By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

For today’s blog, I’d like to give you a behind-the-scenes peek at the work of archivists, specifically some of the small challenges we face in processing and preserving manuscripts for researchers. Collections come to us in all shapes, sizes, and physical conditions. While the work is interesting and rewarding, you may be surprised how long it takes to get a collection ready for use. Here are a few of the issues that make our jobs a little harder.

First, let’s talk about processing. Processing involves physically arranging a collection and describing its contents in a catalog record or collection guide. Imagine taking the carton shown above, removing all the letters from their envelopes, arranging them chronologically, identifying correspondents and subjects, etc. So, what are the most common hurdles?

1. Undated manuscripts. I give this issue pride of place in my list because of how common and how frustrating it is. Archivists may be able to date a letter based on a postmark (if we still have the envelope), a partial date, or internal clues, such as the passing mention of a recent event. The black border on the letter pictured here tells us a relative of the writer has recently died. However, archivists don’t read all the letters in a collection and seldom have time to do the digging necessary to date undated letters.
2. Unattributed manuscripts. I’ve seen this primarily with diaries, which is understandable. After all, most people probably don’t think their diaries will ever be read by anyone else. (God forbid!) But so much information is lost without this context. Who was this person? What experiences did they live through? Like letters, diaries can often be identified with some investigation, but it’s time-consuming.
3. Unidentified photographs. I wrote a few years ago about processing a large collection of family photographs and having to identify the baby pictures of three sisters who looked almost identical. We see so many terrific photographs come through our doors, it’s a shame when we can’t tell you who’s in them.

4. Difficult/illegible handwriting. Archivists get better at this with practice, but it never really stops being tricky. If you’re responsible for processing a large collection of someone’s papers, you’ll become intimately familiar with their handwriting and the way they form certain letters, but then you’ll move on to the next collection and start all over again. Centuries-old writing sometimes barely even looks like English.

5. Cross-writing. It was very common for correspondents, when they were running out of space but had a little more to say, to return to the first page and write across it at a 90-degree angle, as shown in this letter by Margaret Fuller. In this example, the end of the letter is right on top of the beginning. I’ve seen many variations of this, including writers who scribble along the margins or even turn a letter upside down and write in the gaps between the lines.
6. Duplicate copies. For modern collections, one of the biggest problems is excessive duplication. A collection, particularly the records of an organization, will usually contain multiple photocopies of documents that take up unnecessary space and need to be weeded.

Next up is preservation, the key to the long-term survival of our collections. Preservation encompasses everything from conservation—the physical repair of individual documents—to temperature and humidity control, light management, and the selection of acid-free enclosures. It also includes all the little steps we processing archivists take to ensure that a given document lasts as long as possible.

7. Acidic paper. Newspaper clippings, as they deteriorate, will not only become more brittle themselves, but they’ll also emit acid that does the same thing to the papers that touch it. You’ll see the pattern of staining on documents that have lived next to clippings for a period of time. It’s not just newspapers, either; the same kind of poor-quality wood-pulp paper was used for telegrams and some 20th-century copy paper. MHS archivists generally, time-permitting, photocopy newspaper clippings and remove the originals, or at least isolate any acidic paper.
8. Onion-skin paper. This unmistakable thin paper was common in airmail because of its light weight. It was also used for carbon copies of typed business correspondence. The ink on these copies is frequently faint to the point of illegibility, and the paper tears very easily.

9. Metal fasteners. Ah, staples and paper clips. I often think archivists should be sure to keep up with their tetanus shots. Some past recordkeepers even used straight pins to attach pages together. And if a collection has been kept in a damp and/or warm environment before coming to the MHS, the rust (and rust stains) resulting from these metal fasteners can be epic. Rubber bands get an honorable mention here, too, because as they dry and harden, they will also stain paper. When fasteners are necessary, we use plastic paper clips.
10. Post-it® notes, tape, and other forms of adhesive are dangerous for paper even after they’ve been removed. Some residue of the adhesive remains on the paper and will damage it over time. Best to avoid them altogether.

11. Red rot. Red rot is what happens to leather that has been exposed to humidity and/or high temperatures. This image shows how poor the condition of leather-bound volumes can become. Red rot is also, as any archivist or special collections librarian can tell you, a huge mess; it will crumble onto shelves, desks, your clothes, everything. Volumes that are literally falling to pieces can’t be handled by researchers, so the MHS measures each volume and orders custom-fitted cases.
12. Organic material. More than a few collections contain other forms of organic material, such as leaves and flowers pressed into volumes, as well as locks of human hair. These items are removed.

This is only a partial list; I haven’t mentioned digital records or issues related to the reference side of things. If my fellow archivists or librarians out there want to add anything in the comments, you’re more than welcome!

By Rakashi Chand, Senior Library Assistant

MHS library staff members answer reference questions from far and near through e-mail, chat, mail, social media, and by phone on a daily basis. While working on one such reference question, I needed to consult a box from the Ellery Sedgwick papers. Sedgwick was the Editor of America’s most noteworthy literary magazine in the early 20th century, the Atlantic Monthly. As I read through the names of correspondents in the collection guide, one name jumped out at me. This was a name that I know well but never thought I would see at the MHS: Rabindranath Tagore. ‘Could this be?’ I thought to myself. As an Indian-American raised in the United States, I have always admired Tagore so I was astounded by this serendipitous discovery.  

Ranidranath Tagore was and is India’s literary giant. Tagore was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1913, the first non-European to be awarded a Nobel Prize, in any category. Tagore was knighted by King George V in 1915. He renounced the knighthood in 1919 in response to the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre when British troops gunned down hundreds of innocent Indians. A supreme hyphenate, Tagore was a poet, writer, spiritualist, and artist, and he wrote the Indian national anthem. Tagore helped define the culture of modern India. He represented India in his travels and lectures around the world, not as a British colony, but as a unique country with a long history, rich culture, and a diverse people. Cumulatively, Tagore spent the greatest amount of time outside of India in the United States over a series of three trips.  

I eagerly awaited the arrival of the offsite box and was filled with elation when it arrived.  The letters, five in total, plus one from his private secretary, span the years 1914 to 1930.  

Most of the letters discuss submissions to be published in the Atlantic Monthly. One letter dated 12 October 1930 was very unusual and intriguing. In it Tagore writes to Sedgwick as a friend seeking guidance on how to handle the American media. In this letter, Tagore reveals his thoughts not only about his experience of coming to America, but what he feels as an Indian in America at that moment in time trying the grasp and understand American culture. The letter is magnificent in depth, intimacy, and detail. Please see below for an unofficial transcription. The letterhead is of Williamstown, Mass. where Tagore would have been staying at the time.  

Williamstown 

Massachusetts Oct. 12, 1930 

My Dear Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, 

Some time ago while travelling in Europe I got your letter and in a fury of movement I completely forgot that I had not answered it. Can you forgive me? 

I hope I shall be able to elbow my way to a meeting with you while I am here and shall have the opportunity of a talk. In the meanwhile I ask your friendly advice in my present state of helpless bewilderment. Let me state my case in brief. 

Directly my steamer came to the dock in New York, my cabin was invaded by a host of strangers before I could guess their intention and adequately prepare myself for the attack. In my own country I am used to  such unannounced and unforeseen catastrophe. We are a democratic people with our doors open to all kinds and conditions of men. My position in the world offers no barricade against intrusion into my privacy, interruption of my work or disturbance of my peace of mind. So with a spirit of resignation which has become habitual to me, I silently suffered these unexpected guests of mine to fill up all of the available space in my cabin. At first, in my pathetic vanity, I though it was deputation from some committee which tried in its own manner to express its obligation to offer me welcome at the moment of my reaching your shore. But their object was made clear to me when they brandished their pencils and notebooks and began to question me about matters that were personal to myself or that concerned my own country. I meekly accepted the inevitable decree of my fate and did my best to satisfy their curiosity in as clear a language as was in my ability to use. Let me assure you that I did not court this publicity nor did I appreciate it as a favour. However, the next day to my painful surprise I found in the first newspaper that came to my hands my words twisted to give a contrary suggestion to what I tried to convey to them. Then I came to know from my friends that several other newspapers have followed the same track of misinterpretation on questions vitally important for my people and for the cause of truth. I am sorely puzzled. I cannot ascribe this to a sudden epidemic of unintelligence among the American reporters and my vanity forbids me to think that I failed to make my meaning clear specially on points which would lead to mischief if vaguely expressed. I fully know that all earlier misinformations have the advantage over the contradictions that follow later as the wound creates a deeper impression than the bandage. And yet I did send my own original version to one of the most important of these papers and waited for its appearance on the next morning. But I find that they are not as prompt in publishing the correction as they have been in giving currency to the wrong statement. I am a simple man from the East and I hate to carry in my mind distrust against any section of your community specially the one whose duty it is to supply information to the public. I tell you truly it has made me feel afraid, for I do not know the technique of your public life and it tires me to be always on my guard. I am beginning to feel like a pedestrian from my country trying to walk in his own absent-minded manner in some busy street in New York and suddenly finding some necessary portions of his limbs disappearing in the dust. I only wish I could laugh at my misadventure, but that has become impossible even for an oriental philosopher owing to its extremely mischievous nature. I have come to the conclusion that the only place which is safe for the eastern simpleton is his own remote corner of obscurity. Waiting for some advice and consolation from you 

I remain 

Very sincerely yours 

Rabindranath Tagore 

 

Sent from:  

Buxton Hill 

Williamstown 

Massachusetts 

This poetic letter reveals so much about Tagore and his experience in America and with the American public. Tagore embarked on his journeys to connect with to learn as much as possible about people across the globe, while also sharing the wealth of culture, philosophy, ideology and art from his own country, a country fighting for freedom against colonial oppression. 

This letter and so much more can be found at the MHS. Please reach out for more information about visiting the library. For further reading on collections held at the Society related to the history of India, please see our blog post Boston to Bombay*: Historical Connections between Massachusetts and India | Beehive (masshist.org).

By Jenna Colozza, Library Assistant

In February of 1653, twenty-one-year-old Michael Wigglesworth listened as Henry Dunster, clergyman and president of Harvard College, gave a sermon at the public assembly. But Wigglesworth was distracted from the sermon. Instead, he was fretting over one of the students he tutored at Harvard who was absent from the assembly due to illness. Later, reflecting on the day, Wigglesworth wrote in his diary:

“I feel not [love] to god as I should, but more [love] to man, least I should [love] man more than god. I am laden with a body of death, and could almost be willing to be dissolved and be with christ free’d from this sinful flesh.”

Why did this young man feel so terrible for worrying about his pupil? The answer may lie in coded diary entries. In these entries he wrote about having feelings of love and desire (what he called “unnatural filthy lust”) for his male pupils.

In 1653 Wigglesworth was a fellow at Harvard College, from which he had graduated in 1651. He was assigned to a group of freshmen, the class of 1656. The students ranged in age from about 13 (the young Increase Mather) to 27, the majority being teenaged.

Perhaps some of the guilt he felt for his desire toward his students was due to the age and power difference between them, and his responsibility for both their academic and their spiritual development. (Richard Crowder, who published a biography of Wigglesworth in 1962, reports that as a student Wigglesworth was “fondly attached” to his own Harvard tutor.[1]) Furthermore, to put it lightly, Puritans frowned upon same-sex desire and acts. Laws prohibiting sodomy classified it as a capital punishment—though it was seldom prosecuted to the full extent of the law.[2]

For these reasons, it makes sense why Wigglesworth would want to write portions of his diary in code. The code he used was based on a stenography shorthand. It was quite popular at the time and used for both personal and business purposes, but Wigglesworth made his own alterations to the code which would have made it more difficult to decipher.[3] This must have allowed him the peace of mind to write without fear of someone stumbling across the diary and reading his most intimate secrets.

Puritans hold a peculiar place in the modern imagination. They are stereotypically portrayed as fixated on sin and delighting in punishment. And this particular Puritan seems to lend himself rather unfortunately to stereotype. His name alone sounds laughably quaint and silly to the modern ear. Because of his diary, Wigglesworth has been described as overwrought, neurotic, a distillation of Puritanical anxieties. One notable entry sees him worrying over whether he has a duty to let his neighbors know that their stable door is blowing open in the wind as if it is a life-or-death situation. Many of the entries read the same way, whether about pride, lust, or some other perceived shortcoming.

But Wigglesworth’s diary was actually quite typical in its anxious fixation on sin. Diaries like his were a common method of religious devotion for Puritans. The purpose was for the diarist to meditate on their sins to come to a greater assurance of salvation through divine grace. And Wigglesworth indeed used his diary as a place to wrestle with his feelings about his pupils. He wrote in one entry, “I find my spirit so exceeding carried with love to my pupils that I cant tell how to take up my rest in God.”

His love for his pupils often took the form of deep concern for their religious development. In one instance, he wrote about a pupil whom he had instructed to focus solely on schoolwork and religious devotion. Upon seeing the student enjoying music the next day, he wrote, “For these things my heart is fill’d and almost sunk with sorrow and my bowels are turned within me.” His identification with the sins of others, their physical effect on his body, seems appropriate (if rather intense) for an aspiring minister. Yet worrying over his pupils’ souls also evoked guilt—he once wrote, “whilest I seek him for others I loose him and my love to him my self.”

The pain and suffering he experienced was also quite literal, as Wigglesworth was in ill health for much of his life. He frequently complained of being prone to colds, bouts of weakness, and “rhewms.” He appealed in one entry, “heal my soul and body for both are very loath and unable to do thy service.”

Though his diary describes almost unrelenting physical and spiritual struggles, to his contemporaries he was a man of high spirits. He was described in an 1863 biographical sketch by nineteenth-century historian John Ward Dean as “[seeming] generally to have maintained a cheerful temper, so much so that some of his friends believed his ills to be imaginary.” Cotton Mather remarked in Wigglesworth’s eulogy that

“He used all the means imaginable, to make his Pupils not only good Scholars, but also good Christians; and instil into them those things, which might render them rich Blessings unto the Churches of God. Unto his Watchful and Painful Essayes, to keep them close unto their Academical Exercises, he added, Serious Admonitions unto them about their Interiour State, and (as I find in his Reserved Papers) he Employ’d his Prayers and Tears to God for them, & had such a flaming zeal, to make them worthy men, that, upon Reflection, he was afraid, Lest his cares for their Good, and his affection to them, should so drink up his very Spirit, as to steal away his Heart from God.”

It is striking to see Mather’s complimentary interpretation of something that caused Wigglesworth such grief. Mather mentions having had access to Wigglesworth’s “Reserved Papers” and appears to quote from the diary in an appendix to the published eulogy. Could he make sense of the shorthand? His father was one of Wigglesworth’s pupils. Would he have still made special mention of Wigglesworth’s time as a tutor if he had discovered the coded passages? It is difficult to say, but it seems possible that the shorthand indeed preserved some of Wigglesworth’s privacy.

Michael Wigglesworth’s diary only covers a short period of his life. Nearly ten years after he began writing it, he would go on to publish his apocalyptic poem Day of Doom, which has been called the first American bestseller. He was married three times, had several children, and had careers in medicine and in the ministry until his death in 1705. The MHS holdings contain collections of materials representing many of Wigglesworth’s descendants. Yet the diary he kept as a young man survives as a record of his pained meditations—and it affords us some historical insights into one man’s personal experience of same-sex desire in seventeenth-century New England.

Sources

Dean, John Ward. Sketch of the Life of Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, A.M.: Author of the Day of Doom. Albany: J. Munsell, 1863.

Mather, Cotton. A faithful man, described and rewarded. Microfiche, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1213 Evans fiche.

Michael Wigglesworth diary, 1653-1657. Pre-Revolutionary War Diaries, microfilm, Massachusetts Historical Society, P-363 reel 11.19.

[1] See Richard Crowder, No Featherbed to Heaven: A Biography of Michael Wigglesworth, 1631-1705 (United States: Michigan State University Press, 1962), p. 32.

[2] See Robert F. Oaks, “‘Things Fearful to Name’: Sodomy and Buggery in Seventeenth-Century New England” (1978), Journal of Social History 12 (2).

[3] Edmund S. Morgan published a transcription of the diary in 1965 in which he decoded the shorthand passages. See Edmund S. Morgan (Ed.), The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth 1653-1657: the Conscience of a Puritan (United States: Harper, 1965).