Completing under intense Heat and Humidity

 

Thomas Pate

            My internship at Sharp Street Memorial Church in Baltimore was a rewarding and fun experience, but that did not mean it was without challenges. The challenges of this internship were caused by a series of unfortunate events that made the processing of the Wilson collection much more difficult than initially anticipated. Some of these were out of the control of the church, while others were the result of issues with the buildings that required serious repair, and will hopefully be sorted with the return of some grants.

            The first issue was the heat and the humidity, which were not ideal over the Summer of 2025. The community center, where my internship was located, lacked air conditioning, but had some fans to keep myself and my manager cool. The archival center had some air conditioning, but it was mainly located on the first floor, with the second and third floors being particularly hot and humid, which are not good conditions for historical documents. However, once the documents were moved out of these areas, the heat and humidity were only problems outside of the church, although thankfully, plenty of water was provided.

            The second issue was plumbing, and this was caused by a break in while I was working on the Edward Wilson collection. I will not fault the church for this, since someone scaled the barbed wire fence, pulled off a metal frame over a window (I am unsure how), and entered the basement in search of valuables. I heard some clanging, but this was a regular sound in the busy streets around the church, so I thought nothing of it. It was not until I needed to use the bathroom that I discovered that there was no running water, and this was due to the copper pipes having been cut out of the basement so no water could reach the community center's upper levels.  A police report had to be filed, but the perpetrator was long gone by the time they arrived.

            Besides having to walk across into the church proper to use the bathroom, this incident disrupted several meetings that were supposed to be held in the community center due to a lack of facilities. A repair was conducted in August to address the issue, and a private security guard would occasionally fly a drone around the building. I am not sure if these methods were effective, but there were no more incidents for the rest of the summer.

            These may sound discouraging to the next intern but fear not. I had an excellent summer internship, and these are challenges you may face at any internship. I include the photo of my award from my manager, Sister Ford, because at the end of a challenge in life, there is a payoff. This came from recognition from the entire church of my efforts to improve the history of Sharp Street despite the heat and inconveniences that were faced during my duty. The job was completed, and I became a better person out of it.

Sorting Through the Mass

 

Thomas Pate

My internship at Sharp Street Memorial Methodist Church in Baltimore focused on the organization and archiving of the Edward Wilson collection, a large quantity of old documents from a man by the name of Edward Wilson. Edward Wilson lived from 1892 to 1979 and was a veteran of the First World War. He was also the registrar of Morgan State University, a member of Sharp Street Methodist Church, and the Maryland Board of Education. He was a major activist for African Americans and was a prominent member of the community in West Baltimore. Wilson was also a member of several fraternities and coordinated campus life for the Methodist Church in Morgan State.

The first step of processing this collection was the transportation of the approximately one hundred boxes from the church archival center across the street to the community center. This was done to save the collection from the deteriorating conditions of the archival center on the third floor, which would be remodeled. These documents had once been processed by another member of the church, so some of the boxes had a degree of organization, but the vast majority had been haphazardly dumped with no organization. Stickers left on the box from the first sorting, around 2012, were also incorrect in detailing what was in the boxes.

The collection of documents had the challenge of being full of absolute junk and garbage. Dr Wilson spared every single document he seemed to have physically touched in his life, as it was also full of receipts, checks, Christmas cards, tax statements for Wilson, tax statements for Wilson’s wife, Alice, tax statements for random people who were completely unknown to the church (I guess that these were done for others out of kindness). One critical role of an archivist is deaccessioning and sorting out documents that, although they are old, are not worth saving due to degradation, space constraints, or are of no research value. Newspapers were removed due to existing copies in outside collections. Receipts are thrown away because they are of no research value. Moldy Christmas cards are a health hazard. There is no need to save horoscopes from the 1960s, or receipts to companies that merged into others over 70 years ago.

Books were not spared either. Dr. Wilson had books from all sorts of places, and many of these were critical to detailing church history, but some books had to be disposed of due to being in print elsewhere or being out of date (particularly for Methodist doctrine). Books that had mold had to be disposed of, and only a few were saved for restoration purposes and safely boxed away from the rest of the collection. An oddity of the collection was the artifacts and other miscellaneous junk saved by Dr. Wilson, including old pipes, glasses, and a small iron fist (presumably a paperweight).

Some of these boxes contained documentation of Wilson’s contribution to the Methodist Church, but he also seemed to hold on to much of the documentation for events going back to the early 1900s. Sorting these documents would be the next step of the process of archiving the collection, by categorizing the saved documents into the various boxes pictured above. Some of these categories included Sharp Street History, Dr. Wilson’s activism, Dr Wilson’s work with the Maryland board of education, Morgan, photographs and negatives, physical artifacts, community activism, legal documents, and his writings (he wrote many sermons). Also pictured is the dehumidifier, a valuable tool for controlling humidity during the hot months of June, July, and August.

Much more work is still needed to make this archive accessible to the public, but at least, the materials are in a better environment, the boxes have been sorted, and valuable materials have been found for the church. Digitization would be an important step to preserve the history of the documents, as many were in poor shape.

The Old Methodist Church in Baltimore

 

Thomas Pate

            Sharp Street Memorial Methodist Church graciously accepted my application to intern at the church in May of 2025 to complete a series of tasks with a historic African American church in Baltimore, near the McCullough Homes. This building, first constructed in 1802 and rebuilt in 1897 as the present building, was the result of Black Methodism being segregated from the white Methodist church in the late 18^th century. The church is a large building comprised of masonry and stained glass, and it has a beautiful interior sanctuary. However, my internship would primarily be in the church community center, a connected building next door to the church.

            The other building owned by the church is a townhouse across Etting Street that has three floors. On the first and second floors, a small museum dedicated to the history of the church is displayed in several rooms. The area around the church has your usual Baltimore-style townhomes, save for the large apartment buildings across Dolphin Street. Navigating the church and its adjacent buildings was at first a challenge for me due to the labyrinth of rooms, staircases, and hallways, particularly in the church. I was struck by how small and narrow these buildings were, probably due to different building standards in Baltimore during the 19^th century that did not require larger staircases or simple structural designs. I wish buildings today could still be constructed with this degree of design freedom, and I admired the architecture of all these structures.

My first task was to catalogue all these exhibits in these rooms into an Excel spreadsheet, which did not take me long to complete. My next task was the moving and sorting of the Edward Wilson archival collection, which I will explain in the next post. My later tasks included finding and aiding in grant applications, which were needed for renovations to the archival center. These tasks were outlined to me at the beginning of the internship and were completed around September of this year, so the internship was roughly four months in length.

The internship was helpful for my thesis research, as it had many old records related to 19th-century history. One such example was the membership of many of the attendees who were listed in the Wilson collection. I managed to identify two members who potentially served in United States Colored Troop units during the American Civil War and attended Sharp Street in the late 19^th century, named John H Smith and George “Bishop” Chambers. I discovered George Chambers as a member of Sharp Street since he was listed as an attendee in the Baltimore Afro American in an obituary, and I am fairly certain that John H Smith served in the USCT since he was a trustee at Sharp Street, lived in District 17, and had some enlistment documents for the US Army (unfortunately pinning down his unit and muster roll still require further research). 

Overall, the internship had some challenges, but it was an excellent learning experience and was useful in providing some research for my thesis. It still requires work, so if more UMBC interns are looking to fulfill an internship credit and have previous archival experience, this may be a lucrative opportunity.

 

Image: Google Maps Street view (my phone camera is not that good)

Phase 1 of Gable End Restoration on Walkersville Home

Phase 1

I have been employed with Hestia Restoration, a general contractor specializing in historic restoration, since February 2024. The owner, Matthew Benning, and I are the sole employees of the company. Previously, I worked with Fitzgerald’s Heavy Timber on the restoration of a fourbay bank barn in Summits Point, WV, from July 2023-Jan 2024. Currently, Hestia is working on the restoration of Matt’s own home. We are working on the gable end of the north elevation ell which extends from the original 1830s log home on Main Street, Walkersville. There is a one story kitchen addition off the two story brick ell, the roof of which meets the gable end of the ell. The brick ell has a second story sleeping porch on the west elevation of the home that has been converted into a bathroom and laundry room. The attic contains the original wooden shingles used on the roof, alike to the original log home. Because of improper flashing of the kitchen addition mating to the gable end of this ell, including the brick and framed portions of the porch, has received significant damage on its siding and facade.

We estimate that this ell was added during the Civil War period due to the large, approximately 3 to 4 inch by 8 inch, bricks and their soft composition. 

Unfortunately, the brick was parged with cement render that has caused significant spalling damage to the bricks. Several of these bricks will need to be replaced with similar bricks that have been salvaged through many projects. The brick was laid in an American Bond pattern with a tie course, laid short side in rather than horizontally, every eight courses of bricks. Our first objective in the restoration of this gable end is to remove the rotted wooden german siding, underlayment sheeting, and cement parging by hand. Once the compromised materials were removed, we began to reframe the gable wall attic space and replace the sheeting.

Jewish Museum Adventure

 

I am in the educator cohort at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. The Museum is on Lloyd Street in the Jonestown neighborhood of Baltimore. The Museum exists to tell the story of the Jewish People in the DMV and in America as a whole. It does this with permanent exhibits on immigration, culture, and faith. The museum also manages two historic synagogues. The Lloyd Street Synagogue is across the street. It was built in 1845 and hosted immigrant congregations up until 1960. It is Maryland’s oldest synagogue. I have unfortunately never been in it, since it has been under construction the entire time I have been with the Museum. The second synagogue is the B’Nai Israel Synagogue is a beautiful piece of architecture that was built in 1876 and it is right next to the museum. It originally hosted a congregation of Russian Immigrants. In the 1980s, it was restored and is in use yet again. 

I have been working at the museum since April and, as an Educator, I have had two main responsibilities. The first and primary purpose of my position is to give educational presentations about Jewish history to whomever may reserve my time. The majority of those who do are middle and high school classes. There are three presentations that I give. My favorite presentation to give is about the Holocaust Memory Project. This was a project where the Museum worked alongside the Human Element Project to collect testimonies of holocaust survivors living in Maryland and DC. The project asked survivors to make collages that captured their experiences surviving the holocaust and their lives afterwards. I lead the group through the lives, the stories, and the collages of two of the survivors that were worked with. The second presentation is an introduction to Judaism. It is a presentation that is primarily targeted towards young children. It introduces the basic features of Judaism and Jewish traditions by showing pictures from the Lloyd Street Synagogue. I find this project to be an important one as much of anti-semitism is predicated upon the "foreignness" of Jewish people, and introducing people to its customs at a young age can hopefully help deconstruct some of these antisemitic myths. I also find this presentation to be one of the more difficult to give, primarily because I am not Jewish and some of the pronunciations are difficult for me. The final presentation that I have to give is about Jewish immigration to Baltimore. It discusses why Jewish immigrants, primarily from Europe, might have left and how they built community in the Baltimore area and specifically in Jonestown, where the Museum is located. In an era where immigration is a contentious topic of discussion, I find that it is important to be able to discuss other examples of immigration. I hope when I give this presentation that the audience, again usually school-age children, might have a more open mind to the reasons that people choose to leave their homes and to build new ones in our communities. 

My primary responsibility of giving presentations about Jewish history, leads us into a discussion of my second responsibility, which is to always be learning new things about that history. When I am not giving the presentations, I am practicing them and studying the material. More than this, I have had the pleasure of attending conferences for holocaust educators. The first being the asynchronous Belfer National Conference and the Holocaust Educators’ Conference in Towson. I found both to be wonderful learning experiences however I really enjoyed the latter especially since I was able to meet other people in the field and learn more about novel research in holocaust and genocide studies. 

Overall, my experience at the Jewish Museum of Maryland has been a delight. I have found it to be both enjoyable and incredibly moving. In an era where antisemitic and all other kinds of prejudice and violence are on the rise across the globe, I find my work and my experience to be extremely important. 

Shelf Discovery: Adventures at the Loyola Notre Dame Library Archives

    This summer I did my internship at the Loyola Notre Dame Library Special Collections

and Archives. This Special Collections is unique because it is shared by two different

universities: Loyola University and Notre Dame of Maryland University. It sits beautifully

between both universities and caters to needs for both institutions. The Special Collections works

with both universities to not only house many collections, but to aid in research for classes across

all fields. The department holds collections on the different departments for each university as

well as unique collections on manuscripts, rare books, maps, papal coins, and more! Our

department is also unique from other Special Collections departments because unlike many

others, our department is located on the top of the library overlooking a beautiful pond, the Notre

Dame of Maryland soccer field, and the beautiful Notre Dame of Maryland Merrick Tower. The

department is very small with only 2 full time employees, Jenny Kinniff, Head of Archives and

Special Collections, and Peter Sutton, Archivist for Digital Initiatives. During the fall and spring

semesters the department gets two undergraduate student workers. The department also benefits

from a loyal retired librarian volunteer as well as the summer graduate intern (me).

    My main duties as the summer graduate intern were processing collections. I began by

assessing the collections based on size, content, organization, privacy, and subject matter. Then I

started to organize, folder, and rebox the items based on an organization system that my

wonderful supervisor and I agreed upon. After physically organizing and foldering everything, I

then put all of the information into the online database, ArchiveSpace, to create a finding aid. For

some collections, I had to do research to find information in order to write the

historiographical/biological note in the finding aid. A few of the collections already had a written

historiographical/biological note written either by our amazing department volunteer or one of

the great undergraduate assistants. After the finding aid was completed, I would then barcode the

boxes and find a space for them in one of the three storage rooms. I made sure to note the

location of the boxes in ArchiveSpace after placing them.

    When I started this internship, I was worried that I would get bored working in an

archives department. However, I soon learned that the organization and clerical aspect of the job

was extremely satisfying. I found great pleasure in taking a mess of items and putting them in

neat boxes and labeled folders. While I did not enjoy the seclusion of the office, I very much

enjoyed the pride that came with completing each and every collection. Many of the collections I

processed, while they had some interesting individual items, were not the most exciting subjects

such as: Loyola University Maryland Office of Academic Affairs records, Notre Dame of

Maryland University Department of Psychology records, and Notre Dame of Maryland

University Curriculum Committee records (the bane of my existence). However, some of the

collections were extremely fascinating such as: Notre Dame of Maryland University scrapbook

collection, Elizabeth Morrissy papers, and Adelia M. Hall diaries (one of my favorite collections

I processed). Overall, this internship was an incredible experience that I will cherish forever.