Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 11/5/12

This week I reviewed letters previously transcribed by Michelle, MSS113-b01f05-02 & -03, as well as worked on MSS113-b01f19-06, and -b01f20-03.

health

Capt

 Michelle did a great job on the first two; I was only really able to add a few words. I'm glad I didn't have to figure out the weird Ts (i.e. wishous vs without)!



And unfortunately there were a few words that I wasn't able to clarify, either, such as:

This one is in its own little fragment, so while there is some context, it's not really helpful. Ulty? Ultg?

This probably is 'push,' but it certainly does look more like 'p-oh.'

One of the letter headers also included this strange string of letters:

Actct[??] G Moutons Brigade

I thought maybe it had something to do with a kind of outdated abbreviation of et cetera, &c., but the last curve is definitely part of a G. and there's that A at the front... Of course, the only Mouton's Brigade I can find is Alfred Mouton's: the G. is perhaps for General? I've struck out on the "Actct," but I did come across the National Park Service's database of Civil War soldiers, with which I looked up several names just to verify them. I'm pointing out Chaplain Charles F. Evans's entry just because it amused me to see an "alternate name" listed as Charles T./Evens, as indeed, his middle initial is a wee bit ambiguous in this letter:

The latter two were at least partially typewritten, with some handwriting in the last one. Pretty straightforward except for a signed name that I'm uncertain how to read.

Maresh WPA Files, Jennifer Nuzzo - October 31, 2012

I created spreadsheets for files MSS1470-00206 & MSS1470-00208 and uploaded them to CONTENTdm.

31 octobre

This Halloween day is my final day working at the Ideson building on digitising some of the Barnstone collection for the Rice Design initiative and the HPL.

Had minor issues at the end of the day where upon the scanner decided to stop working, giving me a wonderful error message.

As I had issues with the scanner warming up to me at the beginning of my work I am sure this is the scanners way of saying good bye.

Au revoir et bon Halloween!

-ryan

29 octobre

Bon lundi tout le monde.

Today worked on more Marti's drawings and sketches, a synagogue in Maine and some more overseas buildings for Schlumberger.

As my time at the library draws to an end I have appreciated my time working with the Barnstone collection. 

Today I nearly finished the second of the three file drawers that house the Barnstone's collection from which Stephen Fox so diligently pulled.

Ciao and à mercredi

-ryan

Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 10/29/12

Today's letters included MSS113-...

• b01f07-01
• b01f11-02
• b01f23-02, -04, & -06

This set was mostly OCR'd type-written text to be revised and a couple of handwritten notes which were for the most part very clearly written. Only difficulty was in picking out some of the surnames being referenced. The first letter (b01f07-01) had a few small holes in the paper, but they were small enough and positioned so that there weren't any words truly obscured. All-in-all a very easy set.

Maresh WPA Files, Jennifer Nuzzo - October 25, 2012

I created spreadsheets for several MSS1470 Maresh WPA Files and uploaded them to CONTENTdm.

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - Oct. 24, 2012

Today I worked on two letters from the collection:  MSS113-b01f05-02 and -b01f05-03-01.

The first item was actually 2 separate letters from 1864. Page one was written by R. Greene to Dick Venables and page two was the reply back from Venables. The first writer (Greene) had a habit of joining a small word with the word that followed it. For example, ‘it seemed to me’ and ‘to the’ appear like this,

that it seemed to me

to the

There is also the tendency to not cross the letter ‘t’. It took awhile to figure out that this word was ‘without’ and not ‘wishous’.

were without

The second writer of page 2 (Venables) closed the letter with "In haste, Yours very truly", which may explain why he wrote in short broken phrases separated by dashes rather than fully formed sentences.  He had an interesting way of making the letter 't' which looked like an 'h'.

left next

Venables wrote a real interesting letter loaded with information about his encounter with Yankees, being in prison, and updates on the condition of fellow soldiers. This entire group of Civil War letters was outstanding.