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critical to detailing church history, but some books had to be disposed of due to being in print elsewhere or being out of date (particularly for Methodist doctrine).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.