Reclaimed America Post #2

Its now been two months since I started working as an intern at Reclaimed America in McLean, Virginia. I have been helping find old antiques around the United States to decorate the outside of this home project that Reclaimed America is working on. I am currently set to travel up to upstate New York to bring back these two carved marble mid nineteenth century (1860-1180) urns that were held for auction at the owner Livingston estate sale. These urns were placed throughout her garden that are now going to be placed in the Bethesda’s house garden. Through finding these antiques I have learned communication skills with reaching out to the owner and have done so history on the urns to find out the age and make of them.

            In addition to traveling up and down the east coast to find antiques for this property, I have also been working with Reclaimed America on this historic property in Georgetown, Washington DC. We have been working on the landscape of this house. I have had to run errands and make copies of the proposal that they would use for their client.

            I feel that by now I have a good grasp of what this internship entails. I have much more confidence reaching out to clients and making connections with others to help Reclaimed America. I really have enjoyed working on the marketing aspect of this internship. Having to travel up and down the east coast has broaden my view of the world in a historical aspect while searching for antiques. I cannot wait to see the final result of both the historic house in Georgetown and the garden for the Bethesda house with the antique earns that I have been apart of.

Catherine Raff

Irish Railroad Workers Museum Oct-Nov

One of the projects I was given that seems to be taking up the majority of my time working at the museum is creating a digital tour.  The tour will consist of a collection of photos from inside the museum with audio recording behind it.  So far is has been planned out to take the viewer through the same sort of talk they would get if they came to the location in person.  We begin with background on the life of an Irish immigrant during the 19th century in Baltimore, with information about the Great Famine, and the jobs market that was available to them on arrival.  Then we introduce the Feeley family themselves, and talk about the life inside the home.  By displaying pictures from the collections in the 918 recreation home, we generally focus the first half on what the visitor would see if they arrived.  This ends up having a particular domestic focus, talking about the kitchen and cooking, and Sarah Feeley’s work as a washerwoman, and the children’s lives.  Then we take the viewer outside of the home, and use photos from 920 to discuss the B&O, religion, and the social life of the Irish.

Having an online tour available on websites and through app stores is becoming more and more common in recent years.  They are a given on college websites, real estate, hotels, and of course museums. These online tours can be used as sort of a preview for the actual location itself, and while they aren’t intended to replace the actual visit they offer a great deal of benefits to the public.  For the museum we hope this tour will work for several purposes.  

The first is for gaining more visitors.  By having the tour available on the website it would allow someone with general interest to see the museum before they can attend.  Or perhaps if they are planning a group trip and want to have a very clear idea of what will be shown on site, the virtual tour offers them exactly that.  Hopefully it will act as a good almost advertisement to bring people in to see the real thing, or spark questions they will want to come in and have answered.  

Another positive that this app will bring to the museum is that it makes the museum more accessible to people who may not live in Maryland or have transportation to come in person.  For people doing school projects, or independent research the online tour could be a resource for them to learn about the lives of Irish immigrants, and the visual aspect would really help with that.  

Lastly, but I think most importantly, this app would benefit this museum specifically because the houses are not handicap accessible.  And while a great fraction of our visitors seem to be senior citizens, and I have seen several groups from senior centers, there are stairs to the front door, and stairs within the house.  In 918 the original staircase is steep, spiral, and has no real railing so any slight disability would make climbing it impossible. This app would allow these visitors to see the experience what the museum has even if they cannot see for themselves.  If they arrive with the group they can still engage, form questions, see and hear what the rest of the houses have to offer.  I think this is very important for any museum to offer this to visitors, especially because historical locations can often have features that are not handicap accessible, and cannot be modified to be so.  However, since museum’s are supposed to be places for public learning they need to make sure they are are available to all the public, in every possible way that is in their means.  

I am really excited to get started on this project because I find it really important, and hopefully it will be rewarding not just for me, but for visitors to the website and house itself.  

Ending Reflections

Thinking back over the course of this internship, it has helped me to improve on conducting research as I continue the process of research for my Thesis. I also have a source of comparison in that I have done both a regular Volunteer services internship in which I did flag talks and spent the most of my time talking to visitors, and the behind the scenes research part of volunteering at Fort McHenry. While I liked doing research for it will help in the talks I give with the Fort McHenry guard along with future volunteers who want to know about Civilians and Fort McHenry I think I favor being out and talking with the public more. There were some days I felt like I had put myself in self-imposed exile, locking myself away in the library while the other volunteers handled large school groups. However there were days where I would find new information that directly involved Citizens or information that neither I nor my volunteer coordinator knew. I also had to deal with not being able to easily conduct my research on some days because the reference library also is the conference room, so I would have to take the HARP binders to another location and then have to wait till the meeting was over to switch out the binders for the next set of years. While doing the research there were points where I would be frustrated because I would go through entire years and find no mention of Civilians helping at the fort or about the areas around Fort McHenry. It would only be about money to rebuild a part of the garrison or receipts for munitions. I felt that there was a part of the forts history that was forgotten by time because it was a military garrison, Civilians visiting the fort or even working at the hospital on the grounds are not mentioned in the record or they are just a number on a pay receipt. This is especially the case when many of the laborers are African American enslaved and free. I know that if it would be a solider or a government official their name, rank and other information would be listed and you would be able to find everything about them in the record. Even without names I can construct the important role Civilians played in the history of Fort McHenry throughout its history. The information gathered in my research along with information given to me by Wendy Alexander, lead Citizen of the Fort McHenry guard will help to improve the citizen interpretation at Fort McHenry. This will ensure that the Civilian story will be told along with the military story that often overshadows the trials and struggles the Citizens of Baltimore have endured to aide and protect Fort McHenry and the City of Baltimore. For as I have seen in the public history classes I have taken the history that is forgotten in the people who do not or cannot write their own history. The problem also arises in sites like Fort McHenry, Gettysburg and
Antietam is the military history takes more importance than the Civilian history even though the battles that occurred there directly affected the Civilians living in the area. People who visit want to know about the battles and who was standing where, not about the woman who was killed by a British Bomb, running water and supplies to the men station outside the fort. This research will help preserve the stories of those who otherwise are forgotten, and I am honored to be writing and telling their stories.    

Article Reflections

To help get a deeper understanding of the process of research, public history and the National Park Service read five articles that I feel will help me as a continue on my path to writing my thesis. The first article was to understand the development of the history program of the National Park Service. Edwin C. Bearss in his article “The National Park Service and its History Program: 1864-1986: An overview catalogs the transformation of the history program of the park service into the service we know today. The most important of the programs in the development of the NPS history program was MISSION 66, a 10 year re-development of the Park Service that improved staffing, faculties and resource preservation in time for the Park Service’s 50^th anniversary (Bearss, 15). One program to come out of the MISSION 66 was the extensive research conducted for Fort McHenry and Harper’s Ferry that would become the HARP collection that I used for my primary source research. Many of the visitor centers and programs that were introduced during MISSION 66 are just now being replaced by new programs and new visitor centers, while some sites like Gettysburg and Fort McHenry have updated to new programs and visitor centers. Some of the programs and exhibits being replaced are bringing in parts of the story that in the 50s and 60s was seen as unimportant. Civilians and African Americans were one story that were left out of the narrative unless the narrative was about domestic chores or slave quarters. The change is slow coming, but it is happening, the narratives are starting to be woven into one instead of having two separate narratives of history.

            The rest of the articles speak upon the trials and problems with public history and in archival work done my museums. In “People, Historians, and Public History: Demystifying the Process of History Making” by Hilda Kean. She argues that for many public history programs the public is passive in being the receptors of history while the public historians are the agents and the active members. This makes the public unable to have free access to historical knowledge as research. Kean things this should change to where both the historian and the public who are taking part in the historical process are both active members in creating and remembering history (Kean, 26). The article then goes on to explain how Public history is taught in England which is different than in the United States. Kean teaches at Ruskin College that specializes in training people for public history with a project oriented approach (Kean 33). The college also takes people who are usually excluded from higher education or already have a profession but want to become public historians (Kean 27).  Public history in Britain tries to get citizen involvement in preserving and remember British history for they get their students to research their family background giving history a more personal connection (Kean 31).  This allows for people to break down the division between the historian and public and how they as historians are participants in events (Kean 34). I think this article gives a good way or trying to make people understand the way to make public history more accessible to the public and make them interested in history and to be active in creating their own history. “In Women’s History and Public History: The Museum Connection” by Edith P. Mayo argues that women have been in public history for centuries they have mostly preserved the history of men (Mayo 65).  Women have not been preserving their own history and when they do save aspects of their history it is out of the main historical narrative and placed in its own context of the home or Home front (68).  Mayo argues that museums could be the best conduit for women’s history because it gives people a way to see tangible women’s history in the larger historical context. The problem arises when museums want to talk about women’s history but keep it out of the main narrative of history. I can see this in the research that I did where the women and civilians are separate from the military history even though they are intertwined. Barbara Franco in “Public History and Memory: A Museum Perspective” writes that public history is “history in action and sometimes reenacted. It is history in useable, tangible, and visible forms that evoke personal and often highly emotional responses (Franco 66).” Public history also is closely related to memory and the creation of a new historical memory. People come to a museum with a notion of history that is influenced by family background and other outside factors, talking with a public historian can alter the visitor’s memory of the history. The last article shifts away from Public History and turns to Archivists and research. Eric Ketelaar argues in “Archivists Research Saving the Profession” that Archivist is more important than historians because they are the ones who choose what gets saved and what is lost forever to time (Ketelaar 328). The process that archivist follow is methodical and takes as much training to be an archivist as it does to be a historian. Archivist play a part in the preservation of the historical memory because of what they choose to save based on their own biases and upbringing (Ketleaar 326).  In doing primary research of the 18^th and 19^th century this decision of what to save and what is lost is reflected by the lack of women and African Americans in the record. Today Archivist try to be unbiased in their practice but it is impossible to be complete unbiased. After reading the article I have a deeper appreciation for Archivist, for while I am out talking to people they are spending hours preserving documents to I and other historians can use the documents to expand our historical knowledge. 

Sources Consulted: 

Bearss, Edwin C., "The National Park Serivce and its History Program: 1864-1986: An Overview,"The Public Historian 9 Vol. 2 (Spring 1987): 10-18, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3377327 

Franco, Barbara, "Public History and Memory: A Museum Perspective," The Public Historian 19 No. 2 (Spring 1997): 65-67, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3379145 

Kean, Hilda, "People, Historians, and Public History: Demystifiying the Process of History Making," The Public Historian 32 no. 3 (Summer 2010): 25-38, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2010.32.3.25

Ketelaar, Eric, "Archivistics Research Saving the Profession," The American Archivist, 63 no. 2 (Fall -Winter 2000):322-340,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/40294145

Mayo, Edith P., "Women's History and Public History: The Museum Connection," The Public Historian, 5 no. 2 (Spring 1983):66-73, http://jstor.org/stable/3377251?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#reference_tab_contents  

Civilian v.s. Military: Finding Civilians in a history of War

In conducting the secondary source research, I started back at the American Revolution and worked my way to the Civil War. Many books on the American Revolution focus on major battles and figures and not on ordinary citizens. There is even less information about Fort Whetstone because the fort did not see any major action like it would see in 1814. Maryland also did not see major combat like Charlestown or Boston. Wealthy Baltimoreans supplied supplies and money to the Army, which is seen in the primary source documents in the H.A.R.P. collection. When civilians are mentioned in aiding, the cause men are more likely to be named than women even though women, in general, are thanked for sewing clothes and bandages. The interwar years provide a challenge because Fort Whetstone was being reinforced and would eventually be torn down in the 1790s and Fort McHenry would be built in its place. For the citizens of Baltimore they would try to return to pre-war lives, merchants would begin exporting and importing again to establish connections broken during the revolution.  The focus of most books of the interwar years between the Revolution and the War of 1812 concentrate on political and maritime problems that are directly caused by the Napoleonic wars.  The War of 1812 books unless they are about Baltimore only mentions Fort McHenry at the end. Examples of these books are Walter Lord’s Dawns Early Light, Christopher T. Georges Terror on the Chesapeake or Scott Shead’s Rocket’s Red Glare. Again the mention of civilians is mostly men that made up the committee of vigilance and Safety, who were responsible for raising money for the defenses of the city and for getting supplies to the soldiers. Women again were asked to make clothing and bandages, and in September of 1814 were asked to help dig entrenched and retrieve water and food supplies. Fort Mchenry played an important role in the defense of the city holding out against a 25 hour bombardment by the most powerful navy, but one part of the story is largely forgotten in the history books.  A woman, her name, and occupation are unknown was hit by a large piece of British bomb and was killed instantly. I have only seen her mentioned in detail in the primary source material.
 History has always been concerned with men and with the military parts of history. Women, if mentioned, are in their acceptable roles in society, in the home doing domestic chores and pushing their sons to fight to protect the Unites States and Republican ideals (Frank,63). Women’s place was in the home thus making their participation in history limited to times of crisis or if they wanted to deviate from the accepted norms for women in the 19th century.  The Civil War in Baltimore saw the challenging of liberty with the suspension of Habeaus Corpus and the institution of Martial Law. Women used their position in the home to aid the war effort either by becoming spies or by urging their men to fight to preserve the Union or to aid the Confederacy.  Fort McHenry became a prison to house political prisoners and Confederate soldiers. Some of the famous prisoners of the Fort were the Governor, Mayor, and Chief of Police. There was also one female prisoner detained; her name was Susan Archer Talley. She was a poet and friend of Edgar Allan Poe (Bailey 71).  Women who acted out against the Union occupation challenged the male notions of womanhood for they were acting outside the home and posed a problem for the men that had to try and arrest them.
Trying to find Civilians in the history of a military garrison is difficult with much of the history being written about the military activities. Fort McHenry is no exception; I have found more information about the civilian involvement at the Fort with the primary sources than the secondary. Civilian populations are usually pushed down to secondary importance to the military in the history of wars. Civilian and social histories are always written separately from battle history. I found that the social history is more interesting than military history because civilians are affected longer by conflict than those fighting the battles. Civilians are the ones left behind to clean up and rebuild after the cannons and muskets cease.

Sources consulted:

“American Bastille? Fort McHenry and Civil Liberty, 1861 - 1862 :: UMBC Electronic Theses and Dissertations.” 2015. Accessed December 10. http://contentdm.ad.umbc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/ETD/id/92/rec/1.

 Frank, Andrew K ed. Early Republic: People and Perspectives. 2008. 1 edition. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. 

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.

Ohio Summer 3: Odds and Endings

One of the things I noticed most about my time in the Buckeye state was that the passion to continue to make public history available to the public, and the often tireless efforts of the small groups of people that have taken up these roles. But sometimes the willingness to help is impeded by little things like money and the disinterest of local governments, both no small obstacles. How do you overcome those? What can a small group do to try and continue to fight the good fight? The struggle was definitely real!

One key observation was the need for the continued effort to raise funds, no matter the day, month, or year, money doesn’t grow on trees, not at least for those involved in public history. Cutting costs where they can be, and raising money from every available angle, is the name of the game. One of the suggestions I made to both R.H.I. and the John P. Parker House was getting rid of the standard bank owned credit card machines and moving forward with using Square. While 4% on every credit card transaction doesn’t sound like much, it adds up quickly, compared to Square’s 1.5%. This also eliminates the need for stand alone phone lines, you can see how the savings start to filter in.

Perhaps the other thing I was constantly encouraging everyone to do was not be afraid to ask for the almighty dollar! I found some really great, yet cost effective, stand alone donation boxes for the two locations, almost immediately we saw money more and more people dropping change and bills into them, even 5 bucks a day adds up! One of the other things I encouraged was the shilling of souvenirs. I know, I know, seems like I’m a bit of a carnival barker, but selling T-Shirts and souvenir books is a cold hard fact, and today’s public historian has to be able to be both historian and pitchman, after all, those John Rankin shirts aren’t going to sell themselves.  

However for every enthusiastic supporter of history you seem to find someone who just doesn’t share your view. One of the things I found disheartening was a lack of support from the county chamber of commerce. To them, tourism just didn’t seem  important, which meant the historical sites in the county don’t receive the support they so rightly deserve. Sadly, Brown County Ohio doesn’t have a tourism director, recently phasing out both the position, and the budget. The void created means it is up to the individual organizations and museums to both market themselves, but explore new avenues, like social media, to help bring in both customers and donors. This is the cold hard facts of what we, as public historians, face in this new era of instant gratification and shrinking budgets. One of the things that all the wonderful people I met and worked with this summer taught me is that the quest for the preservation and availability of history to the public is alive and well. Creative problem solving, flexibility, and traditional ideas mixed with new techniques are the keys.

I’d like to take the time to thank some amazing people that gave me the chance to work and learn in Ohio this summer. Betty Jo Campbell and Carol Sue Stivers and the board members and staff of R.H.I.,the John P. Parker House, and the Ripley Museum, the Village of Ripley, Dr. Melissa Blair, Alison Gibson and the staff of the Ripley Public Library, the Ohio History Connection, Brian Shellum, Tasha Coldiron, Pete Renshaw, and my friends and family in Ohio for putting up with me for a few months.