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!

Some interesting finds at the Boston City Archives

Wednesday morning I decided to speak to Marta about my blogs, what I needed to watch out for and what I needed to do more of. The main thing that she mentioned was making sure I used active over passive voice when writing my blogs. After this, I spent some time going over what I had written and editing. At this point, I’m pretty sure that I have a fair amount of blogs ready to go and writing will be much easier in the coming weeks.

When I went looking for documents this week it looked like I wouldn’t find much this time around at first. I did have the Anthony Burns papers, and Marta gave me a box of election items to look through. In that box there were two pamphlets with articles from women either endorsing Mayor Curley or Fredrick W. Mansfield. Jennie Barron, one of the women I’ve already written about, endorsed Mansfield for mayor.

There were a few very interesting finds this week. The first black man elected to the US Senate after reconstruction came from Massachusetts. Edward Brooke held office from 1967 until 1979, so it took this country over one hundred years to elect an African American to the senate after the Civil War. In the Boston City Archives we have correspondence between him and Mayor John Collins allowing me to write a post on Brooke.

I also spent some time looking through the index of the city’s documents to see if I could find anything worth writing about. I found a document from 1900 about Mrs. Roger Wolcott, who represented the city at the International Congress of Charities in Paris.

There was also as document from 1902 about the death of Mrs. Emma Stone, who came into the hospital with a floating kidney and “hysterical.” She was observed to be very nervous during her stay. During one of those nights, she woke up at midnight and jumped down a flight of stairs fracturing her thigh. After the accident, she started refusing all food and continued to be nervous. She passed away about twenty-one days later. They performed an autopsy on the body, and Emma had multiple tumors throughout her body including the lung, stomach, uterus, and ovaries. I find this really fascinating, because not only did they fail to diagnose her properly but the medical examiner had to be called in to confirm that she died of natural causes and not the thigh fracture. This way the hospital wouldn’t be blamed. I’m really excited to write about women as patients with this as my example.

Before going in next week I need to write a few blogs and do substantial research on what I can find in the archives. Doing an hour of google searching for prominent events and people is not cutting it anymore.

Settling into a Routine at the Boston City Archives

I’ve settled into a routine at the Boston City Archives. I come in, put my things away, and get settled on the computer. I spend the first half of my time editing blog posts I had written and fixing mistakes. When I’m done with that, I create a list of people and documents I can find for them. The second half of my visit is spent looking for those documents and scanning them into the computer.

That’s how this week went. I went through and edited through my posts, fixing them as Marta suggested. Then I went into the back and found multiple documents for new posts. Like last week, this week was pretty great. The first African American woman to practice dentistry in Boston was Dr. Jessie K. Garrett. I managed to find her tax records from 1939. Another woman that I found interesting this week was Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson, who went to Girls’ High School and was one of the first female African American teachers in Boston. She created Boston’s first remedial reading program and fought for black history education. I feel her blog in particular will be really interesting, mainly because I have both her graduation exercises from high school and her teacher qualifications record.

Like Crosson, Marcella Boveri and Pauline Hopkins both attended Girls’ High School. Marcella Boveri was a biologist and the first woman to graduate from MIT. Pauline Hopkins was an African American writer and part of the Harlem Renaissance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find their graduation exercises, either because that year was missing or because the exercises weren’t available that far back. On Marta’s suggestion though, I will be posting a blog just on Girls’ High School in particular and writing about famous alumni.

This week wasn’t entirely about women though. Forrester Blanchard Washington graduated from South Boston High School in 1905. Although his work was largely in Detroit, he was also one of the directors in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration during the Great Depression. His work wasn’t in Boston, but he has a Boston connection so I will be posting a short blog about him.

One of the members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives is Russell E. Holmes. I was able to dig up his Hyde Park Year Book from 1987. He was a member of the National Honor Society, captain of the basketball team, and voted Most Likely to Succeed. It’s really cool how if someone went to a Boston high school, there’s a chance I can find them in one of the yearbooks we have in the archives.

I feel as though this week I made a lot of headway for Black History Month. I plan on adding in citations and writing a few blogs before I go in next week. This way, like last time, I have the ability to look for new things more easily during my next visit.

A fruitful week at the Boston City Archives.

During this week, I came into the Boston City Archives and the first thing I did was work on the edits Marta gave me for my blogs. I also began compiling a longer blog about Margaret Sanger and the issues the Boston Public Library had when processing her autobiography. That blog is turning out to be longer than my other ones, because of how much there is in those papers.

I created a list of people that I wanted to look for in the back, and then was able to find a lot of what I was looking for. Rose Kennedy attended Dorchester High School and graduated in 1906. I was able to find her in the graduation exercises from that year. She was listed as being on the honor roll. I also took a look at the school newspaper published that year to see if she was writing for it or on any sports. Unfortunately she wasn’t, but there was two very interesting articles written in the mid 1940s that I’ll probably write blogs about. One asked girls if they think women should serve on a jury, and the other was about dieting.

I found William Monroe Trotter, a newspaper editor and civil rights activist, listed in Hyde Park’s graduation exercises from 1860. At that point, Hyde Park High School was predominantly white, but Trotter managed to do well enough to be valedictorian of his senior class. I also tried looking for Horatio J. Homer in the city records, but have yet to find him. Homer was the first African American on the Boston police force.

I really enjoyed this week. I found a lot more to work with this week than last week. I want to finish up a few blogs before going in the following week. This way like before I can get some new things started much more easily. There are documents related to the Anthony Burns case that I need to look through next week. The Anthony Burns case was one that made a lot of people question the Fugitive Slave Law. I would also really like to find Horatio J. Homer in the archives. I feel as though I am finding my groove, and I am really getting to know where I can find documents in the archives.

Continuing the Search at the Boston City Archives

This week I received my own log-in information for the computers at the Boston City Archives. Marta Crilly, my supervisor, explained that I would be doing all my work using google docs. This way it would be much easier for her to proofread and check my blogs before they get posted online. I managed to finish almost three blogs this week. The ones on Jennie Loitman Barron and a group of schoolgirls from the Franklin School in 1837 are all set. I also have one Julia Harrington Duff that I need to add a document to next week.

Marta also showed me a folder she found on Margaret Sanger, which was about her autobiography. Apparently when it was published, the Boston Public Library got a copy and began processing it, but the book was not put into circulation until years later. Before it could be put on the shelves, someone pulled it thinking that allowing it to be on the shelf would be breaking Massachusetts state law. I find anything to do with censorship really fascinating, so being able to write a blog entry about this is really exciting.

I spent some time trying to locate Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s tax records. She lived in and operated an office in Beacon Hill in 1869, and later on her and her husband moved to Hyde Park in 1880. The tax files were arranged by ward, and after finally locating the ward her street would have been on, I was not able to find her or her husband in the books. I was looking for either her husband’s name, a mention of a black doctor, female doctor, or any combination, but nothing was mentioned. By the time I got to 1876, the wards switched, so I began to hit a dead end. I would like to go back and do another search on a later date.

I did some more searching and wrote down key events that would have centered on abolitionism at Faneuil Hall during the 1800s to continue my work next week. I also continued looking through the 1837, not finding much at all this time around.

Before going in next week, I want to continue my list of events and people. This way, I have an easier time locating documents in the archives. I like the fact that my project here is a bit of a scavenger hunt with the added bonus that I might stumble upon something completely unexpected every week.

Boston City Archives: Week One

I started my internship at the Boston City Archives this past Wednesday. Marta Crilly took me on a tour of the building and then told me about the project I will be working on. My internship is social media based. I will be looking for documents in the archives that have something to do with women or famous African Americans that were either from Boston or happened to do something in Boston in preparation for Women’s History Month and Black History Month. Then, I will be writing blogs and tweets about the person/document, so they can be posted onto the City Archives’ social media accounts.

I spent my first day creating a list of women who either spent a portion of their lives in the Boston area or did something of significance that would connect them to Boston. Then with Marta’s help, I found documents that related to Julia Harrington Duff and Jennie Loitman Barron. Julia Harrington Duff was a teacher who fought for the rights of Irish-American women who wanted to be teachers in Boston when the administration went out of their way to hire women from out of the state instead. I found her teaching record from before she married to. Jennie Loitman Barron was the first woman in Massachusetts to serve as a full-time judge in the municipal court, and she was the first woman appointed to the state superior court. Before she served in Massachusetts courts, she was elected to the Boston School Committee from 1926 to 1929. Her election results showed that she had the second highest number of votes in that year’s election.

I then, began looking through the city’s records from the year 1837 in an attempt to find anything to do with the Grimke sisters or famous abolitionists. I am only a part of the way through those papers, but I looking for the word “anti-slavery” when groups asked to rent Faneuil Hall and the names of famous abolitionists. While looking for those papers, I found a letter a group of schoolgirls wrote to the Boston School Committee when their school wanted to move the girls from the Franklin School to the Johnson School. They argued why this should not happen and thirty-six of them signed their names to the letter petitioning against it. This letter would be really cool to post a blog about, especially since this happened before women had suffrage.

Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain; she also lived in Boston in 1958 with her husband. The first female African American doctor spent time in Boston as well. Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the only African American woman to graduate from New England Female Medical College and owned a practice on Joy Street in Beacon Hill. I am working on plotting the addresses on maps found at the archives and writing up two separate blog posts on each woman.

I really enjoyed getting started on this project and excited to keep going with it next week.