Oral History Projects in the Works

I have been increasingly drawn of late into the realm of oral history. My understanding of this particular branch of the great tree of history was, until recently I should admit, fairly simplistic, and based around the fact that from being a child my father recounted to me often tales of past things and events in our neighborhood. Born in 1925 he grew up in a rural farming society not too far different from the farm life of 1875 or in many ways even 1825 – the local shoddy mill manufacturing textiles, the one-room schoolhouse, the pump-handle well and the outhouse, horses not for dressage but for a transportation and to pull farm machinery – I think he was really struck by how much things had changed. He would recall for me the arrival of the first electric lights to the neighborhood; driving on the first tarmac road in the area down by the old Charlestown Naval Air Station; “riding the rails” of the Wood River Branch Railroad to the village of Hope Valley. By the time I came along in the mid-sixties, the vestiges of this old rural way of life were still present but were fading. The thing I remember most about it was the constant interaction with our handful of neighbors in a variety of farm projects that seemed to me never-ending. But by the time I was finishing high school that way of life was ending. Between the dying-off of the local neighborhood patriarchs and the building boom of the 1980s that saw land values skyrocket – land that I remember selling for a few hundred dollars an acre (and was rarely purchased) now sold for tens of thousands of dollars – the ways of the old neighborhood disappeared. Neighbors grew far too numerous to keep track of, and most of them didn’t care to wave back or stop their cars and chat anyway. During the 1980s and ‘90s I often thought I should make a project of photographing all the old barns in South County as they fell increasingly into disrepair and began to collapse upon themselves. At the time, my father (pictured below, at age 78) could recount who had once owned each farm, what their barns were used for, whether he had ever any occasion to go there, and when and why the farm went out of business.

                            

In hindsight, I wish now that I had methodically recorded more of my father’s tales of the early and mid-twentieth century when he (and I) were younger – he will be 88 in less than two weeks. I did videotape him talking to me about local mills, businesses and railroads a few years back. We explored several locales as he recounted the events at each, but the days of his clambering over stone walls or even taking a modest walk over slightly uneven ground are, unfortunately, behind him now. I still have the videotapes, but never thought to transcribe them or have him sign a release – we both figured that his agreement to participate and be recorded for the purposes of posterity implied his permission to be used by me as a historical source. But the problem is, as most readers will agree, that life is very busy. To make time for a 'low-priority' task (i.e., to sit down and record my father’s recollections of the past) has taken a back seat to more pressing matters of the everyday (i.e., teaching, taking courses for re-certification, several summers researching and then writing a master’s thesis, maintaining a household, becoming a husband and a parent) – somehow years pile up and a more thorough recording of the oral history of my father’s life will probably not get much further than what we have already managed to accomplish.

                            

                             Grandpa with grandson Ian, c. 2002 -- both are about the same height now

Realization of this missed opportunity and a more recent encounter with the World War II Foundation has gotten me to reconsider the urgency of the oral history mission. Back in December, I went to a Teaching World War II workshop at the Rhode Island Historical Society called "D-Day: The Price of Freedom." The workshop, led by Tim Gray of the WWII Foundation, featured a video by the same name. During the introduction, Gray explained how he got involved in the project, and the importance of the work he is doing. Beginning with a trip to France that included a visit to Normandy’s American cemetery, Gray wondered how many Rhode Islanders had fought and died in the conflict (99 men are interred there, actually). Upon his return to the states, he began researching the answer to his questions, work that eventually led him to begin interviewing local veterans of the Normandy invasion. This effort culminated in the documentary movie D-Day: The Price of Freedom, where he filmed the return of several Rhode Island veterans to the beaches of Normandy sixty years after the invasion. He then explained why he founded the World War II Foundation as a result. The last American World War I veteran, Frank Buckles, died in 2011. In the past decade, over 1000 World War II veterans have died each day in the United States; in a few years they too, like the veterans of World War I, will be all gone. Gray has made it his mission to preserve as much of this living history as he possibly can in the time that is left. I have recently come across similar concerns about recording the stories of the women who helped build the American war machine that defeated Hitler, or who took part in the fight for contraceptives and birth control, or in the civil rights movement, or Vietnam protests…there seems to be a growing awareness that events that once seemed to be part of the recent past are quickly receding into “history,” a past that will soon be out of reach of the first-hand account and oral history.

As I started working in the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society Archive last summer, I first began thinking about establishing an oral history project there. Tim Gray’s project convinced me that there is a need for such work to be done, and I began in earnest to look into the logistics of putting together a Western Rhode Island Oral History Project. Last month I had the opportunity to visit an oral history project that has been in operation since the early 2000s - The Matunuck Oral History Project, which published its first volume of oral history in 2006. Sandy McCaw (a fellow traveler at the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society and volunteer coordinator of the Willow Dell Historical Society’s Matunuck Oral History Project) saw to it that I was invited to "A Celebration of the publication of Volume VI of the Willow Dell Historical Association's Matunuck Oral History Project." The celebration, held at the Matunuck Land Trust Barn, featured nostalgic reminisces by long-time Matunuck residents amidst concerns over properties lost to the recent hurricane and winter storm damage and erosion, as well as offering the latest volume of the Matunuck Oral History series. Volume IV, Matunuck: Not just a place but a state of mind gathers “fifteen interviews featuring the historic houses and special places of Matunuck.” The introduction is written by Barbara Hale Davis, and features oil paintings of Matunuck houses by Anna Richards Brewster, Frank Convers Mathewson, and her great-grandfather Edward Everett Hale. From there the project tells the highlights of a number of South Kingstown locales, such as Roy Carpenters Beach (as related by resident Kevin McCloskey) or Point Judith Pond (by URI oceanography professor Prentice Stout and hiswife Patricia). Replete with many color and black and white images, the interviews have all been transformed into narrative accounts. Much of the stories’ appeal would be of most interest to the local consumers of Matunuck history, but there is enough relevance made to the larger history of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, and the United States to make the book interesting to non-locals as well.

                                       

I also had been trying to get in touch with someone (anyone) at the New England Oral History Association (NEOHA), but I was not having any luck. On my most recent attempt I was redirected to the Oral History Office at the University of Connecticut. From there, I made contact with Bruce Stave, professor of history at UConn and director of the UConn Oral History Office. I made an appointment to see him, which as it turned out, was to take place only three days after the celebration at the Matunuck Oral History Project. Dr. Stave is a fellow resident of Coventry, but of the Connecticut variety. (Coincidently, Coventry CT was also the home of Nathan Hale, Revolutionary War hero and the grand-uncle of the aforementioned Edward Everett Hale.) My meeting with Dr. Stave was very informative. He first explained why I was getting nowhere with contacting NEOHA – the organization is currently defunct and on hiatus. He gave me a number of resources (many of which can be found on the Stave Group website and a list books to read. He explained that oral history is a process that goes beyond simply finding someone old and asking them questions. He insisted that the oral historian should always have a project or a goal around which they organize their research, base their questions, and identify persons to interview. At the first interview, the interviewee should always sign a “consent to be interviewed” form, and the recordings made become the property both of the interviewer and the interviewee, who should get a copy of them as well to do with as they wish. The interviewer should transcribe the interview, and when finished they should meet again with the interviewee, who is given a copy which they can edit for content. The final edited transcript is then signed off on with a second consent from. At that point, the transcript becomes a historical source document which can from the basis of projects like the Matunuck Oral History series.

Dr. Stave and I then discussed what might be a viable project for me to begin for the Western Rhode Island Oral History Project. I related that one of my tasks as the archivist of the WRICHS is to help organize the Society’s past records and help recover the “institutional memory” of the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society. He had mentioned that one of the projects he undertook at the UConn Oral History Office was to interview the staff and members of the Connecticut Historical Society to create an oral history of that society that served a similar purpose. Given that there are a number of people with long memories of the WRICHS both in the community and serving on the WRICHS board, I decided that would become our first project. I mentioned my idea for an oral history project at the Society’s most recent planning meeting, and got the go-ahead to start putting together a planning “mini-grant” from the Rhode Island Council of the Humanities, which also provides funding for the Matunuck Oral History Project. For the time being the mini-grant program is on a “spring hiatus,” which gives me some time to do some research into what sort of equipment I should budget for.

Building on that idea, I intend to reach out to other Rhode Island historical societies, house museums, and historic districts and suggest they too create an oral history of their own organization, that they keep a copy, and the WRICHS keep a copy, as per Stanford University’s LOCKSS Program (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). As part of the planning grant, I want to put together an oral history workshop and invite Dr. Stave and his oral history team to come out and talk to all interested parties about how to set up an oral history program. Eventually, a history of Rhode Island’s historical organizations and preservation efforts could emerge from such an effort.

                                 

Dr. Stave also asked me if I have ever used oral history in my teaching. I haven't, but he suggested it might be another good place to start. As mentioned in a previous blog post, my history department is developing a new research paper for the US History II course based on the idea of America’s “Grand Expectations” after World War II. I brought up the idea of incorporating oral history into the student’s research project in a recent department common planning meeting, and my suggestion was met with some enthusiasm. Where there may be some students whose buy-in to the research paper would be somewhat muted despite being able to choose their own topic, those same students might be more interested if they could choose rather than conducting extensive library research, to instead interview a relative, neighbor, or other local resident about their knowledge of how the student’s chosen topic or event affected the interviewer. The work of identifying a candidate to speak with, developing good open-ended questions, interviewing and then generating a transcription certainly qualifies as a research project. The final transcripts could also be cataloged in the school library and serve as a source of information for future research papers.

Currently I am reading some of the books that Dr. Stave recommended – Valerie Raleigh Yow’s second edition of Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2005) is an excellent how-to guide for designing interview questions, memory, recall, strategies for questioning, even words and phrasing to avoid when interviewing. Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan’s The Oral History Manual (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2002) provides an overview of the entire project: project planning, recording technology, budgeting, interviewing, and processing and care of oral history materials. I also took out from the library the second edition of Donald A. Ritchie’s Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) covers much the same topics as the Ritchie book, but is longer and also has sections on teaching oral history and using oral history in the classroom. Before visiting Dr. Stave I had also taken out a copy of A Guide to Oral History and the Law by John A. Neuenschwander (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), which had some interesting case studies related to the legal considerations of oral history. Neuenschwander’s book also discusses online use of oral history and includes legal release agreements. Dr. Stave agreed it was an interesting book but said I shouldn't be too concerned about potential lawsuits. My take-away is that as long as the work is ethical and honest, and the double consent procedure is followed, there really shouldn't be any problem.

Finally, I bough a copy of Linda P. Wood’s Oral History Projects in Your Classroom (Carlisle: Oral History Association, 2001). Linda Wood was at one time the librarian at South Kingstown High School, and organized several oral history projects. Among those include “The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968,” In the Wake of '38, and What did you do in the war, Grandma?: An oral history of Rhode Island Women during World War II. On the Prentice Hall/Pearson site, Linda Wood has written an online Guide to Using Oral History. Here is an excerpt of her pedagogy for using oral history in the classroom:

One of the most important lessons students can learn from oral history is to see that individuals are part of the greater society and that the individual is shaped by society and, in turn, helps to shape society. They get a snapshot of another person's life as he or she interacts with events outside that life, and, in doing so, they learn how the individual reacts to the events, learns from them, and attempts to exert control over them. In every interview in every oral history project, the narrators explain what they saw, what they did, and what they thought about the things they were experiencing. Students listen and learn from these interviews. They learn that history is assembled from these human pieces, that no one piece is any less important than any other piece, and that they have a role in making sure the pieces are not lost.

The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America

Thursday evening January 24, 2013, Brown University historian James Patterson gave a presentation at the Fabre Line Club (200 Allens Avenue) in Providence about the year 1965, and why it is so pivotal in understanding the transformative decade of the 1960s. The talk also happened to be the topic of his most recent book, The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America. Dr. Patterson, Ford Foundation Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University, is also the author of volumes 10 and 11 in the Oxford History of the United States series -- Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (published 1996), and Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (published 2005).

These well-received overviews of US history since WWII (Grand Expectations won a Bancroft Award in 1997) have made Patterson eminently qualified to speak on what he has identified as the "hinge year", the turning point where post-World War America shifted from the conformist “All-American” culture of the ‘Long 1950s’ (which began perhaps in 1945 with the end of WWII) to the explosive counterculture of the 1960s. While many commentators on the period tend to point to the assassination of JFK in November 1963 as the “end of innocence,” or the arrival of the Beatles in America in early 1964 as the crucial cultural turning point, Patterson argues that the real “sixties” doesn’t begin until 1965. The “decade approach” to American history works for some periods – the 1920s, the 1930s, and possibly the 1980s and 1990s tend to fall into ten year chunks, but the 1950s and 1960s are problematic in this regard. Patterson’s take is that 1965 is really the beginning of the 1960s that looms large in the public imagination – the protests, the violence, the Vietnam war, the counterculture, the music and Woodstock.

Patterson began his talk at the Fabre Line Club with the confession that he is not the first to describe 1965 as the “hinge” year of the 1960s. In 1995, the renowned conservative George Will had pointed out 1965 as a pivotal turning point in American history, not to mention the much-less regarded conservative, Newt Gingrich, has done so as well.

Patterson’s argument is that the triumph of liberalism was at hand in 1964. With his landslide victory over Barry Goldwater (486 to 52 in the Electoral College), and the domination of the Democratic Party in both houses of Congress, Johnson’s hubris brought him to make this almost surreal speech at the lighting of the national Christmas tree in December 1964:

…These are the most hopeful times in all the years since Christ was born in Bethlehem.

Our world is still troubled. Man is still afflicted by many worries and many woes.

Yet today--as never before--man has in his possession the capacities to end war arid preserve peace, to eradicate poverty and share abundance, to overcome the diseases that have afflicted the human race and permit all mankind to enjoy their promise in life on this earth.

At this Christmas season of 1964, we can think of broader and brighter horizons than any who have lived before these times. For there is rising in the sky of the age a new star--the star of peace.

By his inventions, man has made war unthinkable, now and forevermore. Man must, therefore, apply the same initiative, the same inventiveness, the same determined effort to make peace on earth eternal and meaningful for all mankind.

Grand expectations indeed. From there, Johnson, consummate master of Washington politics and Capitol Hill, took full advantage of his election mandate. LBJ’s Great Society picked up where FDR’s New Deal left off: Medicare, Medicaid, immigration reform, the Voting Rights act of 1965, the War on Poverty, the Education Act of 1965 – a stunning feat of serial legislative engineering that remains unparalleled to this day.

But at the Christmas tree lighting of 1965, Johnson did not follow up on his bombast from the year before as the liberal triumphant. What had humbled him? Patterson carefully expounded on the escalation of war in Vietnam, Selma, the rise of Black Power and the open fragmentation of the civil rights movement, the Watts riots which exploded only days after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the first teach-ins, the rise of the SDS and resistance to the draft… all this violence and discontent turned the country almost on a dime.

The “grand expectations” of America were brought to heel in a flood of uncertainty that really began, Patterson convincingly argues, in 1965. The year began with the Beatles “I Feel Fine” as the number one song in America. But by late September, P.F. Sloan’s "Eve of Destruction" as sung by Barry McGuire was number one. Patterson then played a cassette tape (which is in itself an analog relic in this age of digital music) of McGuire’s hit song while the room quietly listened.

The eastern world it is explodin',
violence flarin', bullets loadin',
you're old enough to kill but not for votin',
you don't believe in war, what's that gun you're totin',
and even the Jordan river has bodies floatin',
but you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Can't you see the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
and you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin',
I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin',
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
handful of Senators don't pass legislation,
and marches alone can't bring integration,
when human respect is disintegratin',
this whole crazy world is just too frustratin',
and you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama!
Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space,
but when you return, it's the same old place,
the poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace,
you can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace,
hate your next-door-neighbor, but don't forget to say grace,
and you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
no no you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

I have used this song myself in teaching the 1960s – musically the song is a brilliant piece of folk-mainstream crossover -- a pastiche of Dylanesque protest folk with its acoustic guitar, harmonica, nasally vocals and references to Vietnam, Selma, and nuclear annihilation. Ironically, by the time McGuire’s song had replaced the Beatle’s pot-addled “Help!” in September 1965 as the number one song in America, Bob Dylan was in the midst of rejecting his identity as the voice of the 60s folk generation, plugging in at Newport and returning to his rock’n’roll roots by going on tour with The Band…

The questions and answer session after Patterson’s talk was nearly as interesting as the talk itself. He pointed out as the Q&A began that it appeared everyone in the room had lived through the year. I looked around in agreement – I was probably the youngest in the room, so I can attest that he was correct. I have to admit though I was alive in 1965, I can’t say I remember anything about 1965. I know I turned one that year. I had not yet quite reached my six month birthday on December 18, 1964, the day that Johnson compared his administration to the birth of Christianity. It was very enlightening to listen to people whose memories of the year were considerably more detailed than mine. For the most part, audience members saw their experiences as a microcosm located on Patterson’s larger canvas. The most

remarkable exchange in the Q&A came when one gentleman, who had known Barry Goldwater personally, took exception to Patterson’s characterization of the Arizona senator as a deeply flawed candidate. Patterson listened politely then definitively tossed Goldwater back into the dustbin of history, pointing out the folly of Goldwater’s screed against the TVA in Tennessee, how his offhand remarks about nuking Vietnam and the Kremlin terrified millions and played right into Johnson’s hands, and the political suicide of calling for the abolition of Social Security while campaigning in Florida.

After the Q&A, I walked up to Dr. Patterson and introduced myself. We spoke about P.F. Sloan’s song and how emblematic it is as a cultural touchstone for this shift in the 1960s. I also explained to him that the history department where I teach has decided to use his Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974, as the thematic source for teaching this period of American history, as well as a basis for students’ research papers. He was genuinely pleased to hear a high school program was using his book, and asked me to let him know how it turned out. But like 1965, we will have to live through 2013 before we can evaluate its success.

For those who were not able to catch James Patterson’s talk at the Fabre Line Club on The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America, David Scharfenberg conducted a short interview with James Patterson in the Providence Phoenix in December 2012. Patterson also appeared on BookTV’s After Words, an hour-long program recorded in November 2012, where Professor Daryl Scott and Patterson explore in depth many of the themes only briefly touched upon herein. Both are recommended followups to this essay.

____________________________________________________________________ Sources

James T. Patterson, The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America. New York: Basic Books, 2012.

-- Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Lyndon B. Johnson: "Remarks at the Lighting of the Nation's Christmas Tree.," December 18, 1964. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26766.

P.F. Sloan, Eve of Destruction Recorded by Barry McGuire, © 1965 MCA Records Inc. Lyrics transcribed by Manfred Helfert

Adventures in Archiving: Work Spaces and Public Places

After recommending to the board of the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society that we should establish both a work space to process the manuscript collection, and a place

for the public to be able to sit down, access and use the collection, I am happy to report that my recommendations were accepted and work has begun to create such a space.

One of the problems I began to run into this past fall was that the work space I was utilizing was only temporary (see photo left). I was setting up in the "military room" (so-called because of the civil war uniforms, swords, and other military memorabilia on display) which was open to public tours. I could not simply leave folding tables and chairs in the middle of the room with whatever papers and manuscripts I might be processing laying about.

So there was a set-up and break-down process every time I came to work on the collection of about 30-40 minutes in toto. This meant that if I had a free hour where I could go work on the collection, most of that time would be spent simply carrying everything out of the library room, then putting it all back into storage a few minutes later (see photo right).

My recommendation to the September 2012 board meeting was to convert the military room to a work space that would be closed to the public, but that idea was voted down because closing it off would interrupt the flow of traffic on museum tours, which is circular and does not require visitors to retrace their path through rooms they have already visited. It was then suggested to me that part of the "music room" (so-called because of the nineteenth-century musical instruments and players on display, such as this Edison music player, below) be turned

over for a permanent work-space that would not have to be broken down every time I worked on the archive. One issue I realized as I considered that plan was the lack of light control -- the room's windows face south and west and the space receives direct sunlight for the afternoon hours; at the least new blinds and lighting would have to be purchased and installed. That could get expensive.

As I began to think more about the future of this project and not just my immediate needs in processing the collection, I realized that the Society should also have a place where the public can come in, sit down, and use the collection. This public access area should provide for some supervision of public usage -- a desk where someone from the WRICHS can comfortably watch people using the collection to ensure its safe handling and security, but also be where an archivist can work, answer questions, pull records out of storage and return them. I went back to the board with the suggestion that the military room be re-purposed into a work-space that would remain open to public tours; guides would simply inform visitors not to disturb the work in progress. Then the room would be re-purposed again into a public access space once the work on cataloging and arranging was complete.

The other advantage is that the windows in the military room face north, so direct sunlight is not an issue. I went back to the board with my ideas and a floor plan schematic (right).

The response was that the military room would be too small a space; that the public reading table/work space would take up too much room and it would be a cramped area for people to work in or tour through. This a valid point (see the first photo above). But providing public access to the collection is fundamental to the mission of the Society, and therefore it was decided that the music room should be entirely re-purposed into a permanent work-space now, that will become the public access room later. With light-blocking window shades, sunlight can be controlled and artificial lighting installed that would not damage the collection. I drew up a new floor plan (below), which has become the blueprint for what is now the WRICHS Archive Cataloging, Conservation and Public Access Project, and the board pledged funds for the project that hopefully can be matched by philanthropic grants. The essential plan is to catalog and arrange the collection in 2013 and 2014, with a tentative opening of the archive to the public sometime in the summer of 2014.

On December 28, 2012 several WRICHS members met to begin moving the "music room" collection and making an archival work space. We were joined by Andrew Boisvert, Archivist of the Old Colony Historical Society in Taunton, Massachusetts, who wanted to photograph us working on the project for a book he is putting together about public history in the area, Below are photographs of the music room before we began relocating the furnishings and musical collection.

Below is the room later that day, re-purposed for the archive. The case that is currently exhibiting old children's games (above) is slated to be used to display interesting parts of the WRICHS archive collection. I am looking forward to arranging the first archival exhibit in time for the 28th Annual Preservation Works on Saturday, April 27, 2013. This is a statewide historic preservation conference sponsored by Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission (aka Preservation RI) that this year is focused on the Pawtuxet River Valley and West Warwick, RI (which, as Rhode Island's youngest town, is celebrating its 100th birthday this year). One of the locations conference-goers will visit is the Paine House Museum -- this conference will be the first time that the new archival floor plan will be used by the public. I have also created a website for the archive that will be eventually placed under the westernrihistory.org domain, and a WRICHS Archive twitter account that has already started attracting a following.

The other work being done on the archive is as equally important if more prosaic; securing donations and funds for light control, archival-quality storage and a computerized cataloging system. I have discovered that JC Penney has blackout roller shades that should block the rays of the sun, and they are only $10 apiece -- definitely in our price range. Currently I am using my personal laptop and Excel spreadsheets to record the catalog, but I downloaded the freeware version of the Museum Archive Software to check it out. It looks like it would work well for us, the premium edition upgrade is eminently affordable at $24.95, and so far everyone I have talked to that has used it says that it is a great little program. Computer software engineer extraordinaire James Pansarasa is donating a computer system to us, and I have applied for an ADDD Media Project Grant from the Rhode Island Foundation to help us purchase acid-free folders and boxes. At the moment we are using relatively inexpensive bankers boxes and folders purchased from Staples, which are better nothing but aren't of archival quality, and there are still parts of the collection that aren't yet stored at all. Even so, when I look back on this past year at what we have done for this collection, I am so pleased to see that it is in a much better state now, and on track to become a viable historical resource for researchers, genealogists, and the general public.

A Healthy Rivalry: Evolution of New England's Secondary Urban Centers

Boston has always been first and foremost among New England cities. Her one-time colonial rivals: Newport, Portsmouth, New London, and Norwich are comparatively inconsequential today. Occupying secondary status beneath Boston and above small

municipalities and the larger towns, are Springfield and Worcester, Massachusetts; Manchester, New Hampshire; Providence, Rhode Island; and Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut. Historian Bruce C. Daniels (New England Nation, The Connecticut Town: Growth and Development, 1635-1790, and Dissent and Conformity on Narragansett Bay: The Colonial Rhode Island Town) argues that they “represent the long-range success stories of New England’s urban history: of the nearly 1000 towns founded in the colonial period, they (along with Boston, of course) were the ones to grow and become major entrepôts in the twentieth century, while others grew relatively less, grew and declined, or did not grow at all.”

Worcester is a poster child for central place theory. There is little else in its history to

suggest it would ever become an important city. Deserted twice and utterly destroyed once before 1713, by 1790 Worcester was a typical farming community. But it did have two factors in its favor: first, it was centrally located between Providence, Boston, Hartford and Springfield, and it also lay on the “country road to Connecticut.” Geography lent crucial commercial value to Worcester’s property. Also, its central location in Worcester County made it the judicial center and county seat of the region. Court days were accompanied both a holiday atmosphere and the presence of men of significant wealth

and power, important community boosters that would contribute to the eventual rise of Worcester. The startling changes in Worcester's courthouse from 1732, when it was a simple Georgian-style single story to the 1830s, when it had become a sprawling Greek Revival compound, speaks volumes about the changing fortunes of the community.

Settled in 1636 as an outpost of Connecticut, Springfield, Massachusetts got off to an earlier and far more ambitious start than Worcester. The success of Springfield resides

with founder William Pynchon, whose vision turned a fur trading post into the economic powerhouse of western Massachusetts. The decline of the fur trade in the 1650’s did little to slow its growth, as mills, mines, factories, ironworks, were all in operation soon after the town was founded. But an early rise did not guarantee Springfield long-term supremacy over the Connecticut River Valley. Springfield faced internal division typical of many New England settlements. The town split into two parishes in 1704, and by the Revolution four new towns formed from outlying districts (the bounds of the original town actually encompassed all or part of what are today Westfield, Southwick, West Springfield, Wilbraham, Ludlow, and Longmeadow in Massachusetts, and Enfield, Somers, and Suffield in Connecticut). By 1790 Springfield’s population was less than that of either West Springfield or Northampton, an ambitious town twenty miles to the north on the Connecticut River. While one of these centers would likely come to dominate the upper Connecticut River Valley, it was not clear that center would necessarily be Springfield.

Unlike Springfield, both New Haven and Hartford always dominated their respective areas. Even after the colony of New Haven was absorbed into Connecticut, both communities retained political clout as co-capitals and the seat of their respective counties. New Haven had been founded by a group of wealthy merchants for the express purpose of establishing a commercial center, while Hartford’s Puritan ministers and merchants enjoyed a central location among Connecticut’s founding settlements. New Haven’s harbor and Hartford’s location on the Connecticut River were the keys to their commercial growth. Both were incorporated as cities at the same time in 1784, and by 1790 both had become bustling, urbane communities.

Several other Connecticut towns experienced rapid growth. Middletown, Norwich, and New London had all caught up with New Haven and Hartford by Washington’s first inauguration. But no one could have forecast the future importance of Bridgeport, which did not then go by name Bridgeport, or even legally exist until 1821. But the farmers of “Poquonnock” had considered themselves a separate entity from neighboring Stratford and Fairfield as far back as the 1650’s. The road to their eventual independence began when Poquonnock was incorporated as an independent ecclesiastical society in 1694 and changed its name to Fairfield Village. Over the next century, the community underwent several more changes in name and political status. In 1790 Newfield, Connecticut had a population 3000; its village center provided a tavern and home to number of part-time artisans’ shops. More important to the eventual rise to urban status, the community’s outstanding deep-water harbor, a resource that went unnoticed during the colonial period, was only dimly grasped for the first time during the Revolutionary War. It is unlikely anyone would have ever predicted this Connecticut hamlet would outshine every other major Connecticut center its rapid economic development.

In Rhode Island, Providence played second fiddle to Newport throughout the colonial period. Twenty miles closer to the Atlantic trade routes than Providence, Newport’s real rival was Puritan Boston; and the combination of location on the southern tip of Aquidneck Island and its religious tolerance gave Newport a significant edge over both Boston and Providence (see image left, Library of Congress. Call Number G3774.N4A3 1878 .G3.) As long as the overland road system in Rhode Island remained undeveloped, settlers preferred rowing or sailing to Newport for their goods than traveling overland to Providence. However, by the 1790s, Providence was poised to surpass Newport, whose fortunes crashed when the British occupied and destroyed it during the Revolutionary War. Providence was a far more secure port during the war, and the improvement of overland roads convinced merchants even before the war broke out, particularly the Brown family, which of the two cities to invest their fortunes. When the rest of Rhode Island balked at ratifying the Constitution, Providence threatened to secede from the state to access the economic stability promised by the new national government. By 1790, Providence had a bank, an impressive array of shops, the only college in Rhode Island (Brown University) and had developed its own commercial contacts reaching all corners of the globe. When Providence extended a series of turnpikes across western Rhode Island and into the unserviced hinterlands of Connecticut and Massachusetts (see map, below), the entrepôt became the central place for large swaths of all three states.

All roads lead To Providence

In New Hampshire, the odds-on favorite would have been Portsmouth as the most likely to succeed (see photo, left). The only relevant port north of Boston, by 1790 it had over 6000 residents, a vibrant merchant community and shipbuilding industry, and was both the first settlement in New Hampshire as well as its capital. Instead, the vision of Samuel Blodgett would lead an insignificant village called Derryfield (with a population of only 362 in 1790) to surpass Portsmouth as the primary central place in New Hampshire. Blodgett, described by one neighbor as “demented old man bent on squandering money that would profit no one.” Yet Blodgett imagined that Derryfield could become “the Manchester of America” if only a canal were built around the nearby Merrimack River rapids, rendering the river navigable to shipping. Upon Blodgett’s death in 1807, Derryfield was still just a small village on a costly canal. Yet Blodgett’s farsightedness eventually brought economic prosperity and urban prominence to his once skeptical neighbors, who in due course changed the community’s name to Manchester, as he had suggested.

Manchester, New Hampshire

All seven of these cities had geographical advantages that aided their development, but so did many other communities that never grew into major urban centers. Political forces and early settlement are two other important factors yet they are also not the sole determinant, as Bridgeport and Manchester had neither distinction. Natural and man-made transportation systems also played a significant role in the rise and fall of New England's central places. Individual initiative was another key to the success of all these communities -- exceptional individuals like Moses Brown, William Pynchon or Samuel Blodgett, group efforts by the Puritan merchants that founded New Haven and Hartford played key roles as well. However, of all the key characteristics of successful cities, this might be the most impossible to quantify of all, only serving to remind us it is the very unpredictability of the human venture that makes history such a fascinating business. Bruce Daniels reminds us that while “urban development between 1790 and the twentieth century seems smooth and organic, the inevitable quality of this evolution is a trick played on us by the arrogance of hindsight.”

Sources:

Bruce C. Daniels, “The Colonial Background of New England’s Secondary Urban Centers,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Volume 14 No. 1 (January 1986).

NB: A version of this article also appears in the August 2012 Hinterlander, the monthly newsletter of the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society

Adventures in Archiving: A Letter From Gull Rock

I am back at work on the archiving project at the Paine House Museum (when I am not teaching, that is), after getting some advice about how best to proceed after the newspapers have been removed from the rest of the collection. The newspapers have been carefully taken off the floor and removed from piles of other documents, and

organized by title inside two plastic bins, a temporary measure until we get acid-free storage boxes. I also began labeling boxes and organizing materials according to type -- there is now a box for letters, a box for loose papers (handwritten), a box for loose papers (typed), a box for WRICHS papers, a box for Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission (RIHPC) papers, and a box for account/record books and diaries.

So far, I have been able to find almost all of the newspapers in the Library of Congress collection, though at least one title (Inside) is not in their collection at all. Others are going to require me to open them up and look for publisher information; I only want to handle them one more time, when I put them into permanent storage boxes. Most are from the twentieth century -- a record of particularly momentous national or international events like the JFK assassination, Eisenhower's inauguration in 1953, or the Soviet invasion of Hungary in '56. There are others that relate more closely to the local history of area, and some date back as far as the 1880s:

The Evening Star (Peekskill, NY)
The Farm Journal (Philadelphia)
George Washington Bicentennial News (The Alexandria Gazette, Alexandria, VA)
Inside
The Home (oversize)
Mirror and Farmer (Manchester N.H.)
New England Homestead (Springfield Mass.)
North Country
Pawtuxet Valley Daily Times (West Warwick RI)
Providence Evening Bulletin (Providence RI)
Providence Evening Telegram (Providence RI)
Providence Journal/Providence Sunday Journal (Providence RI)
The Providence Star-Tribune (Providence RI)
The Observer (Greenville RI)
Our Young People (American Baptist Publication, Philadelphia PA)
The Reminder (Coventry RI)
The Rhode Islander - Providence Sunday Journal Magazine (Providence RI)
The Springfield Newspapers
The Stars and Stripes (Washington, D.C.)
Thoroughfare Celebration in the Shepard Stores - advertisement (Providence RI)
The Young Ladies Bazaar (Chicago IL)
The Youth’s Companion (Boston MA)

As far as advice how to begin with the preliminary organization of the rest of the collection, I emailed Lori Urso and talked with Patricia Ahl, and Eleanor Langham, the Director, Librarian & Archivist, and Museum Assistant, respectively, at the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society. Lori forwarded some pictures I sent her to Patricia and warned her I was coming with questions about the library at WRICHS. After Eleanor looked at the pictures she assured me she had seen archives in far worse shape, and suggested that she would start by organizing things into boxes by types of materials. Patricia added that if more records come to light providing accession & donor information or other provenance, that would be helpful, but for now the important thing is to find out just what we have in the WRICHS library and put like things with like. Even though they are light-years ahead of WRICHS at Pettaquamscutt in terms of organization, they are still dealing with the same problem of materials "found in collection" -- boxes filled with "stuff" that comes with little or no information as to what's inside or where it came from.

So the methodology I will follow for organizing the WRICHS collection, to go back to the Basics of Archiving course, is by "Types of Materials" where

Records are divided into groups based on what they are--correspondence, diaries, photographs, and minutes, for example.

Should topics begin to emerge within or across types, that will be a further means to differentiate materials. Whenever there is any semblance of provenance or of original order, I plan to keep it, simply storing for now items in the groupings and the order they are in when they are grouped in some order. A priority that has emerged from the most recent WRICHS meetings and work on the collection policy for Paine House Museum (a whole other blog post on that is in the works) is finding all the records having to do with the Society itself. So much "institutional history" took place before any of the present members and volunteers became active that, until those papers are reorganized and gone through, the WRICHS has little sense of its "institutional self" -- we have little idea of what "we" did before we got there, if that makes any sense.

I also asked the folks at Pettaquamscutt about cataloging software (and when I spoke with Kirsten Hammerstrom at Rhode Island Historical, she gave me pretty much the same

advice); for now I should just enter basic information into an Excel spreadsheet. Most software that we might eventually use (PastPerfect, CollectiveAccess) is compatible with Excel, and any database I create now in Excel could be easily exported at some point in the future. I had already started listing the newspaper collection into a Word.doc, so I had to transfer the information over to Excel, but fortunately I hadn't gotten too far with the Word catalog. After an hour or so of copying and pasting, all the newspapers were re-cataloged in Excel.

After that, I took a bundle of news papers I had noticed in a stack of other materials last time I was working (left, the bundle is just visible in the pile to the left of the chair, in the yellow circle) and brought it out to the work table. This looks to be the last of the newspapers that were in the piles on the floor, though there are a few more on the bookshelves, and no doubt some still lurk in boxes I haven't yet looked in. These newspapers were inside a deteriorating paper bag and tied with string. On the outside of the bag were written the words: "The Story of the Hurricane of 1938." (below)

The newspapers, all copies of the Providence Journal, the Providence Evening Bulletin or the Providence Sunday Journal, ranged in date from September 22, 1938 (the day after the 1938 Hurricane struck) to October 9, 1938. For the first few days the headlines were all related to the storm: "Hurricane Kills At Least 125 In State" on September 22; "71 Dead, 57 Missing in Westerly…Villages Vanish; Coast Changed" on the 23rd; "Toll of Hurricane Reaches 300" on September 24. But a few days after the disaster, alongside the reports of the storm damage and the cleanup were stories of an escalating crisis and the possibility of war in Europe. The Czechs were balking at Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland on September 27th, 1938, but over the next several days "The Big Four" weighed in, appeasing Hitler and trading the Sudetenland (and in the spring of 1939, the rest of Czechoslovakia) for 11 more months of peace. For October 3, 1938 the headlines read "Sudetens Welcome Hitler."

Meanwhile Rhode Island continued with its clean-up efforts; on September 28 sharing the headline with "Hitler Agrees to 4-Power Talks" was "One Giant WPA Plan to Clear State Charted."

But as I took each paper and cataloged it I discovered, in the midst of "The Story of the Hurricane of 1938" collection, a folded letter whose letterhead identified its origin as from Little Compton. Along with the letter was a small square of white paper (right), on which is stamped "Town of Wareham Selectman's Office September 30[?] 1938," and written on it is "Pass to Onset Edward Tourtellot and Party of Four. Officer Reidy."

Onset is a village (and a beach) in Wareham, Massachusetts; Onset Bay lies off the coast of Wareham and opens up to Buzzards Bay and out to Rhode Island Sound (Onset is labeled B on map). Wareham is at the exact opposite end of the stretch of coastline that begins with Little Compton (labeled A on map). From Little Compton the coastline curves east and north until it reaches the isthmus of Cape Cod, opposite the Elizabeth Islands and western block of Cape Cod. In a hurricane storm surge, the coastline and islands would funnel the stormwaters in Buzzard's Bay higher and higher until they reach the end of the funnel. There lies Onset.

The letterhead on the paper the letter is written upon has printed in a neat maroon font:

      Gull Rock                -               Little Compton                -               Rhode Island.

The letter itself reads:

Sat. Eve.

Dear Fora [Sara?],

Quite a lot has happened since I saw you. I thought Wed. I would go out in the Atlantic house and all. Three or four times perhaps more, the ocean came under my front door, lucky the door held. I was busy mopping floors and window sills. My front screen door was damaged, half dozen or so shingles torn off below living-room windows, garage doors blew off, well curb blew over.
My house escaped but you should see my yard in front [page 2] sand and rocks. bayberry bushes. bathing house door, large rocks brought up right to my front door Moved those large boulders I had for a wall half way across the front lawn.
If you came down now you wouldn’t see any Warren’s Point bathing beach or “break-water.” All houses down and from breakwater. Big fishing bldg went floating up the river with 3 people or more in it. several drowned. Two houses next Stone House collapsed.
I had 2 suit-cases packed and planed to move up to Lowe-Smith’s [Love-Smith’s?] if I had to get out. [page 3] Richard sad I was crazy to stay in the house as long as I did. Said I wouldn’t have had a chance to get out if a wave came large enough it would pick the house right up.
To-day I came nearly setting the house on fire, melting some paraffin to cover orange marmalade. Went out to speak to mail-man, came back the kitchen was ablaze, sauce-pan ad probably tipped and wax had fallen in oil burner. I turned off burner singed my hair and dropped sauce pan on floor. I’ve been having a heck of a time I’ll say.
[page 4] coming down Wed. nite Richard had to jump from his car just below Stone Bridge. He took the road near the water thinking there would be trees falling on the highland road. A large wave came and turned the car over. He was up to his waist in water. Left the car there. The wreckers brought it down the next nite. I don’t think its any good now. It had floated down the river some distance from where he abandoned it.
Yesterday his riding-horse was taken sick. We went for veterinary said sleeping-sickness so he had to be shot. This is all I can write now as I want to write my cousin in Middleboro[?] whose sister lives in Wareham also hard hit

Eliz.

[in the top and side margins on page 1]
I wondered how the Nickersons at the cape[?] fared. Hope you can read this scrawl.

[in the top and side margins on page 2]
You can still get here by machine, coming around by Stone House & over Lloyd’s hill but not Warren’s Point way but it is pretty rocky going in places.

Based on the evidence in the letter, Elizabeth had probably gone to her "Atlantic house" on Wednesday September 21, 1938 without knowing that a Category 3 hurricane was approaching the coast. She was familiar enough with Richard that he was most likely a relative of Elizabeth -- a cousin, son or brother, or even possibly her husband. Conditions were still so bad Wednesday evening that Richard's car was rolled over by a wave while he was driving to Gull Rock. Both were fortunate not to have been swept away in the storm.

My father had related similar stories of his experiences in the 1938 Hurricane to me since I was a kid. He was 13 in 1938 and living in Fishtown, which was once a village outside of Mystic, Connecticut (at present there seems to be little left of Fishtown other than its old cemetery). The day the '38 Hurricane struck, as my father recalls, school let out a bit early once the teacher realized a bad storm was brewing. Before he got home, my father said the water flooding the road to Fishtown was up to the front sprocket of his bicycle and he was pedaling in a foot and half of water. A passing delivery truck stopped and the driver yelled for my father to get in. The driver threw my father's bike in the back of the truck, and delivered him safely home. Then the storm really hit. The old farm house, built in 1721, weathered the storm with some minor damage, but my father, my grandparents and my Uncle Walt (my grandmother as it happened was also very pregnant with my Uncle Bruce in September 1938) watched on as the wind blew the roofs off two barns, then tore the barns right off their foundations and rolled them across the yard.

I attempted to locate "Gull Rock" on maps of Little Compton, including this one from 1925 that the Little Compton Historical Society has "zoomified" on its website, but not that map nor any others I have looked at has a location marked Gull Rock. Based on Elizabeth's descriptions, it was probably not far from the beach since waves reached to her front door and rolled her stone wall around. There are other clues in her letter too -- Stone Bridge, for instance, and Lloyd's Hill, that might help piece together where in Little Compton Elizabeth and Richard weathered what has been described as the worst hurricane to strike New England since the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. Elizabeth's letter, dated only "Sat. Eve.," was probably written on Saturday September 24, 1938, and the pass from the Wareham selectman, appears to be dated September 30, which was the following Friday (the day that the Providence Journal reported "Czechs Accept Big-Four Terms"). Likely there is a connection between the reference to Wareham in Elizabeth's letter and the document from the selectman's office -- had they heard from Elizabeth's cousin or her cousin's sister? Conditions in Onset were bad enough that selectmen had apparently closed off access to the area without their permission. And speaking of the selectman's pass, why is this with the letter sent from Little Compton? Was Fora (or Sara) one of the "party of four" led by Edward Tourtellot that traveled to Onset on that late September day, and who later bundled together all the newspapers, the letter and the pass and gave it to the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society for posterity?

Altogether, there may be enough to eventually identify who Elizabeth and Richard were; the one clue that would almost certainly have identified everyone involved -- the envelope the letter was mailed in -- was not with the letter or in the newspaper collection. Someone at the Little Compton Historical Society might be able to help piece this mystery together. As far as the person the letter was addressed to -- Fora, or possibly Sara, the WRICHS records in the PHM library might have clues as to who that might have been. I also have a feeling that this discovery is only the first of many just waiting inside the next box or under the next pile of documents in the WRICHS archive... For now, just that we know that that we have this letter is an important first step in organizing this collection.

Remembering (and Forgetting) General Isaac P. Rodman