Where do I begin?

Starting any research project is hard. You have a research question or a topic and have to go about finding an answer for your topic. There are many different paths to take to find the information and sometimes the amount of sources can be overwhelming. This is what happened to me when I started my internship at Fort McHenry. I had my topic which is Citizen actives at Fort McHenry from 1775- 1865. I knew a little information about Citizen involvement during the War of 1812 (1812-1814) and the Civil War but aside from that I did not know much else about how the Citizens helped keep the Fort running smoothly. This task would be daunting since I knew most information would be about the military operations at the fort and not much about citizen visitors or what the women that were working at the fort were doing. When I got into the Fort’s reference library I just sat in a chair and looked around at all the binders of collected primary sources and the wall to ceiling bookshelves of secondary source materials. I was overwhelmed at where to start, or if I would be able to get the amount of information I needed to complete my research in the amount of time I had.  After the initial shock I asked my volunteer supervisor where he thought I should start. He told me I should begin with the H.A.R.P collection, which was a program in the 1950s to collect primary source materials about Fort McHenry into one location to make it easier to do research.  I have posted pictures below of the reference library and the HARP collection that I spent a month and half working through.

Even though all the primary sources are gathered into one location, making it easier to research because of when the copies were done, it presented a whole new level of challenges. The first being horrible copies to where the letters and documents were impossible to read. This combined with 18-19^th script meant there were letters that I could not read in their entirety. The hardest to read were the ones that the black ink had copied white on white paper leaving only a faint black outline around the script. I placed post it notes on these copies so the Ranger that is going through and recopying the HARP collection knows that needs to be re copied since copiers have come a long way since 1950. In this way I am helping the next person that comes along to do research and they will have a little bit easier time than I did going through the documents.

When I looked at my question I knew I already had some research conducted by Lead Citizen of the Fort McHenry Guard Wendy Alexander and Ranger Scott Sheads. This information I had archived in my email from when I started volunteering five years ago. This information was about the Tavern that existed on the Fort property and of the role of women as laundresses at Fort McHenery. I needed to dig deeper into this information to see if I could possibly find pay receipts or even when the Tavern land was bought and the Tavern built. All this information was approximated and I wanted to see if I could find a more exact date.  I also wanted to learn about the hospital that existed during the War of 1812. I wanted to know when it was built and any information on the doctor or his staff since I do know that there were nurses and a hospital matron that worked at the Hospital. In completing my research in the HARP collection I have found information about the Tavern and the hospital but also about more of what the Citizens of Baltimore were doing in the city and around the fort during the American Revolution, the interwar years of 1783-1811, the War of 1812, the next interwar years of 1815-1860, and the American Civil War. While most of the documents that I looked through dealt with the military operations of the Fort there were some traces of the Citizen involvement that helped the fort to run smoothly even if it was only thought a pay receipt for supplies for the hospital or a letter from a solider.

Now that I have finished the primary source research, I begin the secondary source research. Once again I ask myself the question when I started. Where do I begin?

Below are examples of the type of copies I have come across and the picture of the collection in the reference Library.