Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 12/17/2012

Today I reviewed letters Michelle had worked on previously, MSS113-b01f05-04, -b01f06-03, -b01f06-04, and -b01f06-05. I wasn't able to add/correct a great deal: Michelle got the vast majority of it, and many of the items are initials or names for which there isn't enough context to conclusively interpret.

I was able to figure this department name in the header of the first letter thanks to a Google search for "1864 dept marshall texas" which uncovered an earlier letter from Brig. Gen. Green which has a typed header. Hooray! That letter also helped clarify the signature at the end for "W. Stedman, A. A. G."

Trans-Miss Dept (Trans-Mississippi Dept.)

W. Stedman AAG [Assistant Adjutant General, possibly?]

Michelle had already figured out this following word (possession), but the nature of the elongated Ss common to this set of letters made it look very strange...more like "popepion." There were a number of lower-case Ts that looked perfectly like lower-case Hs, as well.

possession

Old Vault Letters, December 12, 2012 - Michelle Godfrey

Today I worked on three more items from the Old Vault Letters collection: MSS113-b01f06-03,- -04, and - -05.
The first letter was the one that presented the most problems. Some words within the text remain a mystery. I think it's especially nice to be able to read the names of the people mentioned or make out a signature.

"to Ali? C? by said Friedlander"

William Webb, C.S. Receiver

The other two documents were fairly easy to read and had some details about the purchase transactions for two slaves. The second letter, written in 1863, was the Bill of Sale for a woman named Lucinda who was purchased as a slave for $3,500.

The final letter explained how a man named Henry ran away from the North and had been sold to someone in Brazoria Texas for $600. It appears that at least one page is missing because the end of the first side indicated to turn the page over, but nothing was on the other side.

Overall, I'd say this was a most interesting batch of documents. They were all from the folder 'Slavery: Legal Documents, 1796-1863'. I could see a difference in the wording and structure in the last two items. The one written in 1863 said that Lucy (Lucinda) was to be a "slave for life" and be "property for ever". In the third letter, dated earlier in 1834, the 30 year old man Henry was to be a "good servant" for a "term or period of fifty years".

Sheet music collection Dec. 12, 2012 - Mary Sommerfeld

Working on the 5th floor, I worked on 25 records.

This included 20 (#865 to #885) entries found on the database, and five new entries added.

None of the items had bar codes assigned to them. My time sheet will need ajusting, taking away a

 

half hour.

 

There was one very striking cover:

Image Metadata, Elaine Patton, 12/10/12

Today I reviewed an exported list of digitized image metadata looking for missing/faulty data, particularly collection numbers, finding aid links, identifiers, and publisher.

There were a few that weren't listed in the Collection Information reference sheet I was referring to, so I had to simply pull the collection name from further along in the Image Metadata spreadsheet (collection numbers SC0329, SC1058, and SC1433). There was also a collection set (MSS0277, the Rev. M. L. Price Collection) that was supposed to have a finding aid in TARO, but when I tried inserting the file number (184) into the URL, as I'd done for the others, it only produced a 'does not exist' page. Searching did not uncover it, either. A couple had typos/errors where the identifier data differed from the collection data, which I noted.

The TARO reference list could have used some revision, for that matter... lots of irregular collection identifiers. Easy work-around: highlighting that column and doing ctrl+F searches for whatever piece of the number I had (since leading 0s were often left off).

Bracey's Block Maps - Michelle Godfrey, Dec. 5, 2012

Today I finished scanning the Bracey's Block Map book. The second half of the book was in better condition than the first half, so there were fewer torn pages to deal with. This week I found some of the missing fragments for a few of the pages that were scanned last week. These pieces could be put back in place to get a better and more complete image. The most notable change was for page 60 which previously had a large portion missing.

Sheet Music Collection December 3, 2012 Mary Sommerfeld

 

Back downtown with my left arm out of the cast.

Working on the 5th floor, I worked on 25 records.

This included 23 (#841 to #864) entries found on the database, and two new entries added.

Only one record had a bar code assigned to it.  Some of the music had very nice covers.

 Two very art deco in style         

                                             

And one includes a sock knitter



















Finally tis the season to count your blessings

Greek Community Collection, Elaine Patton, 12/3/12

Today I was back in ContentDM polishing up/adding metadata for photos from the Greek Community Collection.

(MSS0199-0174) 1939 picnic photo,
including a guy holding out his bottle

Most photos did not have captions associated with them, which presented to me the typical challenge of succinctly describing a scene with no context while trying to avoid 'group portrait of people'-type descriptions. A couple of caption-less photos in this set, however, either had a duplicate already online or had a different view of the same scene that included descriptions I was able to copy over. In another one I was able to positively identify the fence near the tracks of Houston's Union Station thanks to an otherwise unrelated photo in the collection.

Bracey's Block Maps, Michelle Godfrey, Nov. 28, 2012

Today I worked on scanning the 1929 edition of Bracey's Block Maps of the City of Houston. The scanning process went really well and I was able to finish about half of the book. The only problems were due to the book's condition. The pages are very brittle and many of them are torn or missing pieces. There were a few times when I could find the loose pieces of a page and fit them back into place, it was a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 11/26/12

Today's letters: MSS113...

• ...b01f02-02,
• ...b01f06-02,
• ...b01f09-01,
• ...b01f10-01.

MSS113- b01f06-02 is mostly clear with a few instances of scribbly, indistinct script and a few places where the ink has badly faded. This word (words?) was used twice near the beginning-- I believe it's "pursuit," but there's a disconnect in the middle.

 Aside from that, I'm pretty sure I parsed most of the words correctly, but the whole of the message doesn't really... flow. It has the feel of a sort of hurried, disjointed, run-on mess. Or at least, there are a lot of words placed into sentences alongside other words I wouldn't have thought had any business being alongside each other. For example:

...for and in consideration of the sum of [??? (worn page)] dollars to me in hand paid the receipt where of is hereby acknowledged.

I'm 90% certain of all the words in that sentence (save for the obvious place where the page was worn, which is presumably a numeral amount), but the phrasing is just...bewildering.

B01f02-02, b01f09-01, and b01f1001 were all nice and clear, yay. I was interested to see the word "aforesaid" used, rather than the more familiar "aforementioned."

Old Vault Letters, November 14, 2012 - Michelle Godfrey

Today's batch of letters included MSS113-b01f05-04, --b01f23-07, -08, and -09. 

The first letter was fairly legible until the final page. I could not make out most of it, but it might have been a log tracking transportation information. This was the first time I saw dates written with a slash instead of the full year.

maybe Jny 21/65

Nov 22d/64

The last three letters were OCR'd so there were only a few corrections to be made.

Maresh WPA Files, Jennifer Nuzzo - November 8, 2012

I created a beast of a spreadsheet for file MSS1470-00209 and uploaded it to CONTENTdm. I scanned two missing pages and added them to their assigned derivatives folder.

Old Vault Letters, November 7, 2012 - Michelle Godfrey

Today’s letters were the same batch Elaine did on Oct 22^nd :  MSS113-b01f04, --b01f05, and --b01f06.

First letter, written by Sam Houston, was really hard to make out for the reasons Elaine previously mentioned. There were jumbled letters that could be one word or two really close together. 

Mystery word(s)

I was also unfamiliar with artillery terms and was able to figure out the word ‘carronades’  by doing a little research about the word ‘grapes’.

supply of grape and carronades

Our second letter was much easier to read. It was written in April 1865 and had the official letterhead from the Confederate States of America.  There were several names mentioned, including  General Lee and Lincoln.

Third item was written in 1796. It’s really great that it still exists, but unfortunately it is just too illegible.