Old Vault Letters - Elaine Patton, 8/29/2013

Finally back (from a scheduled break and then unexpected scheduling conflicts from my librarian job). Today involved reviewing the last few Old Vault letters previously decoded and assembled, in a couple of cases, by Michelle:

• MSS0113-b01f15-06
• MSS0113-b01f19-03
• MSS0113-b01f20-05
• MSS0113-b01f21-02

I was able to add in a few words here and there, made much more straightforward by the work already done by Michelle & Cecilia to get the oddballs in the right order to be legible. Other difficulties remained, i.e. that letter with random(?) slashes after many of the words and at the ends of lines. Same letter also had very expansive, spidery writing. I also learned the term "chirography" from the letter to Eliza Fannin, a good counterpart to the better-used 'typography.' Good stuff.

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - August 7, 2013

This week I completed two more items from The Old Vault Letters, MSS0133-b01f20 and -b01f21.

The first letter was a bit difficult to get through because the writer added a slash (/) at the end of many words for no apparent reason. This would occur both mid sentence and at the end of a line. 

and extensive/ acquaintance/, in/ the selection/

The second letter got a little messy at the end of page one. It appears that some of the writing was added at a different time because the ink was not as dark as the main part of the letter. 

Also, the writing seemed to be crammed into that section as if it had originally been left blank and filled in later.  

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey, July 31, 2013

This week I switched to letters completed by Elaine back on April 22nd, MSS0113-b01f08 and -b01f22.

The first one was written in Spanish and I managed to get through it with a little help from my limited knowledge of the language. Using an online dictionary and changing the MS Word document options to Spanish (Mexico) settings also helped.

Our second letter written by Andrew Jackson was really hard to read and make any sense out of it. Fortunately, Elaine had tackled so much of it and I was able to fill in a few of the questionable spots.

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - July 24, 2013

Today I worked on letters from MSS0113- b01f15, -b01f19, and b01f21.

-b01f19 contained the missing page 6 from last week, so it was nice to finally get the whole letter completed.

-b01f15 was a letter from 1830 to Eliza Fannin while she was away in Salem, North Carolina.  It was written by a family member who was giving her a lot of practical advice, such as ‘don’t neglect your teeth’ and if she had rotten teeth, go to a “good dentist; have them operated on as much as necessary”.  The last page was confusing because it had the postal information, as expected, but also had a list of the Kings of England. 

The final letter had very challenging handwriting and names that were hard to figure out. One nice thing was that the letter had bold dark ink which helped to make it easier to read.

sample of names within letter

 

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - July 17, 2013

Today I returned to Old Vault Letters for MSS0113-b01f19 and -b01f15-06 (both pages01 and pages02). 

I previously worked on b01f19 but was unable to fully complete the transcription because the pages were scanned and arranged out of order. The page adjustment has been made and now we just need to locate the final page number 6 and include it with the other five pages of the letter.

The letter from b01f15-06, has also been adjusted to present it as one large sheet of paper. For the most part, the writer kept both sides of the page divided, but there are a few places where lines of handwriting from the left side drift over into the right side portion of the page.  This letter also had a lot of spelling and grammar errors.

the words 'and', 'again' and 'your' written across both pages

Old Vault Letters & Franklin Beauty School - Elaine Patton, 5/13/13

Today's Old Vault letters: MSS0113-b01f15-04, -b01f20-04, and -b01f21-03.

The first letter is again addressed to Eliza Fannin and is so parental in tone, from "you haven't written..." to a quotation advising care of mind over appearance (the unnamed source here) to chastising her to take better care of her teeth (recommendation: rub with pulverized charcoal and a toothbrush). For some reason the last page (with the address) is largely occupied with a list of rulers of England.

The writer inserts forgotten words into the left margin with a ^ added wherever it belonged in the sentence. It was a little confusing to encounter the first time, since (unlike the pictured example) the word belonged further down the line, and I wasn't sure where the extra word was actually meant to go.

The second document is deceptive. It starts out as a typewritten article that had been OCR'd, but near the bottom and on the back of the page is begins handwritten (in smudged pencil)...notes? An addendum? It's a bit messy, and the paper is thin enough that on the back that the type shows through and further muddies things.

The last item was another transfer of property and so-so in difficulty.  Pretty legible with some difficult places helped along by remembering the general language of these things from past documents.

Last box (#49, photos 721-810) of Franklin Beauty School photos went by with no complications. This set had been skipped over initially, and I added them to the spreadsheet in order (I highlighted the left column yellow to distinguish them, since I wasn't sure whether they should be in order or just come at the end).

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - May 8, 2013

Today I worked on MSS0113-b01f15-06, -b01f19-04 and -b01f19-05.

The first item was another letter to Eliza Fannin. It had some condition issues, including a large hole in the paper. The pages were scanned in such a way that the endings of some of the lines rolled onto the next page and looked like they were part of the text there. With both pages side by side, it was possible to make out some of those questionable areas.

The second and third items were actually part of the same letter but the pages were out of order. We previously worked on a portion of the letter a few weeks ago. It was easy to recognize because of the letterhead on the stationary.

Old Vault Letters and Litterst Dixon Photographs - Elaine Patton, 5/6/2013

Today I reviewed the letters Michelle worked on previously, MSS0113-b01f13-01, -b01f15-02 , and -b01f15-03. Not much for me to add (though I think I actually had to add some misspellings to the second letter!). The second and third letters are part of the correspondence between Eliza Fannin and her family (-b01f13-01 dated 2 years after -b01f15-02). Her education was obviously paying off-- such a difference in style and spelling between her letter and the one from her father!

(He charmingly refers to influenza as "influenzy" a couple of times in his letter: )

The Litterst Dixon photographs were great, though one image was mislabeled. MSS1248-2910 was supposed to have been the Preston Hotel but was instead a duplicate of MSS1248-2911.

Just for fun, another comparison photo with modern/historic Houston. As near as I can tell, this is the same area on Main Street (the red flag possibly being where the movie theaters had been in the first modern photo; where the Kirby theater had been and looking from the opposite direction in the second modern photo), 1930 vs 2011:

 

(A 1961 postcard photo is shown on this page about the theaters.)

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - May 1, 2013

Today I switched to the group of letters Elaine previously completed which included MSS0113-b01f12-08, -b01f15-01, and –b01f15-05. I only found a few extra words to add since she had done a great job getting everything else figured out.   

The first document was like the one last week with the property sale listing an endless list of block and lot numbers. 

Our second letter was not in the best condition and was obviously really old, unfortunately, there was not a date written on it anywhere so it's a mystery as to when it was written.

The last letter written to Eliza Fannin seems to be connected to one of the letters I worked on last week (-b01f15-05).  Both letters mentioned the same things about clothing, especially underclothes, traveling to Salem for a visit, and family news updates.

Litterst Dixon Collection, Old Vault Letters - Elaine Patton, 4/29/2013

Today I entered metadata into ContentDM for photos from the Litterst Dixon Collection MSS1248. Several of the photos had two entries (one in each of the two databases/spreadsheets associated with the collection), but they generally supplemented each other. A couple initially seemed to have conflicts but were easily resolves: e.g., a building was said in one to be at Main and Franklin while the other said Main and Travis. Both street sets frame the same block, so it wasn't the conflict it initially seemed to be.

Neat photos! I can't get over how...small Houston appears to be/is in this one:

MSS1248-3652

For comparison, a modern picture with 2 of the recognizable buildings pointed out (the Gulf Building, now JP Morgan Chase Building, just right of center (orange arrow below), and the domed Courthouse, at left above (green arrow below):

What was the tallest (apparently) building on the skyline is dwarfed and scarcely stands out.

Also of note: a photo of people at Luna Park, an amusement park that opened in 1924 (nowadays part of its property is occupied by I-10 and I-45), and based on fashion alone, I would have never guessed the picture was taken in 1925.

MSS1248-2988 (cropped)

Today's Old Vault Letters: MSS0113-b01f12-08, -b01f15-01, and -b01f15-05. All were pretty clearly written and there weren't any particularly mysterious bits, save for a name here and there, though there are a few tears that obscure some words in the second two. The first letter is largely one big run-on listing of properties being transferred with very little in the way of punctuation, either between individual lots (e.g. ...one two three four six eleven...) or to connect numbers like 'fifty-five.' Whew. Easy to read and write, but also easy to lose your place.

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - April 24, 2013

This week, I worked on MSS0113-b01f13-01, -b01f15-02 , and -b01f15-03.

The first letter contained a long list of properties that were sold for the incredibly low price of only one dollar.  It got a bit messy keeping up with all the block and lot numbers. The writer had an odd way of writing the letter ‘d’ and it could be different at the beginning or end of the word.
A word ending in ‘d’ would look like this,

and

He also had the tendency to split a word apart. Combining the two patterns made some words appear like this,

discribed[?]

declare

The writer of the second letter did not seem to have a very steady hand and had several spelling errors. To make matters worse, there were many places marked to insert omitted words. It looks like this should have been the draft of the letter rather than the final version.

The final document  was written in 1830 and had a few condition problems but not so much that it distracted from the letter. The quality was outstanding especially when compared to the previous two letters. The writer clearly had excellent writing skills and it must have been a delight for her "Dear Parents" to receive a letter from her.

Old Vault Letters, Franklin Beauty School - Elaine Patton, 4/22/13

Finished box 53 (photos 1091-1119) of Franklin Beauty School photos. There was an even larger portion of color group photos in this set (as opposed to black and white headshots). One photo had a well-worn index card stapled to it. The back of the photo and the index card had statistics/pricing/? info for various services, from nails to pin curl sets to permanent color.

I reviewed a couple of Michelle's letters, MSS0113-B01f18-01 and -b01f18-02. I wasn't able to add much, though thankfully Michelle did get most of it. Same problem: itemized bill = challenge. I tried to research what some of the recurring terms/abbreviations were, but no luck.

I also transcribed MSS0113-b01f08-01 and -b01f22-01.

The first is a handwritten letter in Spanish, followed on the second page by a typewritten translation. I don't speak Spanish, but the handwriting was largely clearly enough to transcribe, and Google Translate was able to help me get the right word in a few places. (A few others I'm either reading wrong or have fallen out of use in the language, as I wasn't able to find anything to verify/correct them, e.g. the opening word "obsequiandy." Or so it looks like, anyway: obsequiando is a word, but the last letter in the original doesn't look like an O.)

The second letter is apparently written by Andrew Jackson and is a horrible mess. The text is just messy and the lines tend to start angling downward in the last couple inches, which made it a little difficult in a few places to keep track of my place in reading. Some parts of it, though messy, just stand out as perfectly understandable; other parts I get hardly anything out of. It gets progressively messier as you read towards the end. Oh, and the page is a little wrinkled on the left side (torn in some places), which obscures parts of some letters, so there's also that.

As a sample:

Pretty sure this is "it would," but other times that's how he writes just lower-case Ts.

"is [received]," with the latter apparently being spelled rec'seved or ree'sived or thereabouts. Or maybe it actually is spelled received and it's just badly written.

"... I am sure about that ..." Note that the S in sure looks more like an L, as well as the similarity of the As and Os in "about" or "that."

In the middle: "administration" (I believe). Note how it rolls downwards and scrunches together in the last few letters, despite the availability of another inch or two of paper.