Adventures in Academia

I ran out of 3x5 note cards and the student bookstore is closed, so my evening’s research stalled out. I realized I hadn’t updated folks in the World o’ Kip in a while so I figured I would take some time while I had it and let folks know what was happening.

Yes, I am still volunteering in the archeology lab, still taking stuff out of bags, washing stuff, drying stuff, labeling stuff and putting stuff back into bags. It’s sounds like a thrill o’minute, but I have actually learned a great deal. We also had another test dig outside of town, in which I got more experience in the glamorous world of ditch digging, experience I can hopefully parlay into a job working with a contract archeology firm over the summer. My Anthro professor said that fieldwork is very important to getting into grad school and since I can't afford to go to summer session on out-of-state tuition (and I really need the money) I’m trying to rent my soul out to the highest bidder.

I’m still working on the Blockade of Wilmington, which is the research that stalled out. I have however finished going through all the original sources up in Special Collections.

Special Collections is the area of a library with original manuscripts, old documents, records and letters that historians mine for information. If you ever come across a trunk full of old letters from your grandparents day and don’t feel like keeping it, contact your local library, university or historical society and see if they would be interested in having them. Most letters are personal in nature, but often people talk about what is happening around them because of world events and that’s the kind of stuff we like to know about. We know there was a Civil War, but how did it affect people’s daily lives? That’s what the stuff in special collections helps us understand.

You take a service elevator up to a well appointed room of dark paneling and leather chairs. You leave all your things in a wood paneled locker, taking only notebooks and pencils (no pens) into to collection room itself. You hand the clerk at the desk a slip of paper with a number on it and he or she brings out a box. You take the box over to a table, sit yourself down and enter living history.

“Furloughs will not be granted for any length of time including seven days except in extreme cases…”

“You wrote to me that Grandma told you that I spent fity dollars on my visit to you at Wilmington. Grandma was mistaken. I know Uncle that I have been very extravagant, but I didn’t spend that much…”

“Dear Col, I arrived here yesterday to find Col. N. as fat and crazy as ever…”

“Dear May, We are “sand fiddling” upon Sullivan’s Island again…”

“My Darling, I reached home yesterday from Roanoke Island. The Yanks released me on parole, that is on our signing a written promise not to take up arms again until we were duly exchanged. This we did very cheerfully, because we knew we could be of service at home with our friends…”

“It gives me pain to think of bidding adieu to so noble and generous a band of officers. I can’t hope to find others to whom I shall become so strongly attached…”

“Mother, I know you did not think so but I love him, I do and when I think of how I shall never see or hear him again I feel as though my head and my heart will burst. I wish so much to come home. Please send for me...”

“The reports in the newspaper are so conflicting I do not know whether they passed through my neighborhood or not. It is rumored that they passed through Livingston and other reports say that they went most from Carlton…”

“Dear Mother, You must excuse bad spelling and writing for it is impossible to do is well where there is so much noise…”

“Give my Love to the family and to little Fred and Cary and to all the girls, just tell them I don’t think so much of them because I can’t hear from them and don’t get any prettys at all. Tell them I don’t like them at all if they can’t write a solider….”

These last two were taken from a rather substantial series of letters from Private stationed at Camp Heath on the North Carolina Coast. I spent three hours going through letters assuring (and reassuring) his mother that there was no liquor in camp, asking for flannel shirts, promising to write to his sister, complaining that his sister never tells him about the girls he wants to hear about, talking about his friends, describing trips to Wilmington, nights spent out on the beach with lights to help guide the blockade runners in and days of bombardment. As you get deeper in the box a deep homesickness sets into his letters and then you come across a sheet in a different hand:

“1st Resolved, whereas our late friend and fellow soldier John C. Fennel, has fallen victim to the great destroyer, that which we bow with meekness to the flow, yet his amiability and sweet disposition, his youth and flower good spirits, his manliness and those soldierly qualities doubly endeared him to his companions and rendered keen the pangs of sorrow for his loss.
2nd Resolved, that his loss and to the service is great, but to his parents and kindred it is irrepairable and we extend to them our heartfelt condolence in this their hour of grief; but it must be some consolation to them that mourn not as they would without hope, but have some assurance that his quiet and blameless life secured him a resting place where war and sorrow are not known.”

And you are several lifetimes’ away mourning for a young man you have never met.

........

Of course, that is the more maudlin aspect of history. Part of plowing through people’s correspondence means plowing through people’s handwriting. So you often end up reading things like this:

“My Dear Sir, I am afraid thoul you think I am sexy flav in a unevening your letter inclaring use a hraven…”

I didn’t stop giggling at that one for ten minutes, very annoying to other researchers I am sure.

It looked like he wrote “sexy flav”, I swear!

So that is life in Kipville. I will spend this weekend putting my paper together and hoping that somehow I will pull this all off. Finals actually start next week for me, so wish me luck and have a great weekend!