Being a Social Media Intern at the Boston City Archives

After switching into the archives program and speaking with Professor Morgan, I was able to do an internship early at the Boston City Archives located in West Roxbury. My eventual capstone project will have something to do with digital archives and/or Peace Pilgrim, and by doing my internship early I was able to get an idea of what both the field and digital archives was like. My project focused on collecting documents having to do with Black and Women’s History, so they could be posted in the coming year.

On my first day, Marta Crilly, the Archivist for Reference and Outreach, gave me a tour of the BCA and showed me where I could find documents. During that first month, I got used to the catalog and figured out where people or events could be found. Someone like Julia Harrington Duff, a teacher who fought for Irish-American, female teachers, would be found in the teacher qualification records. I also found Julia in the city documents, as she served on the Boston School Committee in the early 1900s. Unfortunately, the Grimke sisters were nowhere to be found and I could not locate Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s tax records. However, I saw September as a positive first start, as I managed to write seven blogs including ones on schoolgirls from the Franklin School and William Monroe Trotter.

An example of what High School Graduation records looked like.

In October, I managed to find three neat tricks to help me track down some of Boston’s finest. The first of which included looking for famous alumni of Boston public schools. I found alumni from South Boston High, Girls’ High, and Hyde Park High. This tended to graduation records, but state representative Russell Holmes’ happened to have a yearbook in the BCA. Some graduation records were missing, but I still made use of knowing who went where. By using a photo of Girls High’ or a document from the Phillips School, I wrote a blog about alumni who went to those schools later on in my internship. Others I managed to find listed on other documents, like Melnea Cass who attended Girls’ High.

Second, I realized that photographs could easily be used as documents, especially because they are a nice visual to accompany a blog post. When writing about Bobbi Gibb and Katherine Switzer, the first women to run the Boston marathon, I included a photo of Lisa Rainsberger, the last American woman to win the marathon. The John F. Collins album on the BCA flickr page was a gold mine. The Boston mayor met so many famous people during his term in office. This included Julia Andrews, Anna May Wong, and swing musicians. By using these photos, I was able to write about topics I would not have been able to otherwise.

The third trick I learned in October carried over to November. In the middle of the month,
Marta came to me with folders she had found in the John Collins’ papers from the Civil Rights Movement. These documents were things like Collin’s reaction to Selma, letters from CORE about housing inequality in Roxbury, and documents from the NAACP. Looking at records from mayors, then going by folder names and important years, actually turned up far more information than looking for people directly. That same month I found

Eunice Shriver with Mayor Flynn.

Melnea Cass’ eulogy and documents from Eunice Shriver’s Special Olympics in the Kevin White papers. In November, I continued finding documents in Kevin White’s records. I found things I could use on women’s issues and items from the Boston Centennial celebration.

Right before October ended, I posted my first blog and did some actual sleuthing. Marta noticed that it was Edward Brooke’s birthday on October 26, so we took the blog I had written and posted it on the BCA Tumblr page. I learned how the BCA announced blog posts on the Facebook and Twitter pages. Instead of using Twitter directly, Marta normally uses a separate website to post tweets. That website allows her to clearly see any favorites and retweets without clicking separate links. I also learned how to source material and schedule posts on social media.

The application requesting use of Faneuil Hall, sent by Ida M. Hebbard, president of the Housekeepers League.

As for the sleuthing, I found the name of a woman on an application to use Faneuil Hall from the Housekeepers League. Using both google and the Newspaper Archive online, I managed to track her down. Ida M. Hebbard was the president of the Housekeepers League, but this League was not just a group of housekeepers or housewives. They were wives and mothers who were concerned about the prices of household goods. Articles in The Boston Globe and The Boston Post during World War I stated that she lead the group in various boycotts to decrease the prices of goods, advocated for the Bob Veal Bill, and noticed violations in the way food was stored. Ida, extremely influential in Boston in 1910s Boston, is as of right now barely remembered by Bostonians. The fact that I brought back her memory is something I’m extremely proud of.

These are the articles from The Boston Globe/Boston Post I used if anyone would like to take a look:

“Coal Dealers Put the Blame on Mine Men.” Boston Evening Globe, May 29, 1917
“15,000 Women Banded in Fight Against H.C.L.” The Boston Globe,  May 12, 1917
“Potato Boycott by Housekeepers.” The Boston Globe, January 27, 1917
“To Start Probe of Cold Storage Foods.” Boston Post, December 5, 1916
“Watch on Legislators.” Boston Post, March 17, 1917
“Women Who Let Fight For ‘Bob Veal’ Bill” The Boston Globe, February 22, 1917

I continued writing more and more as my internship was coming to a close. In addition to the forgotten Ida M. Hebbard, I found

Grace Lorch(left) with Elizabeth Eckford(right), one of the Little Rock Nine.

military enlistments from the 5^th Regiment Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry, the creator of the Drop-a-Dime hotline Georgette Watson, the first Black female firefighter Karen Miller, and Grace Lorch who was a white escort for the Little Rock Nine. Marta told me that she had expected me to write two or three blogs per week for Black History Month and Women’s History Month, but by the end of my internship I had exceeded her expectations by writing a blog for every day in February and March. I kept on finding more and more information at the Boston City Archives, and I enjoyed challenging myself to write more.

A list of some of the recruits for the 5th Regiment Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry.

During any given day, I would watch the research room, while doing my work. So I gained experience watching researchers and making sure everyone handled documents correctly. In addition to this, Marta began giving me small tasks as I had some extra time. These tasks included answering requests to find relatives in the city employee list or looking through building permits to see if there were any precedents set on a lot someone had recently bought. I realized while doing these tasks that I really enjoyed acting as a bit of a detective for the public.

Until I did this internship, I didn’t know that it was the documents and the preservation of those documents (not writing about those documents) that made me want to “go into history.” By working at the Boston City Archives, I learned how to become a better writer, what working in an archive entailed, and how to serve the public. I began to see myself there and enjoyed going there. While the idea of what career I want is still foggy, I do know that wherever I end up working needs to involve archives or some aspect of it.

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Sources:

Closing Exercises of the Boston Girls’ High School, 1918, Graduation programs, Collection 0400.004, Boston City Archives

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cityofbostonarchives/9501948539/in/photolist-ftDYfX
Mayor Raymond L. Flynn records, Collection #0246.001, City of Boston Archives, Boston

Application from the Housekeepers League, January 7, 1913, Box 1, Petitions to use Faneuil Hall 1912-1914, Applications to use Faneuil Hall 4320.001, Boston City Archives

Max Brantley, “Lee Lorch, a figure in Little Rock’s ‘57 crisis, dies at 98.” Arkansas Times, March 02, 2014

Lists of Recruits, March 1864, Box 18, Folder 118, Town of Dorchester records 1100.001, Boston City Archives

My Final Day at the Boston City Archives

Wednesday was my final day at the Archives. I spent a portion of my time editing the blogs I had sent to Marta earlier this week. I managed to get to my goal of having twenty-eight blogs for Black History Month and thirty-one blogs for Women’s History Month. Unfortunately, the one that I had written for Anna May Wong disappeared. I just finished rewriting it. I also just sent a message to Marta that both it and my Malcolm X blog are ready to be looked over. Once she gets back to me with edits and I fix them, I’ll be done with my internship.

Second, I made copies of some more documents to go with my New England Female Medical College, New England Hospital for Women and Children, and Rebecca Lee Crumpler blogs. As you may remember, earlier this fall I tried and failed to find Rebecca in the tax records. She was the first African American female doctor in the country. Although I was not able to find a document with her name on it, I decided I could still write about her with a document from the New England Female Medical College. I incorporated a petition from the students, trustees, and teachers sent to the city asking to use Boston City Hospital. This was the third petition the school sent to the city, and it was rejected. I was able to surmise that Rebecca Lee Crumpler like other students at the school would not have had the same educational opportunities as male students attending medical schools in the area, and even with the disadvantages, Rebecca was able to succeed.

Third, I spent a lot of time creating a schedule for both February and March. I looked up important dates, like birthdays, deaths, important events in people’s lives, historical events, and national days. For example, February 1 happens to be National Freedom Day, and the day Lincoln signed the 13^th Amendment. So the blog for the 5^th Cavalry will start off Black History Month. As a side note, I could not find any additional information on Betsey, but by mentioning her, I was able to say that African American women were active in the Civil War. National Doctors Day is on March 30, so that’s when the blog for the New England Female Medical College will be posted. I tried to find as many connections as I could and schedule blogs correctly. When I could not find any more, I placed blogs on days where it would best fit with what was already scheduled.

Finally, I created two new files for my blogs. In these files I ordered everything for Women’s History Month and Black History Month separately. Everything was also ordered chronologically to how it will be posted throughout both months. I went through and checked to make sure all citations and sources were correct. If any citations were missing, I went in and added them.

By the end of my day, everything was basically set for Marta to post on Black and Women’s History Month. Once I finish the edits for Malcolm X and Anna May Wong, everything will be complete. I really enjoyed my internship at the Boston City Archives. I did a lot of researching, writing, and learned a lot. I even did some small tasks for researchers. I am so grateful for having this opportunity and all the time I spent at the Archives.

Who exactly was Betsey?

Most of what I did this week was just gathering the last bit of information that I needed. I found the teaching record for Grace Lorch, who was one of the white escorts during the events at Little Rock. I plotted Malcolm X’s Roxbury home on a map, so I could write something on him. The most interesting part of this week though was finding information on the 5^th Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War.

Everyone knows about the 54^th Regiment as because of the movie Glory starring Mathew Broderick, but Massachusetts actually had three African American regiments during the Civil War. This included the 54^th Infantry Regiment, 55^th Infantry Regiment, and the 5^th Colored Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. I spent time looking through the records for the then town of Dorchester during the war and found so many records for the 5^th Colored Cavalry.

There were documents listing men from Dorchester who had enlisted, and those included a Stephen Jacobs and a Betsey Smith. Stephen and Betsey enlisted together. Stephen’s form said he had originally come from Virginia, and Betsey said her home was Africa. The fact that Betsey had written Africa after the slave trade ended was really interesting. I did some digging and found out that she went into the war as a private and left with the rank of private. I could not find anything specific online about whether nurses in the Civil War had ranks, so I could not pinpoint what Betsey actually did in the war, if she was a nurse, cook, or something entirely different. Other documents found on Ancestry showed me that she was in the hospital during a portion of the war.

I’m glad I found another mystery to keep me occupied for this coming weekend. I will be digging around to see if I can figure out who Betsey was or if there is any information on her. All my blogs have been mapped out as well, so I will be writing fourteen more and sending them to Marta to edit. As long as I keep writing, there will be a blog for every day of the month for both Women’s History Month and Black History Month.

Just a few things at the Boston City Archives

As I have done more than expected, Marta has started giving me small tasks researching various requests for the public. There were two this week.

For the first one, I went into the back to look through building permits. A woman had recently bought a house and was wondering if there was anything built there before. She would like to build something there, and by looking at the permits, she’d be able to establish if there was any precedent for it. Unfortunately there was only a permit for a house a few house numbers away and none for the house she had bought. Marta told me that we would still send the information that we found, as house numbers could have changed.

The second task required looking though the list of city employees from 1925 and 1931 to find someone’s relative who used to work for Mayor Curley. I went though the public works department for both those years and managed to find the name in the sewage department. In 1925, he was a laborer, but by 1931, he was both a labor and chauffer in the same department. I scanned both lists on the book scanner and forwarded them to Marta, so they could be sent on their way.

I did some additional research as well this week. I found a few more things for Black History Month like Florida Ruffin Ridley’s teaching record, information on Jane Edmond, and an invitation from the Black Congressional Caucus for Kevin White. Ridley was an African American suffragette, Edmond worked under Kevin White who later supported Mitt Romney for president and Aretha Franklin happened to be one of the organizers for the Caucus. I also noticed that I had enough material for five more Women’s History blogs. Maybe I will make it to sixteen more blogs by the end of my time at the Boston City Archives after all.

After scanning the new material and writing a bit, Marta allowed me to leave early as it was the day before Thanksgiving.

Constantly writing at the archives

By the end of Wednesday, I had written a total of eleven more blogs, five for Women’s History Month and six for Black History Month. This puts my total at nineteen for Black History Month and twenty-two for Women’s History Month. If I write just one more for each one, I’ll have a blog for every weekday of the corresponding month!

Of course I’d like to keep writing. If I’m going to get to my larger goal for writing a blog for every day of the two months, I’m going to need to find topic for and write sixteen more blogs before my time at the Archives is over. There are some photographs of important people in the Boston City Archives’ flickr account that I could write about. That is where I have gotten some of my leads for a few of my blogs. I recently wrote about Georgette Watson, who created the Drop-A-Dime anonymous tip hotline in Boston during the 1980s. There is a photograph of her holding her certificate of achievement from the city on flickr. I also plan to look into the Kevin White records again, this time looking through some of the folders labeled “Black Issues” or similar titles to that.

In addition to writing, I went into the back attempting to find a few things. I knew that Otto P. Snowden fought during the Second World War and was discharged in 1944. I tried finding his discharge papers, hoping he was discharged in Boston. Unfortunately he was not.  I also tried to find Doris Bunte’s trial documents from when she sued the mayor of Boston. She was the first black woman to be a Massachusetts state representative and administrator of the housing authority. Mayor Raymond Flynn had fired her for “misconduct in office,” and she sued, won and was reinstated to her position in the housing authority. Unfortunately I was not able to find either the box with her trial documents or the original appointment to her job. Hopefully when I look again next week, I might find them.

I’ll be doing some work at home this week, editing much of what I wrote on Wednesday and brainstorming ideas of what else I can search for in the archives.

Organizing blogs at the Boston City Archives

My day at the Archives this week was spent focused on organization. I went through all the documents I had gathered and put them all into different folders. For example, the documents for Margaret Sanger went into the ‘Blog on Margaret Sanger’ folder and the documents for John F. Collins’ response to Selma went into the ‘Blog on Selma’ folder. I also made sure that any new blogs I wrote that day had the file names for the documents listed under each blog.

After some organization, I spent a lot of time trying to create a schedule for how I wanted the blogs to be posted. I decided that for Black History Month, there would be four or five more positive blogs in between anything that was on slavery or an event during the Civil Rights movement. This way Black History Month would focus more on the positive than the negative. The schedule starts off with the 1850s and ends with current influential, African American Bostonians.

Women’s History Month looks a bit random, but there are connections throughout the month. For example, Rose Kennedy’s blog is before anything on Dorchester High School, and Jennie Loitman Barron comes before the Curley Reelection post as she endorsed Curley’s opponent in the election. For the most part each blog is interconnected, except for the post on Helen Keller/Sarah Fuller, which will be posted on Fuller’s birthday and the post on the Boston Marathon, which will be posted last as the marathon happens the month after Women’s History Month.

Lastly, I spent some time planning out what kinds of blogs I want to write before my internship ends. Since I’ve been moving ahead of schedule, I want to challenge myself to have a blog for every day of each month except weekends. If I manage to do that, I might aim to have blogs for weekends as well if I have time.

I found some information on the first female firefighter in Boston during all this planning and the Vulcan Society of MA, an organization for African American and minority firefighters. So that’s two more blogs for Black History Month!

I want to write a lot in the next few days, so I can focus on finding documents and making copies when I get in on Wednesday. I love how much I’m learning about Boston during my time at the city archives!

Sourcing blogs and a side project at the Boston City Archives

Marta got back to me this week with some edits I needed to do for the last group of blogs I did. So I spent the first part of the day editing. I also added sources and the names of the document files being used for each blog to the end. While I was adding sources, I realized that I was missing a few. This involved me going back to the back room and grabbing the original sources to recopy them. I honestly have no idea what happened to the original documents.

While I was grabbing the documents that had gone missing, I managed to get my hands on a few boxes from the Boston US Centennial celebration from 1976 and the Kevin White records. In the Boston 200 box, there was documentation of the Mary Dyer opera and a black gospel group, the Helen Hollins singers. Inside the Kevin White records, I found documents about the first female deputy mayor, Katherine Kane. I also found documents about the Equal Rights Amendment that never passed.

Marta asked if I wanted to take a break from my usual stuff, since I’m ahead of where she expected I’d be. This side job involved looking for someone’s grandmother in The Temporary Home for Women and Children from the early 1900s. I looked for the grandmother and the grandmother’s best friend. At first I didn’t seem to find either, but I did some google searching. The person, who requested the information, posted about it online, and mentioned that her grandmother was listed on documents by two different names. So I looked for the second name and found it. I also found the best friend after searching a second time. The dates didn’t quite seem to match up, but I still copied the information down and it was sent to them. Dates could easily be miscounted, and this way they have a chance to see what was found before saying it isn’t right.

I spent the rest of my time scanning documents, continuing to make sure everything was correct source wise, and writing. Before next week, I hope to finish a few blogs for the documents I found this week and come up with what else I could search for or expand.

Sleuthing at the Boston City Archives

I posted my first blog this week! Marta had noticed that it was Edward Brooke’s birthday on Wednesday and approached me with posting the blog onto the tumblr page that morning. I posted it after some editing, and Marta also showed me how to link the blog post on twitter and facebook as well. The link for the blog is right here: Edward Brooke

This week I also got to do a bit of sleuthing. I began to go through a box with denied or withdrawn applications to use Faneuil Hall. I found so many applications I could use for blogs, like ones that mentioned the Ladies Garment Workers, Jane Addams, and women’s suffrage. Most interesting was a request from Ida M. Hebbard who was the president of the Homemakers League. I’ve been googling any name I come across, just in case I find something interesting, and I am really glad I did with this one.

After googling Ida, I found out that the Homemakers League was not a group of housekeepers, but a group of wives and mothers. Ida led the group in multiple boycotts and protests against the increasing prices of household goods during World War I. One of the articles in The Boston Globe said the Homemakers League was boycotting potatoes until they went from 70 cents a peck to 35 cents a peck, and another mentioned how they were attempting to combat the rising prices of coal. Ida was also at the forefront of a lot of food safety issues. She advocated for the Bob Veal Bill, which prohibited the sale of calves weighing less than sixty pounds, and she noticed a violation in the way cold food was being stored, which caused prices to decrease as these violations were investigated by the state.

Finding Ida was really exciting. It allowed me to do a bit of historical sleuthing and find someone who had been relatively forgotten, which is my favorite part of being a historian. I’m so glad someone who did so much will be remembered again.

Other than all that, I wrote blogs for Jane Addams and Mel Kings. I finally finished the dockets from 1837 and looked through 1840. I did not find too much in either, but I do have a lot to look for next week. I’ll be looking through documents from Kevin White’s papers for more ideas for Women’s History Month, as White was mayor of Boston during the 1970s.

Catching up at the City Archives

I decided to spend most of my time this week writing. I wrote a total of seven blogs. A lot of the blogs were using images from flickr like the ones I found in the John F Collins album of The Supremes and Julie Andrews. I combined pictures of Erroll Garner and Cab Calloway to write a blog on jazz music. I had also found a picture of Deval Patrick, so I figured writing about the first African American governor of Massachusetts would be a good idea.

Some of my blogs were using both pictures from the flickr page and documents I had found. For example, I have pictures of Melnea Cass and Eunice Kennedy. I mentioned last week that I had documents from the Special Olympics for Eunice. The eulogy Kevin White wrote when Melnea passed away was also in the Kevin White collection.

This is only a sampling of the blogs I was working on this week. In addition to this, I created a list of blogs I had finished and ones I still needed to do. This way I would have a visual of how many blogs I had for both women and blacks, and how many documents I had found for both.

According to my list I had found a lot more documents for Black History Month than Women’s History Month. The second portion of my day was looking for a way to make up the difference. Unfortunately things did not go as planned. The document I found for Isabella Stewart Gardner did not look great visually and was a bit confusing to read. It would not have made for a good document to put in a blog. I tried finding one of the first female school supervisors, but as Lucretia Crocker taught in the 1850s, the archives did not have records for teachers that went back that early.

I also tried to find Rebecca Lee Crumpler again. I had not found her in the tax records in early September, and figured I would try looking at the documents for married women who owned businesses. I only had a chance to take a quick glance, but her years were not available. I could only find documents starting from 1891 and Rebecca would have opened her doctor’s office in the 1860s/70s. I may attempt to find her again next week.

Searching for documents was not completely in vain this week though. I found photos of Sarah Fuller with Alexander Graham Bell. Sarah had given Helen Keller her first speech lessons. There were also photos of Helen Keller. Next week I hope to look through documents requesting use of Faneuil Hall that were denied. I’m hoping a women’s group requested use of the hall, because the years involved are so close to suffrage. I’ll also be looking through dockets from 1840 for the fair that Sarah Josepha Hale organized to help build the Bunker Hill monument.

Documents from John F. Collins and Kevin White at the Boston City Archives

I feel as though by the end of this internship, I’ll have all the recent Boston mayors memorized! I’ve looked through documents and pictures that have mentioned everyone from James M. Curley up until Thomas Menino so far. I spent a lot of time looking at the files of John F. Collins and Kevin White this week.

A lot of Collins’ files deal with civil rights as he was mayor during most of the 1960s. I found a letter with Collins’ reaction to what happened in Selma. There were also documents about CORE helping African American residents of Roxbury deal with housing rights and slumlords. The group met with Collins’ to discuss what could be done about the situation there.

I read multiple letters from racists giving advice Collins’ advice on how he should deal with civil rights. Those will definitely not be included with what I choose to write about! However, it is really interesting how the arguments bigoted people use never really seem to change all that much.

Within the Kevin White papers I found some documents on Melnea Cass, a social activist from West Roxbury. I also found letters from Eunice Kennedy-Shriver on the Special Olympics. I figured if the matriarch in the Kennedy family had documents at the Boston City Archives, then why wouldn’t her daughters? I’m really glad I went with that thought, because I found useful items on Eunice.

I also spent some time this week looking the flickr album the archives has. The bulk of what I found was in the John F. Collins album. There were so many pictures of Collins with famous athletics, musicians, and actors! He met famous people like The Supremes, Julie Andrews, Thai royalty, Boston Celtic players, and so many more. I’m really glad there are so many photographs, because they lend to a really good visual when posting blogs.

I’ve found so many documents and photographs recently, but this means that I’ll probably be writing a lot in the coming weeks!