Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

Intern Describes a Teacher’s Letter Collection

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Hello readers!  My name is Zoey, and I am an intern at the St. Mary’s College of Maryland archives this spring.  I am currently in a graduate program for archives at the University of Maryland, and I graduate in May 2022!  The school requires each student to complete an internship before they graduate.

During my time here, I was assigned to read and describe the Lura Frances Johnson Letters (MSS 097) [link to: https://smcm.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/resources/153 ].  I created the scope and contents notes within the finding aid for the archive’s website.  Before I go into detail about what the process was like, I would like to give some background information on Lura.  Miss Johnson was originally from West Point, Georgia and taught math at St. Mary’s Female Seminary, the predecessor institution of St. Mary’s College of Maryland, from about 1928-1943.  The majority of the letters were written to her mother.  The letters in this collection describe the daily events happening to her at the time.  This collection is a significant example of a teacher’s perspective on routine life at the school.

Lura Frances Johnson and Helen Leighley in Cleveland

Lura Frances Johnson (left) and Helen Leighley (right), a fellow St. Mary’s Female Seminary teacher, in Cleveland (MSS 097 Box 1 Folder 12)

Initially, I found the letters difficult to interpret.  Lura wrote most of her letters in cursive.  Since Miss Johnson was a teacher, I expected her to have neat cursive letters, but I was incorrect.  After reading through a couple of her letters, I began picking up on her handwriting, and it was much easier reading through them.  This assignment was the perfect task for me to dip my feet into the archival world.  It was challenging yet, rewarding when I finally deciphered Lura’s writing.

The key debate in archival work is whether we should process our collections with a minimalist or a maximalist perspective.  My mentor and I decided it would be best to take a maximalist approach when processing these letters.  Because these letters provide a unique perspective on the school’s history, we believed it would be best to summarize all the letters written by Miss Johnson.  By adopting the maximalist approach to these letters, we will be able to support our students in the future.  This is because we have a precise understanding of the information contained in these letters.  Robert S. Cox states in his article Maximal Processing, or, Archivist on a Pale Horse, “If a collection is less well described, less well organized, and less well understood, logic dictates that, all things being equal, it must take longer for archivists to navigate the collection when conducting reference work or when performing any of the other tasks that make use of the actual materials” (Cox, 2010).  By taking the time to read through and summarize these letters, we will be able to better help our students look for materials to support their research.  While the maximalist approach worked for this finding aid, we cannot use this approach to process all of the materials in an archive because it would take too much time to process.

Lura filled her letters with the daily activities of her life.  During part of her time at the college, Miss Johnson was completing her master’s degree.  She wrote her mother consistently about how her thesis was coming along.  Within these letters, you can practically feel the stress, joy, and relief when she finally finished her thesis.

Overall, I have learned a lot from my time interning at the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Archive.  I am so appreciative of this opportunity to learn the daily operations of a university archive.  The task I had of creating a scope and contents for these letters was a great first task in my archival career.  I cannot wait to see what is in store for my future and will be forever thankful for this opportunity!

Zoey Downs

Archives Intern

 

References

Robert S. Cox (2010) Maximal Processing, or, Archivist on a Pale Horse, Journal of Archival Organization, 8:2, 134-148, DOI: 10.1080/15332748.2010.526086

St. Mary’s Smackdown

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Founded as St. Mary’s Female Seminary, St. Mary’s College of Maryland shares its name with many other “Mary” schools across the country.  Though SMCM was founded as a non-sectarian boarding school to memorialize religious tolerance in colonial times, its name was very close to the Catholic school formerly known as St. Mary’s School for Boys, aka the University of Dayton.  We want this post to go viral, so we have no time for supporting each other as institutions of higher learning with stories and aspirations in common. Instead, it’s Mary vs. Mary, boys vs. girls, seminary vs. school, it’s…

St. Mary’s Smackdown 2018

4 images are displayed side by side: the exterior of Roesch Library, a doll dressed as a nun, a doll dressed in a colonial era gray dress, and the exterior of the Library at St. Mary's College of Maryland

Competitor 1:  St. Mary’s College of Maryland (formerly St. Mary’s Female Seminary)

Fighting out of the navy blue (and white) corner is the national public honors college of Maryland.  Coming in strong with 1,533 students, SMCM offers Bachelor’s degrees in the liberal arts and a Master of Arts in Teaching, ready to school its rivals.

Competitor 2:  University of Dayton (formerly St. Mary’s School for Boys)

Currently in the red (and blue) corner, a private Catholic Marianist university in Ohio.  With 10,899 students, Bachelor’s, Master’s, Doctorate programs, and a law school, will UD crush the opposition beyond a reasonable doubt?


Round 1:  1840 vs. 1850

SMCM:  founded in 1840, SMCM is the older (and wiser?) competitor.

UD:  clocking in at 1850, UD is the younger (and reckless?) contender.

Results:  As they say, age before beauty.  Another cool fact about 1840: it was the year Claude Monet was born.

On the other hand, 1850 was the year the London Zoo brought in its first hippopotamus (following a complex chain of events, ultimately leading to the birth of adorable Fiona the hippo at the Cincinnati Zoo!).  Hmmmm…Monet vs. hippos. I can guess who would win in a fight, but I’ve never seen a hippo paint a pond filled with water lilies.


Round 2: Doll vs. Dolls

SMCM:  The Library, Archives, and Media Center is home to Margaret Brent–that is, the doll version.  Brent was credited with keeping the young but full of drama St. Mary’s City alive (it was in its tween years) with her savvy as executor of the governor’s estate.  An unmarried woman who immigrated to colonial Maryland in the late 1630s, she was also the first woman to petition the court for the right to vote, though she was denied (see “History — patriarchy” for more information).  Fun fact: Margaret Brent (the person, not the doll) has a building on campus, the college’s De Soura Brent Scholars program, and a local middle school named after her.

UD:  Roesch Library houses the (in)famous Pauline A. Money nun doll collection.  Representing habits of religious orders around the world, the nun dolls also serve as a reminder that the 6th floor silent policy will be enforced…by library staff who may politely suggest a different floor for your group work.  They are strongly suspected to move on their own late at night.

Results:  Strength in numbers falls in the nun dolls’ favor; however, their commitment to non-violence may hold them back (in mortal if not spiritual matters).  Either way, I wouldn’t want to meet any of these dolls down a dark alley.


Round 3:  Fire vs. Explosion

SMCM:  in 1924, a fire destroyed the Main Building on campus and most of the college’s records.  The fire started after an overfilled boiler exploded; as far as we know, this is the school’s only connection to the events in The Shining.  The students of SMCM lived in temporary housing until 1925, when a new building–now known as Calvert Hall–was finished.

UD:  throughout the 1920s, UD experienced attacks from members of the KKK who targeted Catholics in the Dayton area, many of them immigrants.  One of the most serious incidents occurred in 1923, when members of the Klan set off bombs on campus and set a large cross alight. Students and neighbors banded together to drive off the attackers.*

Results:  The loss of historically important records, damage to property, and fear yield no real winners here.  The 1920s were challenging years on both campuses, yet the communities endured, demonstrating their resilience through hardship.

*SMCM also experienced a great deal of anti-Catholic sentiments as the Know Nothing party gained popularity in the 1850s.  During this period, a principal and teacher were fired for selling an anti-Catholic book, The School-girl in France, or, The Snares of Popery.


Round 4:  Mascots — Man vs. Nature

SMCM mascot:  Solomon the Seahawk, osprey.  Locally, Solomons is a tourist spot in Maryland named for Isaac Solomon, cannery owner/operator and inventor of a speedy method for canning food.

UD mascot:  Rudy Flyer, human.  Adopted as the school’s mascot in honor of the Wright B. Flyer, invented in the First in Flight city of Dayton (don’t @ me, North Carolina).

Results:  Based on punning alone, I don’t know of any mascot that beats rUDy Flyer.  However, I have to wonder whether Rudy’s ever-present aviator goggles hide a sinister secret.

Both mascots are creatures frequently found in the sky, and I like to believe they would coexist peacefully.  Solomon could share his fish catches with Rudy, and Rudy could provide a perch on the Wright B. Flyer when Solomon’s wings get tired.


As you may have suspected by now, we think both SMCM and UD are great, whether they are “St. Mary’s” schools today or in the past.  Let us be united in the ways our histories parallel and enjoy that somehow the libraries at both schools have doll collections.

Of course, we’re more than willing to hear dissenting opinions on this topic.  Who do you think wins St. Mary’s Smackdown 2018?

Our friendly rivals at the University of Dayton Libraries have posted this piece on their blog here.


Find more information about the history of St. Mary’s College of Maryland in the following resources:


Find more information about the history of the University of Dayton in the following resources:

  • Trollinger, W.V. “Hearing the Silence: The University of Dayton, the Ku Klux Klan, and Catholic Universities and Colleges in the 1920s” (2013). History Faculty Publications. Paper 11. http://ecommons.udayton.edu/hst_fac_pub/11

Haunted Susquehanna – Oct 25

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Is Susquehanna a Cursed Estate?

WHEN: Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 7-8PM

WHERE: Commissioner’s Meeting Room – 41770 Baldridge Street, Leonardtown

Actual figure from the 1988 osteological study of the re-disinterred Rousby crypt.

Beginning with the Halloween murder of Christopher Rousby in 1684, St. Mary’s College of Maryland librarian Kent Randell will provide a detailed history of the adventures and misadventures of the occupants of the Susquehanna estate through the death of Henry James/Ignatius Carroll in 1884, 200 years after the Rousby murder. Recently uncovered genealogical clues regarding the Carroll and Rousby families of Southern Maryland, their connections to a second murdered Patuxent River Tax Collector, and the estate’s calamitous transfer to the Henry Ford Museum will also be discussed.

An Art History Major’s Thoughts on Archival Processing

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Thinking about images: an Art History major’s thoughts on archival processing

Guest post by Emily Smith, Spring 2017 Archival Assistant

My name is Emily Smith, I am a graduating senior with a double major in Art History and Religious Studies. I have been working in the Archives as an Archival Assistant over the past semester.

Alba Music Festival

Stage prepped before a performance in San Domenico Church, Alba in 2010. San Domenico Church was the unique location of many performances throughout the duration of the Alba Music Festival.

One project that I worked on this semester while a student archival assistant at the St. Mary’s college of Maryland archives was the sorting of digital photographs of the Alba Music Festival from 2005-2011. Working with images is part of my background as both an Art History major and the Supervisor of the Fine Art Collections at SMCM. However, this project was different than my experience working at the art gallery. The purpose of image analysis in Art History is often to identify its aesthetic and contextual qualities, and engage with the intent of the artist and the experience of the viewer in turn. This project required that I treat the photographs as documents and information, and think critically about its place within the Archives. The first question I was trained to ask was similar to what we think about in Art History, which was ‘what information is the photograph telling me?’ The second question was slightly different, and a new technique for me when thinking about images. It was ‘how is that information relevant to the college and the Archives?

The first step of the project was to look at each individual image, and decide which photographs should be added to the archive’s permanent digital collection and which ones to separate, or remove from the collection, because their content was redundant. In this digital age, sometimes people transfer an entire SD card from a digital camera without any editing process, and archives are left with dozens of images which, from an archival perspective, are superfluous. The field of Archival Science provides impartial guidelines for thinking archival appraisal and issues such as uniqueness, and compels us to always ask ourselves what the archive is trying to document with a collection. The images could be deleted due to redundancy, irrelevance, or poor image quality.

When faced with multiple images of a subject deemed relevant to the Archives, it was easy to utilize some of the skills I learned as an Art History student, such as visual literacy, or being able to understand visual symbols, cues, and motifs. At this point, I could have a little bit of fun and choose from the redundant images based on their visual clarity or level of visual interest they could offer to a future researcher. Following the initial sort of the images, I accessioned each remaining image and provided it with a title and a caption, and picked subject headings from both the Library of Congress Subject Heading authority, as well as the pre-determined terms from local vocabularies. This was done in order to help people navigate future research or other uses of this image collection. It was interesting to engage with these digital images and parse out their most important details while thinking about what information within the image would be useful to someone looking back through this image collection at a later time. I had to think both about what information stands out to me now, and then hypothesize what information would be relevant to researchers in the future. In total, the Alba image sort was a useful experience in thinking about photographs and digital images from different perspectives, and engaging with them in dynamic new ways.

From the Archives: Letters Home

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Uncertainty and Connection in the Archive’s Katherine Tenney letter collection

Guest Post by Rosie Hammack, Sullivan Scholar summer intern in the SMCM Archive. Among other tasks, she is describing the letter collection of St. Mary’s Female Seminary-Junior College alumna Katherine Tenney ‘37 (sister of national archery champion Jean Tenney ’34), who wrote home nearly every day during her time at St. Mary’s.

“Everything has so many ‘maybes,’” laments 18-year-old Katherine Tenney in a letter sent home on a mid-October afternoon in 1936 (one of 131 included in the collection). It’s true—the world for Katherine Tenney was riddled with maybes. Nearly every letter in the collection includes a battery of “ifs” and “thens.” In the 1930s, travel plans were rarely secure. Letters got lost in the mail. Mailing addresses went missing or became obsolete. Compared to our modern era of information, her’s was a world of inconvenience.

Transcribing the handwritten letter into the computer.

And yet, in the weeks that I have spent describing her letters, I have come to enjoy that inconvenience. Saved without return letters, the Katherine Tenney collection is a conversation cut in half; uncertainty is webbed into the experience of reading it. Through the effort it takes to put the puzzle back together (and to learn to accept the missing pieces), that uncertainty has helped me forge a bond with its maker.

To be clear: this was a slow and often frustrating process. Katherine’s letters are stream-of-consciousness. Many are jumbled and repetitive, often broken up by curt, stilted sentences and requests for money or apples or bowstrings. Yet through these letters Katherine sustained strong ties to her family and friends. And amidst the daily tedium, the affected courtesies and the petty drama, the poignancy of genuine human connection occasionally shines through.

On a Tuesday in November, 1936, Katherine sent this letter home:

Letter home from Katherine Tenney in SMCM Archives

Transcribed: “Mother dearest, Just rec’d your card. It all just doesn’t make sense to me, I feel like I’m just up in air all the time. I’ll be thinking about you all the time – I know what you’re going thru with. I hope Mrs. Henesy came. I was going to call you up tonite but suppose there isn’t much use. I’m enclosing $2 for flowers, if that isn’t enuf, please let me know. I’ve just these few seconds before class but just wanted you to hear from me. I so wish I were with you but I hope Mrs. Henesy is. How is Pop? Give him my love + sympathy. Did you engage Mr. Kauffman? All my love K.T.”

Cryptic as this card may be, it isn’t a challenge to imagine the 18-year-old girl who wrote it. Between the hurried lines of cursive we can see her bent over her desk, writing and scrapping and writing again, pen working feverishly to combat some unknown tragedy. And somehow, in this one-sided interaction between conscious reader and eternal writer, the unknowns bring this moment alive. The specifics are blurry, ill-defined, and, at the end of the day, unnecessary. I understand. Through uncertainty, I am allowed access to a tenuous but intimate bond. For a moment, “up in air,” I sit with her.

We live in an age of instantaneous information, with constant access to much of the corpus of human knowledge. We have done away with the inconvenience of unknowing. In that space, it seems we may be missing something profound.

In the incomplete correspondence of Katherine Tenney, connectedness thrives among “so many ‘maybes.’”

Sullivan Scholar works in the St. Mary’s Archive over the summer

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Guest Blog Post (1 of 3) written by 
Taylor Schafer, SMCM ‘2015, Sullivan Scholar, Summer 2014

Hello archive followers! My name is Taylor Schafer. I am a rising senior and I have been interning in the SMCM Archives all summer. This is the first of three Blog posts.

The Archives is located in the basement of Calvert Hall and houses collections of artifacts, newspapers, photographs, letters, and publications relating to both St. Mary’s College and St. Mary’s County history. One of the main areas where College and County history interact is the SlackWater Oral History Collection. My task this summer was to add to this resource by conducting and transcribing interviews of local residents and community leaders, alumni, and longstanding faculty or staff who all have had an impact or were a witness to certain time in local history. In addition, I have been working on my St. Mary’s Senior Project (SMP) this summer, which involves conducting interviews with alumni, faculty, and staff. My project topic focuses around students traditions through the years and the 7 Wonders of St. Mary’s. The interviews I have been doing are helping to piece together the social history of St. Mary’s, which I hope to help publish with my completed SMP.Taylor Schafer '15 works in the archives

My main responsibilities this summer have included brainstorming and reaching out to potential interviewees, preparing for interviews, conducting interviews, transcribing interviews, following up with interviewees if needed, and organizing transcribed interviews for the SlackWater website and preserving the audio files. I have conducted some interviews on campus and have also travelled as far as Prince George County for others. Over the past nine weeks, I have transcribed over 220 pages of interviews, conducted ten interviews, some of which include with former College president Joe Urgo, Jayson Williams ‘03, Trinity Episcopal Church Rector John Ball, and Executive Director of Three Oaks Center Lanny Lancaster. I have had several learning opportunities this summer in the Archives besides learning how to conduct oral history interviews.

Of course, working in the archives, I’ve learned a large amount of content about St. Mary’s history as well. There’s so much history housed in the Archives that most community members do not realize. For instance, did you know that a 1900 graduate, Emily Louise Clayton Bishop, studied sculpture with Auguste Rodin and has artwork in several museums? How about that famous sculptor Hans Schuler designed and sculpted the Freedom of Conscience statue in 1935, and his son, Hans Schuler Jr., carved the College seal in 1970? There is so much fascinating St. Mary’s history to be uncovered in regards to the College and region. My work in the archives this summer has helped me not only realize that but also contribute to that material.

Next week I will write a Blog Post about memory and oral history interviews.  The following week I will touch upon the interviews with former presidents Joe Urgo and Jane Marget (Maggie) O’Brien, and transcripts of these interviews will be made available to the public.

Kay Aldridge, Queen of the Serials and St. Mary’s Graduate

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Nyoka screenshotMovie star and model Kay Aldridge, best known for playing the title role in the 1942 movie serial “The Perils of Nyoka,” is a 1934 graduate of St. Mary’s Female Seminary High School. Then existing as both a high school and two-year junior college, Katherine Gratton Aldridge entered St. Mary’s in the Fall of 1931 as a Sophomore after attending one year of high school in Westminster, Maryland. She was born in Tallahassee, Florida and grew up in Lyells, Virginia. Kay was from an artistic family as Cornelia C. Aldridge, Kay’s mother, notes that she is an art teacher and artist.
[Read more…]

Timeless W.W.II-era St. Mary’s Scrapbook as True Today as it Was Then.

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Guest Blog Post written by
Jennifer Housley, SMCM ‘2014, Archive Student PFP Fellow

As a soon-to-be graduate nearing the halfway mark of my last semester, I am struck by several things.

The impending doom of graduate school responses.  The frantic job search.  The panic of last minute OneSearches for that final,  perfect SMP secondary lit source.  And, of course, the already pervasive feeling of nostalgia as we walk down our always comforting campus path, considering the speed with which our time here is coming to an end.  A comfort to those of us leaving St. Mary’s, however, is the timelessness of this place, as is reflected in a new collection of online images in the college’s archives – the scrapbooks of Doris Ann “D.A.” Hughen, née Miller, class of 1945.

cadet and plane

D.A.’s time here was, in some ways, very different than ours.  Her college experience coincided with World War II, as is depicted in her photograph taken with a military cadet from Charlotte Hall Military Academy and her snapshot of a military sea plane on St. Mary’s River.

Of course, her time was different in more laughable ways, too.

P1944_0005

Smoking Permission Form

But then we see photographs like these, where you can see yourself as clearly as you see Doris laying by the docks with friends, or ice skating in the winter, or peering out over the Garden of Remembrance in one of those rare, quiet moments we have grown to appreciate.

Threepic

P1945_damhws_0004

D.A. Miller Hughen graduation photo, 1945

As we go to seek the next adventure, let’s keep in mind that we are not alone in our love for St. Mary’s.  Far from it.  Even as we leave her for a while, she doesn’t leave us.

“Tho’ sum-mer turns to win-ter and the pre-sent dis-ap-pears,
The laugh-ter we were glad to share still ech-oes thru the years.
While oth-er nights and oth-er days have found us gone our sep’-rate ways
We have these mem’-ries of St. Mary’s.”

“Memories of St. Mary’s,”
lyrics found in MSS 007 D.A. Miller Hughen papers

To view all of the images from the D.A. Miller Hughen Scrapbook that have been added to the SMCM Historic Photograph Collection, follow this tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/p8m8euy

 

Information Science Careers at St. Mary’s and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

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Many St. Mary’s graduates have gone on to careers in Information Studies, a field that includes library science and archives.  Eight history majors in the last two years alone have chosen to attend the “iSchool” (Information Science School) at the University of Maryland.  To address the growing interest in the field among St. Mary’s students, in the Spring of 2015 the Museum Studies Department will be offering Introduction to Archives and Information Science, a 2 credit course.

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Jennie Thomas ’95

Included among St. Mary’s alumni in the Information Science field is Jennie Thomas ‘95, head archivist of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.  She graduated from St. Mary’s of College of Maryland with a music degree, and after studying music education at the graduate level for a time, as well as working music retail, she finally entered the field of librarianship as way to combine her interests in a variety of subjects.  Looking back on the education courses she took at St. Mary’s, she says that it provided her with a foundation for working as head archivist at the “Rock Hall” by learning about ways to teach, put together exhibits, and capture the imagination.  This education background, coupled with her St. Mary’s vocal degree, helps her contextualize rock and roll in a historical framework.

Jennie Thomas spoke at St. Mary’s as part of Museum Studies Week earlier this semester, and gave this advice: “Be patient. Don’t think that you’ll get your dream job right away.  Getting a lot of experience in different things – which a liberal arts education provides – can only help determine whether something is what you want to do. Volunteering and internships are great ways to do that and when you do these sorts of things, be willing to go the extra mile. A lot of jobs can be what you make of them.”

Advice regarding the treatment of College Freshman. From 1495.

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Whenever searching through primary source documents, you never know what you might find.  One can only imagine the circumstances surrounding the issuing of the following statute, prepared by Leipzig University in 1495, but the folks at the Ask The Past Blog were good enough to dig it up for the world to see:

“Statute Forbidding Any One to Annoy or Unduly Injure the Freshmen.

Each and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with insult, torment, harass, drench with water…, throw on or defile with dust or any filth, mock by whistling, cry at them with a terrifying voice, or dare to molest in any way whatsoever physically or severely, any, who are called freshmen, in the market, streets, courts, colleges and living houses, or any place whatsoever, and particularly in the present college, when they have entered in order to matriculate or are leaving after matriculation.”

Leipzig University Statute (1495). From Friedrich Zarncke, ed., Die Statutenbücher der Universität Leipzig, (Leipzig, 1861), 102. Translation adapted from Robert Francis Seybolt, The Manuale Scholarium: An Original Account of Life in the Mediaeval University (Cambridge, MA, 1921), 21-2, n.6.

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Perhaps at least one of these freshmen are concerned about somebody “crying at them with a terrifying voice.”

Feel free to contact the librarians or archivist for assistance with finding primary source materials for your papers and presentations!

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St. Mary's City, MD, 20686-3001

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