Public History studies – Public History at UMass Boston

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Collections and Connections: Interning at the Shirley-Eustis House

By Rachel Hoyle

I have enjoyed nearly every single aspect of my internship this semester at the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury. My duties have led me to a much deeper understanding of how museums operate, from the mundane – hanging Christmas lights for an evening event – to the glamorous preparation of the house for use as a backdrop in multiple documentaries. The site’s Executive Director, Suzy Buchanan, has been gracious enough to let me trail behind her on Fridays, learning exactly how she does what she does.

However, when I use the word “nearly,” there is one particular aspect of my internship that has led to frustration: the lack of original sources to catalog for my developing web exhibit. Given that my exhibit will focus on enslaved Africans at the house, most of whom do not even have their names written in the historical record, it is not surprising that no artifacts of their existence have survived the past three hundred years. Add to that injustice the constantly changing structure and use of the Shirley-Eustis House (at one point it was even used as a “home for wayward girls”), and it is a recipe for the reproduction rather than the display of original artifacts.

The exterior of the Shirley-Eustis House in 1940, nearly forty years prior to its restoration. As is clear from this image, the house was in very bad condition at one point in time. Photo courtesy the United States National Archives.

It is not as if I am the first person studying African enslavement to encounter this problem. The staff at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), when collecting the first artifacts for display in the museum, ventured around the nation to track down relevant objects. Physical artifacts of African American history had often been either lost, passed around to various families, or stored in people’s attics for generations.[1] It was not negligence keeping these items stowed away – it was an instinct of preservation. Many African Americans certainly knew the value of these artifacts. Rex Ellis, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at the NMAAHC, recalled the moment he first came face to face with the Bible of infamous Black slave revolt leader Nat Turner. The woman who gifted it to the NMAAHC from its longtime place in her family’s Virginia home remarked that “It was time for it to leave here…because there’s so much blood on it.”[2] It was not until the NMAAHC’s founding that many of these artifacts were seen outside the confines of a single family or community, because there were few museums and historic sites willing or able to display them with a mindful acknowledgement of the artifacts’ troublesome and sometimes disturbing histories.

A page from revolutionary and slave revolt leader Nat Turner’s Bible, which is now permanently at the NMAAHC. Photo courtesy the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Once it was clear that there would be a NMAAHC, Founding Director Lonnie Bunch began a groundbreaking campaign to collect these artifacts. Under his “Saving African American Treasures” initiative, Bunch deployed conservationists and other museum professionals around the United States in an effort to identify and save artifacts protected and preserved by generations of Black families. This campaign unearthed tens of thousands of artifacts for the NMAAHC; most were free-will donations made by people who decided their personal collections were finally able to be seen and respected in the manner they necessitated.[3] This distinction between a lack of material culture and a preservation of the very same culture is essential. How many other artifacts are still hidden in an attic, trunk, or basement because museums and historic sites have not been ready to display them respectfully? How many of those relate to the experiences of enslaved Africans?

These stories shaped my thinking as I considered the use of artifacts in my exhibit. Unfortunately, I did not have the time or resources that Bunch and the NMAAHC had to track down material culture relating directly to the house or its enslaved occupants. While there are surviving manuscripts and records of Black occupants of the Shirley-Eustis House, written documents alone do not hold the same meanings or have the same impact as three dimensional artifacts in an exhibition. These documents are most often from the perspective of white, wealthy colonists, while physical artifacts were used directly by enslaved people. The history documents and objects carry is the same, but the perspectives they offer on that history are vastly different. Even neighborhood oral histories, which provide us with engaging ideas of how the house’s story has evolved over time and connect us to individuals’ experiences and stories, have a different impact on visitors than material culture.

It was Suzy Buchanan, the house’s Executive Director, who inspired my ideas for how we might incorporate artifacts into an exhibition on the site’s African American histories. She first mentioned that a large iron washing kettle sat in the basement of the Shirley-Eustis House, right in front of the public restrooms. While it was not original to the house, she qualified, it could at least serve to illustrate some of the work likely performed by enslaved people in the eighteenth century. If that was reasonable, she said, I could include it in my exhibit. I could hardly contain my excitement. There was one part of my problem rather expertly solved.

Immediately I realized that the Shirley-Eustis House also had an unexpectedly large collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century historical tools and gardening equipment in the attic of our carriage house. While we may not have been able to tell the stories of those enslaved at the house directly through surviving artifacts, we could still use items in our collection to interpret their lives. It is important to note that there are limitations to using nineteenth century artifacts to interpret eighteenth century events – much changed over that century regarding labor and enslavement. Interpreting these artifacts is still worthwhile, even if I acknowledge their weaknesses in my interpretation. In this concrete experience, I realized the importance of a detailed and up to date collections catalogue and the interpretive possibilities that can result.

An 18^th or 19^th century wooden mortar and pestle in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These and other kitchen tools illustrate the constant labor required in operating a household like the Shirley family’s in colonial Massachusetts. Photo taken by the author.

Two yokes for human use dating to the 18^th or 19^th century found in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These two objects illustrate the human labor that went into daily operations at the house, even though they are not original to the house itself. Photo taken by the author.

Suzy also reminded me that we at the Shirley-Eustis House are not isolated from other museums. One benefit of designing an online exhibit is the potential to use collections beyond your own by linking other sites’ collections into the digital exhibit. Considering this option helped me realize that creating a rich and informative site on the history of enslavement is my priority for this exhibit, not simply drawing visitors to the Shirley-Eustis House and its unique resources alone. If our exhibit leads visitors to another site with more relevant artifacts, then I have done my job well.

The dispersion of artifacts from the Shirley-Eustis House likely occurred due to changing ownership, renovation, and repeated episodes of the house’s disrepair. It may be impossible to know what became of the site’s original eighteenth century artifacts, but this does not render its staff incapable of interpreting a broader history of the house and its residents, including its laborers. I hope that my exhibit does justice to the lives of enslaved Africans and their roles in local and national histories.

[1] https://sah.columbia.edu/content/prizes/tony-horwitz-prize/2021-lonnie-g-bunch-iii

[2] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History,” The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/analyzing-the-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture.

[3] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History.”

The Significance of an Individual: Developing Exhibits in Historic House Museums

December 16, 2021 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Meghan Arends

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. Photograph taken upon my initial visit in August.

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is owned and operated by the National Park Service. Built in 1759, the Georgian style house became the headquarters of George Washington during the Siege of Boston in 1775. It eventually became the home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when it was bought by his father-in-law as a wedding gift.[1] From then on, the house became an important center of politics, society, and the arts.

The estate drew me in because of my interest in material culture. The collections held at the Longfellow House are numerous and diverse, representing the vast culture the family had the privilege of experiencing during their time. My internship here offered me a satisfying and richly challenging professional experience that expands past encounters with collections.

My overall internship goals were both practical and intellectual. In-depth research of extended family member Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr. for the upcoming temporary exhibit “Longfellow Family in the Civil War” sat at the center of my experience. This involved familiar tasks, including online and off-site research into Nathan’s life, writing exhibit labels for artifacts and, eventually, producing web content to further expand upon his life as a Union soldier. This project required an intense focus on a singular subject and his place within the broader American history, which I don’t always get the chance to explore. Rather than generalized concepts and assumptions, an individual’s history can reveal their impact on the world and vise-versa.

Photographs of Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr., “Appleton Family Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society. Left: Nathan as a Harvard Student, shortly before entering the war. Right: Nathan after initial enlistment in 1863 as 2nd Lieutenant. Photographs courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The most exciting part of the internship was certainly the weeklong research trip I took to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which maintains the Appleton Family Papers. Hundreds of documents shed light on the life of Nathan and his family in the years surrounding and including the Civil War. The richness and extent of the resources meant that I had to prioritize materials within the extensive collection. I had to determine which sources were most important to the themes and questions of my project, putting others aside. Previous research endeavors have never offered me such a volume of sources. My week spent at MHS taught me the importance of guiding themes in a research project, which is relevant for both historians and public historians.

The professional and practical aspects of the internship are among its greatest rewards, especially the communication and networking opportunities I’ve had with professionals in the field of public history. I attended weekly meetings with the rest of the site staff; they’ve provided an invaluable glance into the world of historic sites and their daily operations. The isolation of an internship can make it seem like the project you’re working on is the only one, but in reality, there are dozens of programs in development simultaneously. Nothing has expanded my personal field of public history knowledge more than hearing from other staff members about the various projects they are working on each day and their contributions to the site’s significance. A historic site can’t rely on one program or strategy to maintain relevance and interest. Diversity in programming and site history helps them serve multiple audiences and their needs.

The internship offered me opportunities to work on new skills, such as writing labels for exhibits. My natural instinct as a historian is to take my time crafting an argument and presenting evidence. That luxury isn’t available when writing exhibit labels, where you must communicate significance and meaning in relatively few words. General introductions that can’t explain the significance of an artifact in the context of the exhibit provide little substance for the audience. We read Beverly Serrell’s guide, Exhibit Labels, in class, but now I’ve had the chance to put her advice into practice and take on the challenges of writing exhibit text to tell stories and connect the past and present.[2] This is done all within 100 words written for the public, not scholars.

Process of writing and editing exhibit labels. 1. A short narrative with a list of the medals (too long) 2. A more narrative approach 3. Revision after separating a medal, requiring a new title 4. Continuous edits that create an interpretive narrative rather than just a list of facts

It’s inspiring to think that the work I’m currently doing isn’t just for a grade in a class. Instead, I hope to leave a mark on my field, to teach people and help them connect to the lives of this family. Eventually, this project will become part of a larger exhibit that will open in the spring of 2022. My work is not yet finished, as I will be helping with the design and execution of that larger exhibit for my capstone project next semester. I’m looking forward to identifying more stories that answer questions, inspire new ones, and entertain the public while pushing them to consider new ideas in the ever-evolving databank that is our history.

[1] Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach (Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1996), 19.

[2] “Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters,” Home Page, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm.

Joan Ilacqua at a History Project Event

Alumni Spotlight: Joan Ilacqua

October 11, 2018 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

When Joan Ilacqua graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington with a bachelor’s degree in American History and Studio Art: Sculpture, she wanted to contribute to history in a hands-on way. She sought and earned jobs and internships at several national parks, including Yosemite National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, having graduated during the Recession, Ilacqua decided that seasonal jobs weren’t sustainable. She began looking for graduate programs in the Boston area.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 07 April 2007. Image is in the public domain.

“I got advice that I could either go to the ‘big name’ program and use that name as I was job hunting, or the ‘little name’ program and do as much as work as possible to network myself,” she recalls. “I chose UMass because it gave me the opportunity to make connections, to work with other young professionals, and to learn from other experts in the field all at a public university. I gained experience from both archives and public history classes that I continue to use in my outreach work today.”

When she entered UMass, Ilacqua initially focused on archives, but soon switched to public history. While in the program, she made good on her decision to make as many connections in the field as possible, working at the JFK Library, UMass Boston University Archives and Special Collections, and the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She also interned at The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston “because I had an interest in queer history but also because I wanted to volunteer for an organization that could not afford to pay an intern.”

Joan started at The History Project in 2013, and she remains involved with the organization five years later as co-chair of its Board of Directors. “I find it so fulfilling as a queer archivist to be able to contribute to documenting, preserving, and sharing LGBTQ history,” Ilacqua says, “and I’ve gained a wealth of management, fundraising, outreach, and events experience.”

Joan Ilacqua and other volunteers for The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston

In addition to sustaining the connections she made at The History Project, Ilacqua now works a the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an institution she first worked for as a graduate student. The Center “serves to enable the history of medicine to inform contemporary medicine and deepens our understanding of the society in which medicine is embedded.” Ilacqua’s initial role at the Center was as an oral historian, leading efforts to collect stories and other artifacts about the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. After the project ended, she continued to work on other oral history and outreach projects for the Center, including the history of diversity and inclusion.

Joan Ilacqua, Archivist for Diversity and Inclusion at the Center for the History of Medicine, 2018.

In June of 2015, Ilacqua was promoted to Archivist for Women in Medicine. Just last week, on October 1^st, the Center expanded the program’s mission to include documenting all people underrepresented in medicine, changing Ilacqua’s title to Archivist for Diversity and Inclusion. Among her many duties in this role, she will advocate for donations of archival materials crated by underrepresented leaders in medicine, establish new collections and acquire accruals to existing collections, build new relationships with potential donors, and promote the inclusion of underrepresented people in medicine through social media, lectures, exhibits, and events. Currently, she is working on an exhibit on the history of diversity and inclusion at Harvard Medical School in collaboration with the school’s Office for Diversity Inclusion & Community Partnership, which is the culmination of an extensive oral history project. The exhibit will be entirely digital in order to promote access throughout the campus community.

Of her position, Ilacqua says, “I find it incredibly rewarding that I get to help cement [records creators’] place in history by making sure that their stories and experiences are documented. Without original documents, and without representation, how can historians write history? I get to make sure that these stories and experiences are preserved.”

The Center for the History of Medicine preserves a diversity of voices in its archival holdings. Notable among its collections are the Miriam F. Menkin papers, 1919-2003 and the Equal Access Oral History Project records. Menkin was a laboratory assistant to John Rock, the scientist who performed the first in vitro fertilization of a human egg in 1944. Her collection only exists because her files were included in the Rock papers, and were separated out once the Center’s processing archivist realized that she was the creator of the records. Menkin’s contributions to the understanding of human fertility wouldn’t be known if her collection hadn’t been saved. The Equal Access Oral History Project began as an attempt to collect the story of affirmative action at Harvard Medical School and grew to include the perspectives and experiences of faculty, students, and alumni about diversity and inclusion at HMS. This project is particularly poignant because these stories aren’t represented anywhere else in the Center’s collections.

The Countway Library of Medicine, home of the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, 1965.

Ilacqua’s passion for diversity and inclusion extends beyond the workplace. As mentioned, she continues to volunteer for The History Project. She is also currently serving a term on the New England Archivists’ Inclusion and Diversity Committee. She hopes that her work on that committee will “help build and maintain an inclusive environment at NEA…in a field that is overworked, underpaid, and often does not create pathways for diversity.”

Through her work at the Center for the History of Medicine, The History Project, and professional organizations, Joan Ilacqua has put her passions for public history, archives, and diversity and inclusion to good use.

Her advice to students seeking to break into in field?

Make as many connections as you can while you are a student. Go to conferences, present at conferences, go to networking events (Drinking at Museums is a great way to meet people and NEA regularly holds networking events), volunteer, get involved with museum and archivist Twitter, read archivist and public historian blogs, do informational interviews. People want to help students, so don’t hesitate to reach out to alumni or to professionals that you admire – the worst thing that can happen is that they say no.

To learn more about the Center for the History of Medicine, its collections, and upcoming events, please click here. Many thanks to Joan Ilacqua for her participation in our Alumni Spotlight series!

Judith, relaxing outside of her work at the Lynn Museum.

Alumni Spotlight: Judith Marshall

November 3, 2017 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Violet Caswell

In the spring of her senior year at McGill University in Montreal, Judith Marshall opened her computer and searched that question that is nearly ubiquitous among history majors:

For students of history who do not want to teach or work in academia, this wearisome question is ever-present, made worse when relatives exclaim “History! What are you going to do with that?” at every holiday dinner. Yet, as she browsed the internet, Marshall found occasion for hope, not despair. History majors, she realized, could pursue careers in all kinds of organizations and institutions. As the possibilities stretched out in front of her, one path seemed particularly enticing: public history.

Judith with peer, Jacob Lusk, working with archival materials in a graduate history class.

After graduating from McGill, Marshall moved to the United States and enrolled in the public history program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Over the course of two years at UMass, she broadened her horizons and discovered that her interests were more diverse than she could ever have imagined.

“One of my responsibilities was to research the craftsmen and laborers . . . I didn’t think I would be interested in these men . . . but as I learned more about them and immersed myself in their lives, I became absolutely fascinated.”

“I had an internship with Historic New England,” she recalled, “and one of my responsibilities was to research the craftsmen and laborers who built a historic house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I didn’t think I would be interested in these men—and they were all men—but as I learned more about them and immersed myself in their lives, I became absolutely fascinated.” Marshall’s intensive research allowed her to understand the craftsmen as dynamic individuals with robust political and social lives. Her capstone project, a walking tour of Portsmouth, showcased those lives and brought them to life.

After graduating from UMB, Marshall returned to informally advise incoming students at the History Department’s Graduate Student Symposium in September 2017.

With plenty of skills and experience under her belt, Marshall graduated from UMass in 2105 and entered the job market. She soon learned that a position was opening up at the Lynn Museum and Historical Society in Lynn, Massachusetts. After shadowing the Museum’s outgoing education and research specialist, she took over the position. There was only one problem: “I didn’t know anything at all about Lynn. Here I was training docents and working with our visitors, and I was just learning all of the history myself.” Marshall wasn’t intimidated by her task. With little determination and a lot of research, she eventually became well versed in Lynn’s history.

1911 postcard of Market Street in Lynn, Massachusetts, with a car of the Bay State Street Railway. Wikimedia Commons.

“It’s a little like being a teacher,” she explains, “Where at first, when you’re doing lesson plans and you’re teaching yourself along the way. But then it gets easier and easier.”

Now, Marshall serves as an excellent resource to her institution’s patrons. She works with any researchers who come to the Museum to look at its remarkable photograph collection, which spans from the nineteenth century to the present day. Although the Museum has transferred its archival holdings to the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, she routinely directs research requests and assists the public in any way she can.

Judith Marshall (center), Education & Research Specialist at the Lynn Museum, leading a tour.

There is no such thing as an average day for Marshall, whose duties at the Lynn Museum are broad in a way that is common for professionals working at smaller institutions. On any given day, she might be training docents, developing new exhibits, leading fleets of elementary school groups through the Museum or even trying to figure out why that fountain in the courtyard keeps leaking. “Small institutions can be like that,” she laughs.

Marshall says that juggling so many responsibilities can be a challenge, and that time management skills are essential to her success. Flexibility, too, is crucial– as is the ability to remain calm under pressure. When busloads of students arrive early for a field trip, or when buses are late to pick them up, Marshall has to improvise and find ways to entertain them for longer than anticipated.

Despite the occasional hiccups that arise, Marshall finds planning field trip programming to be one of her most exciting responsibilities. While she works with students of all ages, her most extensive initiative is with third grade groups. Because of Marshall’s planning, these Lynn public school students have the opportunity to participate in a field trip that much more dynamic than your average, forgettable one-day field trip.

When she first started the program, Marshall says, “I didn’t have any idea how to communicate with third graders. I didn’t know what they looked like or what they could know.” After careful research, she developed an age-appropriate program to teach Lynn students about their city’s history. She and her colleagues go into the classroom twice—one before and once after students visit the Lynn Museum—to reinforce the lessons that students learn. She also invites the students and parents to the Museum’s end of the year Open House to reinforce the students’ knowledge of the institution and to create new bonds with parents.

Judith, relaxing outside of her work at the Lynn Museum.

Through her work with the Lynn Museum, Judith Marshall has put her background in public history to good use, developed new skills, and brought history to life in Lynn, Massachusetts. Yet, her career trajectory was one that she never could have predicted, even as she graduated from UMass Boston.

Her advice to current students?

“Apply for jobs- lots of jobs. You never know what you’ll end up being interested in.”

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.

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