By some people, museum collections (of any kind) are romanticized as being ground-breaking treasures similar in importance, most radically to the Declaration of Independence. Although those objects obviously exist, that is not exactly the reality of some manuscript collections: most of the time, the collections are simpler, maybe even anti-heroic in scope. More likely, a manuscript collection is similar to the one that I first encountered at the PEM library: a collection pertaining to the everyday life of an ordinary member of the local community.
The first collection I encountered was the Archibald Wheel Company records and Edward A. Archibald papers. The Archibald Wheel Company was a wheel manufacturer active between 1867 and 1910, founded and co-owned by Edward A. Archibald (1838-1910) of Methuen, Massachusetts. Developed in the late 1860s, the Archibald Wheel Company provided spoked wheels for wagons. The Archibald Wheel Company quickly gained favor in the industry after 1869 with their patent for the machine that created iron-hubbed wheels, serving clientele across the United States from 1870 until the 1910s.
Meanwhile, Edward A. Archibald immigrated to Boston from Canada on April 15, 1852. Shortly after moving to Boston, Archibald married Addie E. on December 24, 1857, had 8 children, and then 10 years later started the Archibald Wheel Company. Besides running the Archibald Wheel Company, Archibald served multiple positions within his community, including as a trustee for the Essex Mechanics Association (1874), and as a deacon for the North Essex Congregational Church from approximately 1866 until his death in 1910.
Sounds thrilling, right? Sure, this collection may not contain undiscovered treasure and information relating to fame and glory; this collection simply contains documents relating to the Archibald Wheel Company and Edward A. Archibald. However, as any good historian and archivist knows, the treasure lies in the simplest of words and papers, and that rings true to this collection. History is made through the actions and interactions with a person and their world, and Edward A. Archibald interacted with his 19th century world through invention and business determination.
Edward A. Archibald and his Archibald Wheel Company served multiple communities in the mid to late 19th century by providing a patented state of the art wagon wheel, and the papers in this collection prove his grandeur. Edward A. Archibald also served his community religiously, and alongside his business papers, Archibald leaves behind his thoughts on the development and status of his beliefs into the 20th century.
Without Edward A. Archibald there would be no iron-hubbed wheel, which served both domestic and military purposes. Without Archibald (and the previous owner of his collection), the PEM library would not have this valuable collection pertaining to a local man grasping the American dream and creating a better world for himself and his community. That sounds pretty heroic to me.
For the next blog post, I will be describing the actual processing of this collection and how it only took two days to completely transform this collection into something valuable for researchers.
Archives in Turn: Interns in Archives 
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