Tails from the Animal Cemetery

Although it may not be the most orthodox place for a public history internship, over the summer I had the opportunity to work with the Baltimore Humane Society in Reisterstown, Maryland. The organization is approaching its 100th anniversary, and it operates the Baltimore Humane Society Memorial Park–a historic animal cemetery. Today the Memorial Park sits on five acres of land, has approximately 10,000 graves, and continues to offer animal funeral and burial services. However, after almost a century of operation, the cemetery is nearing capacity. For that reason, my internship aimed to explore the cemetery's history to find materials, anecdotes, or narratives that could support fundraising efforts to expand it.

I was given what was essentially a dream assignment: to find something interesting. Unsurprisingly, after some research, I found that this historic animal cemetery is home to a wealth of fascinating, funny, and poignant stories. Among those were pets who had been left to the Humane Society in their owner’s will, dogs who had lived in the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, a pet lion, an animal who “co-authored” a book on pedestrian safety for children, and many more.

Part of the process involved looking into some of the oldest graves in the cemetery. This was particularly intriguing because both the staff and visitors I met were eager to share the bits of information, memories, and rumors they had about various graves with me. Those conversations often gave me new leads to explore, and it made the research process much more engaging when I knew I had an enthusiastic audience for whatever I’d happened to find. By the time my project was complete, I had created a digital collection of more than 250 items spanning almost a century of the organization and cemetery’s history. I had also identified a handful of individual pets with interesting stories, researched the history of animal cemeteries in Maryland, and compiled all of my findings into a presentation for the organization’s leadership and visitors.

As a final and especially rewarding capstone to this experience, I was recently invited to speak about my project at an event held at the Memorial Park. After spending the summer collecting the history of this place, it was a wonderful opportunity to bring some of my research back to where it began. I was able to share stories and photos with people I had met at the very beginning of the project and heard new stories from people I was meeting for the first time. I’m excited to share more of that process here in future blog posts, as well.

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From Storage Unit to Special Collections: Saving the Baltimore Woman's Industrial Exchange Archives

    Four years ago, in September of 2022, my previous supervisor, who is a researcher for the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center, took me to the second floor of the Baltimore Woman’s Industrial Exchange. She opened one of the office doors and explained that the piles of papers and boxes were archival materials that she found spilling out of one of the closets. We had just received a grant to begin documenting the history of the Exchange, so this office felt like we had stumbled upon a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Since that day, I have spent my free time buried in the archives of the Exchange, knowing they held precious glimpses into the history of Baltimore. In January of 2026, the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center lost key grant funding and was no longer able to afford the rent required for the Exchange building to be its headquarters. As the group engaged in the necessary steps to move their work to become fully virtual, the board had to decide what to do with the Exchange archives. The physical objects, such as baking pans and clothes, were donated to the Baltimore Museum of Industry, while the remaining materials were relocated by my supervisor to a storage unit.

    Understanding that the remaining collection could not stay in a storage unit, my supervisor transferred the materials into my possession in order for me to analyze them for my thesis research. After learning more about the materials held in Special Collections at the UMBC library, I discovered that UMBC held a vast amount of Baltimore history in its archives. I decided to reach out to Special Collections about the materials in my care as I became increasingly overwhelmed with the thought of attempting to use an unprocessed collection as my main primary source for my thesis. After multiple meetings with Dr. Beth Saunders, curator and head of Special Collections, and training by Laurainne Ojo-Ohikuare, the Processing and University Archivist for the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, I was offered the opportunity to process the Exchange materials through an internship under the guidance of Dr. Saunders and Laurainne. The ultimate goal of the internship was to prepare the Exchange materials to be donated to Special Collections. My supervisor and I agreed that Special Collections would be the best fit for the Exchange materials, as the library staff consistently show not only the utmost professional care for their collections, but also take the time to engage with what is housed in their collections in various ways in attempts to promote the archives as living documents. The Special Collections reading room is also free of charge to visit and open to the public, so anyone interested in the Exchange will have ample access to its records.

    The internship was divided into multiple steps toward processing the collection. First, I went through the entire collection to complete a preliminary survey of the materials. At this stage, the materials were in unorganized piles held in five banker-sized boxes. After my initial survey, I discovered that the Exchange collection contains over 200 materials. The second step of the internship was creating a processing plan. This document consists of an abstract description of the collection, an assessment of the materials held within the collection, the provenance of the collection, and a detailed plan of how the archivist will approach organizing the collection. The third and final step of the internship was creating a finding aid for the collection. The finding aid clearly lays out what is held within a certain collection in order for researchers to easily determine the relevance of the collection to their own research. Ultimately, this internship not only allowed me to prepare and organize the Exchange collection in a professional manner for the public, but it has also allowed me to better understand the importance of preserving and making local history accessible to the public. Finally, the internship gave me the opportunity to spend time giving the attention and care needed to each material, allowing me to gain a better understanding of the Exchange as it relates to not only my personal thesis research but also to the broader history of the United States.

Here is me on August 31st, 2026 after signing the official document to donate the Exchange archives to Special Collections.