Northwest History in Unusual Places

There is nothing I like better than finding a new archive of local history--particularly when it isn't local.

Last week I tweeted a question about European museums with collections of North American Indian cultural objects. (For a possible grant proposal, I am looking for items from Plateau tribes that were collected and taken to Europe--but that is another blog post.)  Matt Shaw suggested I look at Europeana.eu, a portal to multiple European archives.

I have not found many native objects yet, but a search for Spokane turns up over 60 records!

Ole S. Weiberg, 1910

This should not surprise us. Spokane was founded as a frontier town in an era of high European immigration to the United States. The early census records for Spokane show scores of Germans, Finns, Danes, Balkans, and other Europeans. Of course they sent letters and photographs and postcards home, and of course some of these ended up in archives. Europeana.eu makes it possible to find some of these objects. Here are a few of my favorites:

This photograph is not that evocative, but the description is full of local information. From the Norwegian via Google Translate:

Description: From the USA. Letter to Severinbrauta: "Spokane, 24.07.1910. A passion greeting from Spokane, is fresh, everything well. Has amenable their letters, is very easily discovered, to write letters when it gets a bit colder, osb Warmly greeted everyone. My Address is: 1007 West 5th Av .. From Ole S. Weiberg.

The translation could be better, but this is still a rare glimpse into the life of early Spokane immigrant. A quick Google reveals that Weiberg died in 1944 and is buried in Greenwood Memorial Terrace.

This postcard is captioned "North Channel, Upper Falls, Spokane, Washington." I have not seen this image before.

The provenance and Spokane connection to this one is a little tenuous. The translated caption idetifies this woman as Marie Lyche Halseth, "mistress of Knut Halseth (f.1860)... who was called "Gold Knut" when he did so well during the gold rush there, moreover he was a trapper."

This guy was pretty well-known in his day. Google Translate: "1898 was Olaus Jeldness winner in the "Canadian Chapionship" to jump and "The Ski Race." Note the skis that are made of oak and ganasjane ... He died in Spokane, WA... Olaus was the largest ski pioneer in Canada and North America. Much discussed in the book "The Ski Race" by Sam Wormington." Here is his biography at the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame.

This makes a point that I have made before: The digital turn is having a far greater effect on the writing of local history than of any other field of historical endeavor. Digitizing records may not teach us anything new about George Washington and his Farewell Address. The relevant documents are well-known and well-analyzed and have been so for generations. But for a relatively under-researched place like Spokane, with historic records scattered across the land, this is a revolution in our understanding.

History for Sale--Exclusively!

For much of American history, the private papers of historically significant individuals usually found a home in a publicly accessible archive--when they were preserved at all. Government archives, historical societies, university archives, and sometimes libraries preserved the papers of the movers and shakers. Some few historically significant collections have found their way into private hands, but this was the exception rather than the rule.

So it is distressing to see the Elizabeth Bacon Custer manuscript collection going up for auction. From the description provided by the auction house, this is a huge and historically important collection, and one that has "never been scanned, copied or cataloged" according to the brochure from the auction house Williams & Williams. The collection includes three dozen binders of material, including letters between Libby and George Custer, her research notes and manuscripts for her books, transcripts of Custer's Civil War letters, and "the Custer's personal collection of stereoviews from the 1874 Black Hills expedition." Who even knew the latter existed?  The brochure gives tantalizing hints that there is blockbuster material in this collection as well:

• A pull-out quote, "For the love of heaven, burn this as soon as you read it," is attributed to "a love letter sent to Custer from another woman."
• The collection include a "spiral bound notebook" of 74 pages of transcripts of Custer letters, most in "old Pittman shorthand."

Libby Custer spent the long decades of her widowhood building up the myth of her late husband George Armstrong Custer, who was in truth something between a questionable officer and a genocidal maniac. Libby lived until 1933--six decades after the Battle of Little Big Horn--and devoted much of that time to writing, giving talks, and promoting a view of her late husband as an almost Christ-like figure who had given his life so that (white) others might live.

Stereoviews of the Black Hills Expedition.

However, there have always been signs that they were a much better couple after the General died than they were when he was alive. Rumor has it that this collection includes letters where George Custer threatens Libby with divorce on account of her alleged infidelity, among other items. A friend made inquiries and the starting price for the Libby Custer Collection is a quarter-of-a-million dollars. To even look at the collection you need to put down a $25,000 deposit and sign a non-disclosure agreement. Williams & Williams is marketing the material as not merely a collection but as a scoop.

What will happen next to the collection? If the historical community is fortunate, the buyer will be a well-funded private but publicly-accessible archive, and the Libby Custer Collection will become available to researches. At these prices, it seems more likely the collection will end up in private hands.

NHPRC Action Alert

I just received the following alert via email and thought I should pass it along. The National Historical Records and Publications Commission is a vital federal agency that funds the identification, description and above all the preservation of historic documents in the United States. The agency has absorbed deep cuts in recent years, and President Obama's proposed 2013 budget cuts then another 40%! Please take a moment to contact some of the people listed below, and defend American history. The Society of American Archivists has more information here.

Action Alert:

Stop the Impending Fiscal Disaster for Historical Records in the United States!
Tell the House Appropriations Subcommittee to Fund NHPRC at $5 million!

In a year in which natural disasters have rocked many parts of the United States, a fiscal disaster is brewing in Washington, D.C., for archives, manuscripts, and records organizations nationwide and for historical editing projects. The President’s FY13 appropriations budget proposes just $3 million in funding for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission grants program – a $2 million (40%) reduction from the current $5 million appropriation. This is the third year of substantial reductions for a program that is authorized at a very modest $10 million.

While most other federal agencies have been weathering hits of around 9% annually, NHPRC’s cuts have been much heftier. The result is a severe crippling of NHPRC’s ability to carry out its legal mandate – which in turn seriously impedes the capacity of states and organizations nationwide to care for our nation’s heritage and make it available for use by our citizens.

What can you do to help avert this crisis?

Submit testimony in support of restoring NHPRC funding to $ 5million. The House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee (of the House Appropriations Committee) will hold a hearing on the NARA budget on March 20, 2012. The Subcommittee will accept testimony submitted for the record, but it must be submitted by COB on Thursday, March 15, 2012, to go into the record prior to the hearing. We encourage archives, libraries, and other historical organizations to submit testimony on behalf of their organization and users. Send testimony that speaks directly to the positive benefits of NHPRC funding for your state or organization. Specific instructions on testimony are at the end of this action alert.

Email your written testimony to: FS.Approp@mail.house.gov

House Appropriations Committee, Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee

Fax or email the chair of the Subcommittee to express your support for restoration of NHPRC funding (at $5 million) as part of the National Archives budget. If your representative is a member of the Subcommittee, fax, email, or call him/her and ask for support of funding restoration for NHPRC. In your letter or call, speak to the specific benefits of NHPRC for your state/organization/users. The more your Congressperson understands that his/her constituents are affected directly, the more convincing your message will be.


Republicans:
JoAnn Emerson (Chair, MO)
Rodney Alexander (LA)
Jo Bonner (AL)
Mario Diaz-Balart (FL)
Tom Graves (GA)
Kevin Yoder (KS)
Steve Womak (AR)

Democrats:
Jose Serrano (NY, Ranking Minority)
Barbara Lee (CA)
Peter Visclosky (IN)
Ed Pastor (AZ)


Guidelines for written testimony:

• Do not exceed 5 pages, double-spaced, single-sided, 12 point font, at least one inch margins
• State in the first paragraph the agency, program, amount of money involved in the request (i.e. National Archives, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, $5 million)
• Name title, institutional affiliation at the top of the page
• Submit as a single pdf document
• Email to: FS.Approp@mail.house.gov

Conserving the Declaration

I am back from a month of travels and have much to post. But today, Happy Fourth, and take a moment to enjoy this National Archives video about preserving the Declaration:

Historian Forges the Past, Perhaps Permanently

A strange and sad story from the National Archives broke today: National Archives Discovers Date Change on Lincoln Record.

Washington, DC…Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero announced today that Thomas Lowry, a long-time Lincoln researcher from Woodbridge, VA, confessed on January 12, 2011, to altering an Abraham Lincoln Presidential pardon that is part of the permanent records of the U.S. National Archives. The pardon was for Patrick Murphy, a Civil War soldier in the Union Army who was court-martialed for desertion.

Lowry admitted to changing the date of Murphy’s pardon, written in Lincoln’s hand, from April 14, 1864, to April 14, 1865, the day John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. Having changed the year from 1864 to 1865, Lowry was then able to claim that this pardon was of significant historical relevance because it could be considered one of, if not the final official act by President Lincoln before his assassination.

NARA made an excellent short video of the discovery:



I think that NARA is handling this potential scandal exactly right by getting it all out into the open and making it a teachable moment. Over at Civil War Memory (where I became aware of this story) in the comments section Kevin Levin wonders how many subsequent historians have used this falsified document in their description of Lincoln's last days. With Google Book Search we can begin to answer the question. Lowry published his research based on the faked document in a 1999 book Don’t Shoot That Boy: Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice. In Google Books I did a search for lincoln + pardon + "patrick murphy" restricted from 1999 to 2011.

As you see there were only three hits, and one of those is Lowry's book. One of the others is Joshua Wolf Shenk's respected Lincoln's Melancholy. Shenk actually uses the false anecdote that Lowry created to offer a poignant counterpoint to Lincoln's pending assassination on the last page of the last chapter:

It is a wonderful piece of historical writing and it is a shame (and no fault of Shenk) that it is not true. Edward Steers makes similar use of the story in his 2005 book Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. "Murphy's case travelled all the way from California through the tangled military bureaucracy to reach Lincoln's desk on April 14," Steers tells us. "Lincoln studied the file and picking up his pen wrote, 'This man is pardoned and hereby discharged from service. A. Lincoln April 14 1865.' Patrick Murphy would live."

This search through Google Books is not definitive--due to copyright most recent books are available only in snippets and sections from the service and others are not available at all. Probably other recent books use the story as well. The sad thing is that now this story--doomed president granting life to a condemned soldier, only to be himself assassinated hours later--will never go away. It is in print and online, and there is no mechanism for recalling or correcting the thousands of copies of the above books. Though training and peer review should keep it out of future academic biographies, other people will find the story and repeat it in History Day presentations and seminar papers and popular biographies. Long after the disgrace of Thomas Lowry is forgotten, his rewriting of our history will endure.

Briefly Noted

Some things that I wish I had more time to explore:

• Memento is an experimental "time machine right in your web browser . . . [to] . . . explore content from a date in the past" according to the Library of Congress.
  
• Google Earth 6 is turning heads (see above)with its scary-good integration of street view into the virtual world. But not all the street views available in Google Maps show up in Earth yet.
  
• Building on Google Earth 6, HistoryPin allows you to "pin your history to the world" by inserting historic photographs into the street view. I am so going to do this with a class.
  
• Did you see where the FCC came out today with a very strong statement of support for net neutrality? Change I can believe in.
  
• ...and I have been meaning to tell you all that my employer, the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, is tweeting. I mostly write the tweets, and so far they have focused on exploring the 92 million digital objects in our collection. I may be a while. Follow us here.

Thoughts on the National Archives Web Redesign

The National Archives is undertaking an interesting project--asking the public to vote on their webpage redesign. They have narrowed the choices to four designs and are bringing in the public as part of an admirable open government initiative. There is even a discussion forum (please vote up my request that they not use Flash!).

I applaud the idea but the implementation is flawed. The designs as presented are too small to discern much, and the links to larger images do not work update: the links are fixed. The larger images are PDF files hosted at Google Docs, which won't tell us much about the usability of the sites. (Sample question: Will any of these use Flash? Hope not!)

What I really do like however is the is the data analysis and feedback section about web redesign they released, which is a rich if disorganized set of information about NARA and its users. I also like that each design incorporates social media features and includes content that will be constantly refreshing, such as "latest blog posts."

If you have a few minutes and care about out national archive, go check out the redesign page and cast your vote.

Northwest Archivists, Inc. - Annual Meeting

The Northwest Archivists Annual Meeting is taking place in Seattle April 28-May 1. This year's meeting is the "Western Roundup" a multi-regional gathering that will bring together the Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists, the Northwest Archivists, the Society of California Archivists, and the Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists. There is even a scholarship to help graduate students attend the conference.

Also: The Northwest Archivists have a digital newsletter that features archival job opportunities and events.

Interview with Iraqi Archivist Saad Eskander

Archivists in the United States have to deal with declining budgets, political interference, and technological challenges--but we have it easy! Check out this fascinating interview with Saad Eskander, Director-General of Iraq’s National Library and Archives. He has worked to rebuild a scattered national archives admidst car-bombing, assassinations and kidnappings. His inspiring story comes via WBUR and NPR's On Point radio program with Tom Ashbrook.

Eskander seems to be doing a media tour to put pressure on the U.S. government to return some Iraqi documents taken after the war. You can read an Guardian profile of him here and his diary is online at the British Library.

A Great Archival Find

Archives are like treasure rooms that have not been fully explored. This article from the Winston-Salem Journal reminds us of the importance of funding and programs to develop archival holdings and make them public.

Cherokee Revealed - Translated Moravian records disclose a forgotten history: In front of the house stands a long, open shed covered with clapboards adequately provided with benches and other seats, as well as a raised plank for writing on. The Talk was held under this shed. At a short distance from this stands a tall pole. A designated Indian took his position at this pole with a drum, and beat the drum as a sign of the beginning of the meeting. He kept drumming until Indians were seen coming in lines. In the heat, the Indians used turkey wings in stead of fans to make a breeze for themselves. -- Report from Abraham Steiner, a Moravian missionary to the Cherokee at Springplace, Ga., May 22, 1801, translated from the German.

The Moravian Archives in Winston-Salem have a website, but unfortunately none of the translated documents are available. A tip of the hat to Suzanne Fischer for making me aware of this story.

Picture is from the linked story, where it has this caption:
"This map showing the settlements of the Cherokee Nation was drawn by Moravian missionary John Daniel Hammerer and is dated to 1766."