The Berks County Courthouse

I made a spur of the moment trip to the Berks County Court House today. I was originally thinking about going back to the Genealogical Society to look at estate inventories and wills. When I called however, the woman said I'd need to go to the court house for the actuall wills.

Not knowing what to expect I got in my car and drove to Reading once again. I am really getting good at navigating around in that city. (NOT!). Actually I found the Courthouse without too much trouble. When I got to the research room where they keep all of the old wills a very nice woman helped me locate the people's wills I needed. She dug out every Boone I asked for and William Bird. Mark Bird's will was absent. I need to look into this because I have no idea why that would be unless he died outside of Berks county.

This is where it got exciting. Inside of these files were the ORIGINAL wills and estate inventories. not photocopies. The real thing. I touched them all. I spent fourteen dollars on photocopies today, and I was only able to get through the Boones, not any other residents of the Oley Valley that I have been meaning to look into like Lesher or Jaeger.

I found all of the documents to be very helpful. The estate inventories will allow me to discuss the economic situation of the Boones in relation to other members of the Oley Valley. There were also lists of the people that the deceased were in debt to. These will help me discuss relations between ethnic groups in the Oley Valley.

The Berks County Genealogical Society

The Berks County Genealogical Society saved my life. Well, maybe that is an overstatement, but it certainly saved my honors thesis. I went there a week and a half ago, after I had spent so much time (and gas) getting to the David Library in a completely fruitless attempt at locating some primary sources. I went to the BCGS on some advice from its president, who I happened to run into while I was researching. I discovered a strange, convoluted, and yet very helpful collection called the Pennsylvania Archives while I was there. Since my visit, I have been able to narrow my topic and finally get the first (actually second, but first acceptable) ten pages written out.

I walked into the Heritage Center Library a day or two after my somewhat failed visit to the David Library feeling a little hopeless. I had eight or ten relatively crappy pages of my honors thesis written. I was torn between several different theses that I liked, but that I was not sure were viable. I was at the HC library simply to scan over a few church records I missed for Exeter Qauker names. Volunteering that day was a man I had never seen before. This was unusual because I thought I knew all of the Library volunteers and staff, and I was prepared for an afternoon with the Glicks, a married couple who fill in for the main librarian some weekdays. This was an older fellow who, I thought, spoke with a slight Pennsylvania German accent. Since I was the only person in the tiny library, he asked me if I needed any help. I explained my project to him and immediately began leaving through some bound church records. I tried to ignore him at first, honestly, because I thought that there was no way he could help me. Then he started asking me about the sources I was using. I told him about the trouble I'd had so far. "Why don't you go down to the Berks COunty Genealogical Society?" He asked. "We have a lot more that was the HC has." "Do you have tax records?" I asked. "What about a map of the townships and who owned what land?" "Or more church records? Earliers ones?" "We have a lot more than what is here," he reiterated "I'm the president of the BCGS."

So the next day had me driving to Reading. The BCGS is located in Goggleworks, which is a big building full of galleries, studios, dance studios, and other cultural organizations. Don't ask me why or how it got there, it just is. Oh, and they have a nice gift shop, with pretty jewlery that I almost spent too much money on that day, but I digress. As soon as I go into the BCGS I was immediately aware that I was the youngest person in the room by a good forty years. Not that I was surprised by this, in fact I was expecting it. I have become completely used to being surrounded by people who are much older than me; it comes with the territory of being a historian and working in the public history feild. A very bent old man is sitting behind a desk having a conversation about "rag heads" with a woman sitting accross the room. The desk is on its own in the front of the room and it looks pretty official. He's the one I'm going to have to talk to first. "what have I gotten myself into?" I think.

I tell the man that I am looking for tax lists for certain townships and he sets me up on the microfilm. It's s;low going but somewhat helpful. He's attentive towards me and constantly asks me how I'm doing. FInally I tell him I am researching the boones. "The Boones?" he says. I knew I should have probably said something earlier.

He takes me back to the stacks and starts shuffling through books. I can hardly understand him because everything comes out in a sort of stream of consciosuness. He leaves me to string the disjointed phrases together to for a complete thought. A woman with long grey hair and a sharp, creased face walks over to us. By now I have been able to deduce that she works here too. She hands me a volume of the Pennsylvania Archives. "This is the volume you want," she says, "I've just researched with this series so much that I know where certain things are by now."

For those of you not aware, this woman's experitise with the Pennsylvania ARchives is no mean feat. These things are divided by series, volume, with no rhyme or reason to the order that documents were edited in. It's a mess that I had always avioded using. Inside this particular volume though were tax lists from the years and townships that I needed. And the really good part? The PA Archives are in any library. I didn't really even need to drive to Reading to read them.

So to make a much too long story short (how do I always end up writing so much?) I found a lot of helpful material at the BCGS. And what's more, because of that material I was convinced that I could change my topic a little. I am now just focusing on the Boones and how they were becoming assimilated into an Anglican and GErman elite and showed their assimilation by fighting in the Revolution. This is a lot more manageable becuase I don't have to trace the genealogy of ten different families in order to track ethnic assimilation. I can just focus on the Boones.

I will write more about this new topic later on. For now just know that I have ten pages written already that I am happy with.

The David Library

This is where I was last Wednesday. The David Library in Washington Crossing PA. I went there to do research for my honors thesis which is about Quakers in the American Revolution. The David Library has a really helpful microfilm collection of pension applications made by Rev. War vets and their widows years after they had served. It wasn't until the 1810s that Congress passed the first bill that allowed Revolutionary War Veterans to collect pensions. Once it was passed the veterans who were still alive had to apply by describing their experience and answering a series of questions. Their answers are extremely revealing about life in Colonial and early America, and they give a fascinating account of the life of continental soldiers.

I was looking for a few specific Quakers from the Exeter Monthly Meeting who I knew fought in the Revolution. I was able to get a hold of a paper index before I made the two hour drive to the library. I was at the disadvantage of looking for men with names like John Hughes, John Boone, etc. Soooooo common. And the index revealed that there were many Higheses and Boones who applied for pensions in Pennsylvania.

Unfortuntaley when I got to the library I realized that it would be little help. None of the men whose applications I read seemed to be the Exeter Quakers I was looking for. One John Boone was related to the John Boone I needed. That was as close as I got. Researching in History is like being a detective. Sometimes, by the most curious serendipity you will find some piece of evidence that changes the way you see everything, or bolsters your argument and helps you immensly. A lot of other times you do a lot of work hunting for things that were never there to being with.

I'm Back

My internship ended August 8th and I ran out of steam the last few weeks with my blog. I've decided to start blogging again for a couple of reasons. First of all I feel like the things I learned at Daniel Boone have not just stopped because the internship is over, they will contunue to affect me, probably forever. Secondly, I feel like I still have a lot to say about history, and blogging gives me an outlet. Thirdly, blogging helps me articulate thoughts and get them out in the open, so that they can develop into ideas for papers, projects, etc. And finally, I'm going to keep blogging because I am working on two rather exciting projects that I would like to document, recieve feedback on, and describe online.

One thing to keep in mind about all this is that I am now back at school. I don't have the time to write voluminous entries like I did over the summer. Nor do I have time to blog everyday. However, I will still try to make time for it, and update the blog with some amount of regularity.

Now onto those projects I mentioned. The first is my honors thesis. It's supposedly the seminal project of my education . I actually got the idea for it from working at Daniel Boone. I am writing about participation in the American Revolution by Quakers who belonged to the Exeter Monthly Meeting. I am trying to make the connection between Quakers who had a lot of contact with other ethnic groups, and those who fought in the War. I think that the Quakers who were more accustomed to dealing with people who did not adhere to thethey Quaker creed were probably more likely to fight. I am trying to prove this "ethnic mingling" if you will, by looking at marriage patterns, property ownership, god parentage, partnerships, and other legal relationships between people of different ethnicities.

The other project has to do with ethnicity as well. This one I am very excited about . I am writing a paper about the Pennsylvania Germans during WWI. I am trying to prove that the reason the Pennsylvania German Society (do I always get inspired by old employers?) halted meetings during the war years was because it was trying to distance itself from the German immigratns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this paper, I am exploring the Pennsylvania Germans' sense of ethnic identity, the ideas they had that made them feel separate from other German groups, and those that made them feel that they were being American in their own way.

I will elucidate more on both these topics later on. You will hear about my sources, the process I use to write and edit, as well as get a more detailed sense of what each paper is about.

"What's in a Name?" My Interpretive Sunday

After having researched for my interpretive Sunday off and on for a month I finally got to present it to the public. Overall, the excessive heat kept people away from the Bertolet Cabin where I was located. The few people who did stop by had mixed reactions to my presentation. I think that the public expects more action on an iterpretive Sunday, not just a static exhibit.



My display for "What's in a name" constited mostly of examples of various ethnic groups' family trees, and facsimile frakturs, that I was to explain to the public as they came though the cabin. I ended up with four ethnic groups: English Quakers, Pennsylvania Germans, Scots-Irish, and Lenape Indian. Basically what I found was that the Quakers, who belived in egalitarian relations between the sexes, tried to repsent both the maternal and paternal line when coming up with first names for their children. The Scots-Irish tended to name boys after their grandfathers, and the Pa Germans and the Lenapes usually didn't go by the first names they were given. I also included in the display handouts on genealogy, teaching people about different resources, and giving them blank family trees to fill out.

I was stationed in the Bertolet Cabin from noon until about 4pm. The heat was oppressive. It was about 100 degrees outside that day in the sun, and it was humid. I was wearing eighteenth century garb, so I was extremely hot, and had very little energy. The Bertolet cabin is in an out of the way location from the rest of the historic buildings and so I think that was a significant factor in keeping people away. I had four groups of people walk through the cabin. Most were not terrbily interested in my display. One older couple asked questions and took time to read everything that I had set up. Most people listened obligingly.

They asked me questions about the bakeoven most of all. I think that on interpretive days what the public really wants is a demonstration. They would have been perfectly happy to watch me bake something in the bakeoven, or to watch me cook on the hearth.

The Keystone Intern Tour of the Oley Valley

The other day the PHMC organized a trip to the Daniel Boone Homestead for the Keystone Interns. They toured the site in the morning, and in the afternoon Jim and I took them on a tour of the Oley Valley. Overall I was impressed with the other interns, they were a bright bunch who were all very serious about history, and they seemed to know their stuff.

When the Interns first arrived in the morning Jim and I took them on a our of the site. The tour of the Boone House consisted of a long discussion of the dendro-chronology of the house that we got last year, and whether or not we should believe the dendro, which dates the house at the 1770's and 1790's, or other historical clues that would date the house earlier. A tour of the blacksmith shop showed the interns different types of log construction. At the barn we talked about how the public complains about how we take care of our animals (which is silly because they live better than some people do!). Dave and I also got to talk to them about interpretive Sundays, and what we each got to research, and how we thought the first one went over with the public.

Then came the tour of the Oley Valley. I was placed in a van with most of the interns. Jim was in a car with a few others. I actually had to try to give them a tour of the Oley Valley. Jim and I had created a route the day before, but I had not had much time to prepare. Most of what I said was a mixture of things that I remembered from my reading, and other tours of the Oley Valley that I had been on with Jim. Although I felt a little bit bad that I was not giving them as thorough of a tour as Jim would have, the interns all told me that they enjoyed it and that they thought I had done a good job. Here are some pictures from the tour.

Here is the Exeter Friends meetinghouse. Jim took us inside. Note the symetry on the outside of the building.

Here we are at the Keim House.

A Day on the Farm: Interpretive Sunday Numero Uno

Interpretive Sundays at the Daniel Boone Homestead are a lot like any other day there, except we put on one or two interpretive programs and all of the staff gets dressed up in period garb. I spent the whole day in the visitor's center ringing up peoples' purchases and giving tours just as always. The only things that were different were that Dave, the intern, and Charlotte, a volunteer, demonstrated flax production and spinning to the visitors. Overall I got positive feedback from the visitors, and I think that the interpretive demonstrations really help people understand what life was like in the past.

When I first put on my costume this Sunday I had one thought: this is ridiculous. I had spent the entire morning pulling weeds in the garden, watering, and picking camomile. (We don't open until noone on Sundays so I always have the morning to do things like that). I thought that putting on a costume in the middle of the day while I wasn't doing anything particularly historical was kind of silly. In fact I spent a good portion of the day on the computer researching "fighting quakers" and institutions that carry eighteenth century quaker documents. It must have looked quite anachronistic. I gave a tour in the garb and I am not even sure if the visitors understood that it was a special occasion for me to be doing this. I think they just thought that it was something gimicky that we did every day. None of them even asked me about my clothing at all when we were on the tour. Maybe they just felt awkward bringing it up.

At the Boone House a loquacious volunteer named Charlotte spun wool in eighteenth century garb all day. She knew a great deal about spinning and told me she had been doing it for about twenty years. She gave me advice about purchasing a spinning wheel and answered my questions about spinning and dyeing wool. The visitors watched her spin as they waited for the tour to begin. In the barn our intern Dave demonstrated linen production. He broke flax up in a flax break, scutched it, and combed it through hackles. He also talked to the visitors about farming, animals, growing hay, food etc.

Overall I think that the people who came to interpretive Sunday and actually engaged in the exhibites had a good time and got a lot out of it. Dave said that he did not get a very good turnout at the barn, probably because his exhibit was around the back and no one could see it. A lot of what I told people at the visitors center about the exhibit seemed lost on them. But the ones who did go seemed to learn a lot. One man told Ryan that he thought our costumes really added something to the presentation, and that we should wear them everyday. People also seemed to reat well to the spinning exhibit. One little boy even asked if Charlotte would show him how to use a drop spindle.