Historic New England, Library and Archives

Some tintype portraits are more intricately painted than others. Historic New England, Library and Archives

Others described the portrait subjects or size: “children and couples,” “hidden mothers,” and “carte de visite-sized”. Why did she make these distinctions? What did they mean? When I spoke to Dr. Korzenik, she explained that the labels are meant to draw one’s eye to the compositional aspects of each photograph. The average person sees a photograph as an image meant to reflect reality.

But as a professional artist and educator, she also saw tintypes as artifacts that had been painted, tinted, highlighted, outlined, scratched, and solarized. Categories based on subject or size also shared composition traits. Her “hidden mothers”—portraits of young children with the adult presence concealed—are small and unpainted; “children and couples” are large and painted. Once I saw these layers and distinctions, I could better describe Dr. Korzenik’s materials and preserve the expertise that shaped her collecting activities.

This is one of roughly 200 “hidden mothers.” Historic New England Library and Archives

The collection also challenged me to manage my time carefully. Early on, I realized that I was dealing with a miraculously growing collection, which had somehow ballooned from my estimated three hundred tintypes to over five hundred, plus a few non-tintype materials. I was eager to get started, but I had to wait for supplies to arrive. Once they arrived and I began rehousing, I struggled to standardize my descriptive language. But I used my time waiting for archival materials to work on my finding aid and produce a detailed spreadsheet. I asked my supervisors for help and examined finding aids from similar collections when I struggled with description. When I travelled to Historic New England’s Haverhill facility to work on framed tintypes, I documented my work carefully so that I could continue it offsite. And when I came to a tintype that warranted further investigation, I set it aside and continued with my work, assembly-line style.

Smaller tintypes often came in paper sleeves or mounts. Historic New England, Library and Archives

Before I knew it, my time was up. I no longer think about tintypes most of my waking (and some of my sleeping) hours. But I know that my work will facilitate access to a historically rich and unique collection. Each tintype can be so many things. It can be a fashion plate, a genealogical record, and evidence of early photographic props, poses, and conventions. Furthermore, each painted tintype illustrates the relationship between young photographic technology and a traditional painted portraiture. Despite the challenges, I’ve helped to make these materials visible and accessible to the general public, and I don’t know if there is anything more rewarding than that.

Down in the Crypt: Interview with an Asher Jackson, Archivist, Fitchburg State University Archives

February 5, 2018 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Maddy Moison

As we descend down a long, forgotten hallway we come across an area of the building seldom visited. Large wooden tables with warm desk lamps stand guard over the old books that line the walls. The lamps do little to cut through the cold air that permeates the room. The climate controls kick in with a gentle hum in the background, the only noise in the room. I have ventured into the proverbial crypt of history. Few have dared to walk this path and even fewer have returned to tell the tale. Why have I risked life and limb you ask? Well, dear reader, I have managed to secure an interview with a rare species. No, not a vampire…. an archivist.

Asher Jackson, archivist, Fitchburg State University

Trapped below ground in Fitchburg State University’s archive I am stuck by how new everything looks; no cobwebs or dust bunnies here. Asher Jackson, the archivist in question, comments that the university has undergone many renovation projects in the past four years, one of which was the creation of a new archive. What wasn’t anything more than a large closet with boxes stacked unceremoniously in piles when I attended Fitchburg State is now a brand new archive. The reading room is small but has enough seats to hold a class of students.

Mr. Jackson is the only trained archivist on staff. He gently moves a cardboard box off of our table so that we can see each other. Mr. Jackson found his way to this quiet reading room through a series of seemingly coincidental and haphazard choices. After dropping out of college and getting a job at a law firm in their records management department he spent his time wondering why arranging the files was such a difficult task. Paperwork was lost all the time, never to be found unless by happy chance. “I didn’t know it then but I was working in a sort of archive. I kept asking: if libraries could do this why was this so hard?” After a bit of research Mr. Jackson found himself applying to go back to school, this time for library and information science at Simmons College in Boston. He found the archives track and finally fit all the puzzle pieces together. After a stint in the muggy climate of Delaware, working at the University of Delaware, he made the move back to Boston. Soon after, he moved to Fitchburg with a friend, an organ player at a local church (I will keep my vampire speculations to a minimum, dear reader, I promise).

What makes Mr. Jackson’s job unique is his interactions with students. It’s the most rewarding part off the job for him. The differences between a job in university archives and one in a historical society or museum is the opportunity to interact with students. Of course, many students on campus don’t know what an archive is or that there even is one on campus. However, as Mr. Jackson points out, “People in university communities understand what primary resources are, and they understand the important uniqueness of that.” Here in the basement of the student center, classes are brought in to conduct research. Jackson’s favorite project every year is working with a writing class on a paper about the origins of superstitions. He helps them find resources, showing them how to navigate an archive for source material. At the completion of the project, each student designs a gallery exhibition to display their research. This ‘crypt,’ as it turns out, is a livelier place than I had anticipated.

R.A. Salvatore, author of the “Dark Elf” trilogy, is among those whose collections are held in the archives at Fitchburg State

Among its many treasures, the archive holds the papers of Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate Wars, as well as those of R.A. Salvatore, creator of the Dark Elf trilogy. Both lived and worked in the Fitchburg area and attended Fitchburg State University. As Mr. Jackson enthusiastically shows me around the archive, he singles out Cormier’s old typewriter. With unabashed joy, he holds the typewriter and lets me touch the well-worn keys.

As he talks, Jackson makes it very clear that he understands the importance of FSU’s archives to the city of Fitchburg. “Fitchburg is one of those places that is overlooked as a working man’s town… I want to force people to look and see that you can live here and be successful. Look at all the amazing things that were happening here.” As a part of his work with the Salvatore collection, Jackson worked closely with the author to create a welcoming space for fans. He points out a number of pieces from the collection, including fan art and letters Salvatore sent back asking permission to include them in his collection. “I wanted to make this place as accessible as possible so everyone can come and look at all of this.”

Main Street, Fitchburg, MA; c.a. between 1930 and 1945. Image is in the public domain.

All of this outreach and work comes at a cost and Jackson, a realist, is quick to point out that his situation at the University is rather precarious. Fitchburg, for instance, does not provide him with his own budget. Consequently, he chips away what he can from the library’s budget. With money tight, he does what he can to minimize time spent on certain activities, “I could either take out all of these paperclips or actually or

ganize [the collections].” When he is not helping students or going through a new collection, Jackson is on call at the local historical society, lending a hand whenever questions arise. He is the only trained archivist in the area; yet, there are limits to his ability to help. He admits, for instance, that his preservation skills are not where he would like them to be. Nevertheless, the prohibitive cost of outsourcing preservation work means that he has to make do with his own skills. As such, he wants to learn more about preservation tactics to do more in house repairs.

I thank my host for sharing his time and make my escape back to the world of daylight and warmth to reflect on my time in the archive.

There was such a vast array of information there to be unearthed and helpful staff there to walk you through your excavation. Such a hidden world should not be left unexplored. Dear reader, I encourage you to seek out your local archivist. I promise you, the archive is not as scary a place as you might think.

“What’s An Archivist to Do?”: An Exercise in Appraisal

October 19, 2017 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Violet Caswell

Graduate students enrolled in Professor Marilyn Morgan’s “Introduction to Archives” class do a lot of reading. We read about the history of archives, core archival principles, and about challenges that modern archivists face. And we read theory- lots of theory. Information from books, journal articles, and even blog posts swirl around in our heads as we to get a handle on the essential practices and principles of the profession. The process can be frustrating– like when we have to reread the same dense sentence five times to ascertain its meaning– but it can also be immensely rewarding, especially when we get to apply our knowledge to real-world situations.

Enter Juliana Kuipers, Senior Collection Development Curator and Archivist at the Harvard University Archives.

Guest speaker Juliana Kuipers leading graduate students in the Archives program in a discussion of appraisal based on real experiences.

Juliana visited our class recently, to talk about her experience in the field and also to lead a short exercise in appraisal. A week in advance, we broke into teams and, in addition to reading published articles about selection and appraisal, Marilyn assigned us a document containing five appraisal scenarios drawn from Juliana’s experience at the Harvard Archives. Our task was straightforward: after contemplating the theoretical readings, we were to put ourselves in Juliana’s shoes, and decide whether or not to accession materials for the Archives.

Faith Plazarin, Taylor Finch, and Iona Feldman debate whether or not the Archives should accession the personal papers of an alumnus from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that this assignment was more complicated than it seemed at first glance. There were all kinds of questions to consider, from issues of provenance to ethical dilemmas to everything in between. Similarly, there were a host of materials involved in the scenarios, including diaries, correspondence, artwork, scrapbooks, and artifacts. As we weighed the benefits and drawbacks of accessioning each collection, we remained cognizant of the Archives’ Collection Policy, a document which clarifies much but also contains ambiguity.

Juliana Kuipers shares her experience with archival selection.

What did it mean, some of us wondered, that the Archives sought “to gather an accurate, authentic, and complete record of the life of the University”? Did that mean that the institution should purchase or accept any collection remotely relating to Harvard? Were some materials more conducive to this end than others? What about resources? Should collections that require fewer resources (finances, personnel, space) take precedence over materials that are more costly? And if the archivist decided not to accession the collection, what then? Did he or she have an obligation to suggest other avenues for the donor to pursue? The Archive’s Collection policy provided clues, but no hard-and-fast answers.

Grad students Chris Norton, Nina Rodwin, and Maddy Moison, with guest speaker Juliana Kuipers, discussing selection challenges and how to navigate tricky acquisitions issues.

Juliana smiled and nodded as we expressed our uncertainties. In many ways, she told us, uncertainty is one of the hallmarks of the accessioning process. The determinations that archivists make on a day-to-day basis require background knowledge, critical thinking, and even a little creativity. They argue for and against the accessioning of materials whose incorporation into the Archives is in no means inevitable. Juliana encouraged our class to keep working to develop the skills that will allow us to make informed decisions that will enhance the collections of our future institutions.

Our sincerest thanks to Juliana Kuipers for sharing her time and experiences with us. Stay tuned for updates on the ways in which our class continues to learn about archives and think as archivists!

Screenshot of the 1919 Boston Police Strike Project

“Abandoned His Duty”: Uncovering the 1919 Boston Policemen Strike

June 29, 2017 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Nina Rodwin

In the fall semester, my HIST 600 class had the opportunity to participate in a collaborative project between UMass Boston and the Boston Police Department Archives. We were tasked with documenting the lives of the officers involved in the police strike of 1919. Policemen had demanded a higher yearly salary, adopting the slogan “$200 or nothing” (Puleo, 143). When their demands were ignored, 1,400 police officers walked out. From September 9^th to the 11^th, Bostonians rioted and reacted violently (often towards the striking officers). President Wilson found the found the strike so disturbing that he described it as a “crime against civilization” (Puleo, 155-156). The police head clearly felt the same, firing all striking officers with no chance of re-employment. The men’s duty cards, which detailed each officer’s employment history, were stamped with a large “abandoned his duty, September 9^th 1919.” These duty cards lay in the BPD archives for years, largely forgotten. It was only by chance that a former BPD archivist discovered these cards and was immediately filled with questions: who were these men and what happened to them after the strike?

Image of Hugh P. McGuire’s Duty Card

The scale of the project required collaboration, not only between UMass Boston and the BPD archivists, but also volunteers, the police officers’ descendants, and finally, my own class. While we entered the project in order to learn genealogical research skills, it was gratifying to see that our small contribution helped in a large-scale project. Each student was instructed to pick an officer and fill in vital information into a worksheet. We used public records to uncover these men’s lives, searching through the census, birth and death records, military records and newspapers. To me, the most engaging records were the census records, as they not only reflected a specific officer’s life, but also larger changing trends in America.

Image of Hugh P. McGuire from the 1901 “The Officers and The Men The Stations Without and Within of The Boston Police.” This book’s yearbook format was a great source for photographs of the striking BPD officers.

I choose Hugh P. McGuire, who seemed to have a relatively good life before the strike: he lived in his rented house with his wife and four children and had been on the police force since 1896. However, his whole family was drastically affected by the strike. Just one year later, McGuire was working as a watchman for a lumberyard. His eldest son and daughter, then in their twenties, continued to live in his house. These two children may have stayed home to contribute to family finances, as both were employed. By the 1930 census, it is clear that he was experiencing still more trouble: he was now unemployed, and while his sons seem to have left home, his two daughters remained as the sole breadwinners in his household.

By 1940, Hugh McGuire was 74 years old. According to census records, he was “unable to work.” His eldest daughter, Anna, now 40, continued to care for her parents as a secretary for the Veterans Bureau. As the sole breadwinner, she received a yearly salary of $1,980, which in today’s money ($34,500) would relegate the McGuire family to the lower class. However, this census information has its drawbacks: even though it offers us Anna’s yearly income, we don’t know, if McGuire’s sons contributed to the household, if McGuire received Social Security benefits, or if the McGuire family saved money before Hugh lost his job. In other words, the whole family may have been struggling to make ends meet.

Image from the United States Census, 1940.

The census records also leave out vital information about McGuire’s wife. Was she unemployed because she was fulfilling the stereotypical duties of white women at the time, or did her lack of education (she only completed the further grade) shut her out of the scant opportunities women could obtain? As much as the census can aid researchers, it will never be able to answer these compelling questions, and may often leave researchers with more questions!

Image from the United States Census, 1930. In the “Home Data” section, it asks the family to report if they own a radio set.

While census records offer the bare facts of an individual’s life, they are quite useful to demonstrate large-scale changes in health, education, immigration and even leisure through their questionnaires. For example, in both the 1900 and 1910 census, participants are asked to list the number of children born, as well as the number of children living. This distinction reflected the high child mortality rate during the time; Hugh’s wife was quite lucky that all four of her children survived. However, by the 1920s, efforts to combat childhood diseases increased, and the census no longer included this category. The most amusing category was in 1930s census, which included a category simply titled “radio set” reflecting the growing number of families with radios, including the McGuire family. This category disappeared by the next census in 1940, reflecting both that radio sets were no longer novelties and the assumption that most households owned a radio.

This research was so engaging that I chose to volunteer my time to help the project further. While completing the worksheets of three more policemen, I learned a valuable lesson about genealogical research: researchers should not always trust their internet searches. When attempting to find the birth records for a man named Owen Katon, I was unable to discover his information. It was only with the aid of UMass Boston archivist Joanne Riley that I noticed there had been a transcribing error between the physical documents and the online search results. When I searched for Owen Katon, I had only found one record for “William Katon” and promptly assumed it couldn’t be the correct person. However, Riley taught me an important lesson: never assume that the online search results are always correct. When I actually looked at the scanned records for “William Katon,” I discovered that the records were really for Owen Katon after all! This is not to say that websites are untrustworthy; rather, researchers must be aware of these human errors, and conduct their research accordingly.

The BPD Strike Project still continues, with the goal of completion by the 100^th anniversary on September 9^th, 2019. If you are looking to improve your genealogical skills, for your own personal or scholarly projects, I strongly I strongly recommend getting involved.

Reference

Puleo, Stephen. Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 2004.

An old sepia photograph of a group of boys standing in front of a barn with hoes and other farm instruments.

Learning By Doing: Exhibiting Thompson’s Island Histories (2016)

September 12, 2016 / Jane S Becker / 2 Comments

Partners: University Archives & Special Collections, Healey Library, and Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center

UMass Boston and Thompson Island have been neighbors since UMass Boston moved its campus to Columbia Point in 1974. University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston was established in 1981 as a repository to collect archival material in subject areas of interest to the university, as well as the records of the university itself.

The mission and history of the University of Massachusetts Boston guide the collection policies of University Archives & Special Collections, with The university’s urban mission and strong support of community service are reflected in the UASC collections, which include local history related to neighboring communities. Since 2014, UASC has been expanding its collections related to the Boston Harbor Islands.

These include the records of the educational institutions established on the island starting as early as 1833 with the Boston Farm School. These schools have left a rich collection of historical materials–the records of the Boston Farm School, Boston Asylum for Indigent Boys, Boston Farm and Trades School, and Thompson Academy—that open many possibilities for exploring Thompson’s Island’s multiple histories, and sharing them with the public. In 1988, Outward Bound partnered to operate the island, creating a new entity: Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center (TIOBEC), which owns and manages the island today. The island continues its mission to serve the underserved youth of Greater Boston with programs that instill teamwork, self-confidence and compassion, and encourage learning by doing.

Today, Thompson Island is privately owned and managed by the Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center (TIOBEC). TIOBEC fulfills a vital educational role for children and adults from Boston and the surrounding metropolitan area. It is the site of an Outward Bound program for inner-city youth that strives to bring together students of varying race, ethnicity, and class in an ambitious outdoor learning program. As stewards of the island, TIOBEC is acutely aware of the legacy of education there and a primary stakeholder of the island’s history. The organization is further engaged in building a community of alumni of Thompson Academy and other predecessor schools.

TIOBEC has installed a number of outdoor interpretive “wayside” signage throughout the island. In the future, TIOBEC plans to install a small museum display about the island’s history. In 2016, public history graduate students worked with Thompson Island collections in the UASC to develop proposals and interpretive samples to support TIOBEC’s interest in developing and installing a permanent exhibition on-island and creating a site where visitors can access historical materials.

Working with primary sources in UASC collections, students created a set of proposals for temporary exhibitions and sample exhibition panels focused on the history of Thompson’s Island. They conducted research, developed themes, chose and researched exhibit materials, wrote exhibit text, and planned participatory activities. They presented their ideas to TIOBEC in an exhibition installed at the Healey Library.