12:32:28 button at the bottom of your application, and then select hide subtitle.
12:32:35 Please note, if your zoom application is not maximized. You may need to click on the three dots icon or more to turn off the subtitles.
12:32:45 Please use the q amp a feature to pose questions to the panel. I will relay those questions to the panelists to close out the session, the podcast and archivists tell was founded in February 2018 with the mission of giving voice to archivists is a platform
12:33:00 for archivists to be in conversation with archivists discussing their work and passions and how they care for the historical record and present the storied past.
12:33:09 There have been 123 episodes recorded today. And they're available via various channels including YouTube I Heart Radio, Google podcasts, and others about the hosts.
12:33:23 Karen Jamison Trivedi MLS is Associate Professor of librarian and head of special collections and college archives at the Fashion Institute of Technology SUNY.
12:33:38 She has nearly 20 years of experience mostly an art archive environments, including the Museum of Modern Art archives, and the sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, sure that earned her master's in library science with a concentration in archives
12:33:56 Records Management from the University at Albany Sunni and her Bachelor of Arts in the history of art from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She is currently engaged in her PhD studies and archival Sciences at the alma mater European hosted
12:34:03 and marrow board Slovenia, along with her archivist husband Jeffrey who she co hosts and archivists tell a podcast as I just said that there's always two archivists and archives of Jason professionals that has published widely and presented at many conferences
12:34:19 in the United States and abroad.
12:34:22 Jeff who is the chief records officer and the chief law Librarian of the New York State united court system.
12:34:30 Our guest today is Kelly Wooten, the Research Services and collection development librarian for the Sally thing I'm center for women's history and culture at the Rubenstein library at Duke University.
12:34:41 She does reference instruction and outreach for women's and LGBT q History Collections, as well as curating scenes artists books and other materials documenting modern feminism feminist activism.
12:34:54 She has co editor of make your own history, documenting feminist and queer activism in the 21st century.
12:35:01 Thank you all for being here today.
12:35:04 Thank you, Ben. And thank you, Kelly for joining us. Hello everyone, I'm Karen trivet, and I'm an archivist, and this is another episode of an arc of his tail, a podcast created by my husband Jeff hoof, and me.
12:35:19 Hi Jeff.
12:35:22 Good afternoon, Karen. It's great to be here in Merak wherever we are in the world. Exactly, exactly. Speaking of which, I just want to say welcome to episode number 124.
12:35:34 It is April 16 2021, and it is exactly 1235 in the afternoon. Eastern time. We are coming to you, Jeff and I are coming to you from one West Street in Manhattan, New York, USA.
12:35:50 And we're just so happy to be back with some return visitors and happy to welcome new visitors.
12:35:58 But for the new visitors and the existing ones we're breaking with tradition in many ways today First of all we are live for the first time and it's very exciting.
12:36:08 We're also at a conference of course Merrick spring 2021 and the luncheon event. I certainly want to thank organizers and sponsors for this opportunity, which is a rare reunion with an interviewee.
12:36:23 But this gives us a chance to dig even further than usual. In our hour long podcast.
12:36:30 But this gives us a chance to dig even further than usual. In our hour long podcasts, so we won't be asking our typical standard two questions, because they've generously been answered already in our episode number 97, which features Our guest today,
12:36:44 Kelly Wootton welcome Kelly.
12:36:48 Hi, thanks for having me, having me back, I should say.
12:36:52 It is a pleasure.
12:36:54 So we have a very special program today with Kelly and Kelly's gonna help us take a deep dive into the acquisition of a particular collection, and the characters that it features.
12:37:17 Great. So if I just jump right in.
12:37:14 Good tale, see.
12:37:19 So in thinking about this conversation.
12:37:24 I was thinking about the theme of suffrage, I was thinking about stories that intrigued me and stories that kind of
12:37:33 encompass a whole lot of the different aspects of my work as an archivist, if you want to follow along with the slides or look at them later.
12:37:42 I made a not super short but shorter Bitly Bitly slash capital be violet dash mera 21, if you want to check this out. So, I shared with jumpin Karen, the story of a woman named Serena Catherine Dandridge, she was most commonly known as Miss violet.
12:38:06 And I have not found a source for that nickname.
12:38:09 But it's possible that you because there were, like, at least one other Serena Catherine Dandridge and her family.
12:38:17 And she live from 1878 1956 in shepherds town West Virginia, so I thought that her location was also appropriate for our conversation today.
12:38:31 So I got introduced to this pilot through a reference question from another archivist Dr. Elizabeth Harmon who works at the Smithsonian, and she like many of us were was digging into questions of connections to the suffrage, the women's suffrage movement
12:38:49 with people who were associated with their institution, so she started looking in to
12:38:59 this particular person's life so violence or even Captain Dandridge was a scientific illustrator, so she was not only one of the first women scientific illustrators, but just one of the first illustrators at all.
12:39:15 And she was one of the few people that Dr Harmon could find with a connection to the suffrage movement. So it started out with this kind of simple request just verifying whether violet had connections to suffrage, and the kind of blurry ish image here
12:39:32 is one that I took from a blog post that Dr Harmon ended up writing about violent in her work. And within an inch from the biodiversity heritage library so one of the threads of the story that's interesting to me too is like all the different places where
12:39:47 where little bits and pieces of her story are located may ask a quick question count Yes. Is that how you got the name or title of your presentation tracing.
12:40:00 You know what that is a really great question.
12:40:06 Uh, yeah, I'll pretend like sure I was really that clever but it was really just my sense of like, trying to trace her story through the different pieces of it but appropriate Thank you
12:40:21 so much more I love that.
12:40:25 So, I worked with two interns that we had with a solid and center. One is, Amelia worker who ended up writing a blog post about this, about violet and another intern who was working with our exhibits program on our own suffered exhibit just asked him,
12:40:44 and we ended up, so we have this collection called a bed bedding or Dandridge family papers. And so most of the manuscripts that I'm going to show really quick are from that collection, but we had to try to figure out where we might find this evidence
12:41:03 of her subjectivism.
12:41:05 So this is just one example that I'm sharing because I love letterhead, and I thought this was a really fun letterhead with this little suffrage map from the National American women suffer just so skated pick satiation data, September 7 1915.
12:41:25 And the person writes, my dear Miss Dandridge, I knew you would have to be a suffragist Sunday.
12:41:32 So I thought that was just I was just that, that to me tells a story like she knew that she was interested in women's rights and, and civic engagement, or like what other combination made her just like know that she was going to be interested.
12:41:52 And then another very similar letterhead from the West Virginia equal separate Association, and she eventually Dandridge, this is dated October, 1915 became fairly active with her local branch so I think that a lot of those stories have suffered or, like
12:42:14 many of our stories and feminist history US history in general, they focused on our kind of bigger urban areas New York DC, or, you know, Houston West Coast but I thought it was really compelling to see a story that is situated in West Virginia that's
12:42:33 like a smaller state and less centered in the storytelling stories that are told,
12:42:40 even though it's really close to DC geographically.
12:42:47 So, um, I may just pause there for a second because just to reflect a little bit that I'm.
12:43:00 This is a true confession.
12:43:02 This is a true confession that I was not really interested in the suffrage movement. Overall, I was not involved in preparing the exhibit from this LED Center at the Rubenstein library, and I hadn't had really a chance to dig into it and the connection
12:43:18 itself doesn't actually support a lot of suffrage movement activity she was financially supportive she served subscribe to suffragist publications and had some clippings about it, but it wasn't there wasn't a lot to it that I could find, and it didn't
12:43:37 seem that interesting.
12:43:40 But the next letter I'm going to share with you is kind of the hook that really drew me in.
12:43:49 Definitely, yeah.
12:43:53 Um, and, kind of started, I mean, you saw the first photo of her, but that she just is a striking looking person but this this is a letter from the shepherd and Enoch Pratt hospital and tells him, Maryland, and I think it later moved to Baltimore around
12:44:09 that area.
12:44:11 This is the letter from Dr. Edward brush to violence.
12:44:18 Father, Mr. Adam, Stephen Dandridge and shepherds town and this is dated February 1914.
12:44:26 And just to give a little more context, she had been working in at the Smithsonian kind of in the early 1900s and then had to return home and spent time at this hospital for mental illness.
12:44:42 So she writes, he writes the standard is not eating and that's necessary for us to resort to force feeding, it's somewhat difficult if she does not retain food.
12:44:51 Well, I pursue this will not be necessary to be long continued her reason for this is that she wishes to die on account of man's and justice to women.
12:45:01 Under the circumstances she's doing quite as well as can be expected.
12:45:05 So, um, this letter also kind of tells tells the story or sparked my imagination to make up a story about what was happening here. So, if, if you're familiar with summer activist, many of them when they were in prison, went on food strikes so I don't
12:45:40 if this is resonates with, with that, I don't know if this is specific to her suffrage movement or feminist feelings or something specific that happened to her, or in her life. Or, you know like, it's just, it's, it's kind of intriguing mystery like what
12:45:45 I don't know what mental illness that she suffered from or what she did for her mother was in and out of materials as they were called at the time or seeking water treatments or water and things like that.
12:46:00 So it seems like maybe there was a history of mental health issues in the family.
12:46:08 But the other thing that really was maybe troubling to me, or, and also intriguing is that a lot of the documentation around her time in the hospital is through these letters about her and not by her so the doctors and other family members writing back
12:46:54 and forth about her condition and not her perspective, we, we found maybe one or two of her own letters home which we know she was a prolific correspondent kind of based on other context but
12:46:44 I really want us to know more about her experiences in the hospital, why she was there what kind of treatment she was received and
12:46:55 what was going on with her.
12:46:59 Kelly, have you delved into researching what the practices were at the time for women of this particular age of this particular socio economic stratum, that kind of thing.
12:47:16 um, that was like one of my questions.
12:47:20 So we started this research like pre pandemic but not too. Too much before.
12:47:28 And that is one of the questions I mean but unit private hospital records are at.
12:47:35 When I say they're at Johns Hopkins. So I curious about that look like specifically treatment at that hospital. Right.
12:47:44 As part of the Sally begin center we have.
12:47:48 And the history of medicine collections I think we do have prescriptive literature medical literature around that time that could be looked into.
12:47:58 I certainly offer if anyone else interested in her story and wants to explore it like I, you know, love to encourage that but i think that that it's there I just haven't had time to look into it, what would have been like, there I mean they were pretty
12:48:16 off so I imagine it was somewhat, you know, comfortable situation but also.
12:48:23 I kind of read into it like this control, controlling the women's behavior, and feelings, right.
12:48:32 So, another piece of the story that ended up being more.
12:48:38 So, let me, let me say one more thing about this letter in particular is that I in my role at the being of the center. The Rubenstein, and do instruction with classes, and one of the classes I was working with was on women in western medicine.
12:48:59 And what's that class, we share our first edition of the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
12:49:07 Yes, as well as some artists books that are about women's health and mental health, like crazy quote by Mari incomings, which is like a thick book that folds out until like a shape with quotes from different from women including her mother who experienced
12:49:26 psychiatric treatment and mental health. So, this was like the perfect example of this manuscript documentation of women and mental health, be receiving medical treatment or in this time period.
12:49:40 So, we immediately started incorporating this into our instruction which went. What's really worked well in this conceptualization of, You know this historical novel about women's experiences, you know when the narrator of Yellow Wallpaper with artists
12:49:59 book that draws on a couple sources and primary sources and then example of the primary source, and I've used it actually in another class that was specifically about book art, where the instructor was talking about incorporating primary sources in our
12:50:16 and giving you examples like crazy cool.
12:50:24 So, another piece of this puzzle.
12:50:28 And I was trying to remember how he came across it, I think it was because
12:50:34 violence mother dance good Dandridge was a poet.
12:50:40 And I believe she was her name was put in a, in a subject heading in the catalog record for this thesis, called the poets of the Shenandoah Valley and amazing century by a woman named Mary Catherine Kern, which was published, not, it's not really published
12:50:56 but it was submitted as a master's thesis at Duke in 1949.
12:51:02 So, I just thought and I was just intrigued about that but I was also poking around to try to learn more about the context for violence family, and there.
12:51:15 There's other poets listed in the book, but there's quite a bit of personal information about dance good Dandridge balance mother in this, and in the footnotes and citations.
12:51:27 It looked to me like Mary Catherine current had interviewed violent in person as well as used manuscript papers that were family papers at violence home.
12:51:40 So, this is David 1949 the collection came to Duke in 1950. So, I thought I thought she made this connection to this bed anger Dandridge family, with the library.
12:51:54 So, that was just like my assumption or instinct.
12:51:59 Um.
12:52:13 The other thing I also have like a little bit of interest in knowing more about Mary Catherine current she was 39 when she did her degree from poking around on Internet Archive and Ancestry. com I was just curious about her I don't think she ever married.
12:52:18 and it looked like she was head of English departments, a couple of different high schools like private high schools. So, she just kind of became an intriguing character to me, and you'll, you'll see in a minute.
12:52:31 I was justified and thinking that but I was just really curious about, you know, a 39 year old woman and 1949 returning to get her master's degree just kind of further hurt just and wish further her career.
12:52:49 So I did find this perfect piece of evidence. And this was like one of, like, in researching another one of our collections, I learned about though, massive correspondence files in the libraries own records.
12:53:10 So, I do a special collections library.
12:53:15 We have this collection that wasn't initially called the flowers collection of Southern America. So eg Roberts was the curator of flowers collection at the time, who acquired manuscripts and other materials documenting the American South.
12:53:31 And he was the person who I believe, Mary Catherine Kern correspond with her with in touch with. She was also had a relationship with some of the other librarians, which is one of my other pieces that I haven't had time to look into because I suspect
12:53:46 there's more correspondence with her.
12:53:49 In another collection.
12:53:51 But she explicitly says since Duke learned about the collection through me and through my influence and paving the way for two years. Mr Marina sold them to do.
12:54:00 I do not feel I'm requesting too much, she's referring to basically having the first, the right to use the papers first. And I remember you said in February.
12:54:10 You wanted to protect my interest, and I know you'll do the right thing.
12:54:18 She's like, just for reminding him of all the work that she did to build this relationship with Miss. Miss pilot, and is interested in protecting her scholarly interest.
12:54:32 And there's some a couple other places where she asserts that
12:54:37 made me think about that, you know, ethics of collecting paper, you know, can you you know keep a collection close to research, except for, you know, this current
12:54:52 directory.
12:54:55 So I was excited to find like direct evidence that my suspicion held up to see this. I don't think we really think about acquisitions records as documenting relationships with people.
12:55:10 And the warmth.
12:55:12 Well, this one, this one is a little less more, but like the work that shows up in some letters I'm an issue between Miss file it. The for Roberts, and the care that they took in each other's lives.
12:55:32 I found a really intriguing.
12:55:52 And I'm always looking for quotes and things about, I think I named this image file archives feelings.
12:55:53 So, Serena Catherine is writing to Mr. Robert, I don't know if he's Mr a doctor for for differently throughout.
12:56:00 In 1950 after the collections been required acquired, and she, she addresses some Dear friends, and is just corresponding about sending the contract and appreciating his help and guidance and preparing the materials to send.
12:56:18 And if anyone wants a little job here I'm not sure that one of the words here.
12:56:24 Since I'm beginning to read every thing, maybe it's every letter, every piece of their lives. I realized as never before what Papa meant when he said a man's life continues even on this world has feelings, thoughts and actions keep on affecting people's
12:56:38 lives.
12:56:41 So, I felt like that was just a really beautiful quote about memory and legacy. Her father had passed away and she was remembering him and the influence.
12:57:01 He had she's rereading these letters and kind of reliving her memories of her parents kind of been like before she was born like that, so I just felt like that was a really great encapsulation of a lot of things but also how her life is kind of affecting
12:57:20 the way I'm thinking about archives and the way I'm kind of walking through this collections and learning, you know, learning more about her, and also learning about how to learn about people.
12:57:33 So, and the other thing I was going to say is this, this, it's kind of hard to see quote rose break. Most break was the name of her house and shepherds town which I believe the historical site.
12:57:46 One of my many dreams is to go visit shepherds town to see rose break house,
12:57:54 where she raised sheep and cattle will have to have you for yet another episode if you take that will take our show on the road to town, let me wonderful, and I almost called that first letter, Mary Catherine currently the smoking gun letter, but this
12:58:12 is the smoking gun.
12:58:18 So, this is for to give a little bit of context, there's another letter that I'm not sharing here where Serena rights to eg Roberts, realizing that her pistols missing.
12:58:38 And being worried that maybe a corner the local kids have found the or some, you know, something that happened to it, and then thought maybe, maybe it was in one of these boxes so I think this is a fun, fun, archive store, do you think every archivist
12:58:56 I know who's worked with materials processing or reference like has just like this weird thing that they found in a box that shouldn't have been there and had to be returned to the, the donor creator.
12:59:10 So I don't know how many other people have found guns unintentionally in their collection.
12:59:18 That's where my I find bullets sometimes.
12:59:24 I don't think I'm hurting it wasn't Luda No idea. But I'm.
12:59:31 Then he ended up having to ship it by real way and was a little concerned but it had arrived safely. And he asked this note I'm happy about that you and the sheep are doing such a fine job, but they'll be letter was describing how she had to defend her
12:59:52 she, her flock from this pack of local wild dogs that were killing and livestock and animals, and 1950s and 51, they both these people refer to like the current situation which I believe they're talking about the Korean War and some limitations on travel
13:00:11 and other things that were going on. And she contextualize the her duty to raise sheep to support. Well production for for the US during this time period and so I had not thought about her farming and raising sheep and cattle that helped me think about
13:00:33 it differently like she didn't just see that as like a you know occupation or application that she saw that in context with her duty as a citizen.
13:00:46 And
13:00:49 then I discovered actually last week and
13:00:56 the comfort but what he wrapped it in was more useful I don't most of those lovely penalties for and filed my legs and feet first that I have up here.
13:01:06 And with this code is covering up because she's writing to ask for more archival supplies to continue.
13:01:15 She is basically processing the collection before she sends she's putting her parents letters in order she's touching every piece of paper, which I guess has not had a donor that wanted to do that or did do that with not let go of the materials before
13:01:31 you know laying hands on everything and making sure that things were in the order that they believe they should be in.
13:01:40 And you can see at the bottom it says they wrote every day, when they were away from each other for however many years.
13:01:52 That's the last night on a movie with, and if you want to check out more about these collections, we have the banner Dandridge papers which is what includes it includes pilots papers, and we'll have to explore more about nine Cardinal young Mitchell who
13:02:08 was her cousin who came and lived with her after her father passed away. And that is another story. The flowers collection of Southern American records is where I found the correspondence with violet and the library staff.
13:02:24 And then there's a couple of really wonderful blog posts as well as this biographical stuff sketch that was shared by the family, which includes clippings and other kind of family anecdotes and some photos of violet, as a older woman, and also was a piece
13:02:45 that really sparked our interest because her family, kind of the pictures of her are incredibly farming, working attire described her as like dressing and more managed clothes, and there's this wonderful clipping about her.
13:03:04 I don't think she changed herself to a tree but she was trying to prevent a treat for me cut down.
13:03:10 As part of construction and I think the headline calls her a girl but she was well, I believe into her 50s. When she defended that tree. So, these are just all these a few different strands of the story that I found really compelling.
13:03:29 Yes. So it seems like like Serena is is nearly lost to us.
13:03:37 So it's sort of a case study in how documentation documents what it wants. So if you, if you don't have many letters of her saying something we don't know what she really thought, we don't we don't know exactly why we she was in the hospital, even though
13:03:56 she gets that sort of horrific statement, which you know seems to be abundantly accurate, but an accurate way to look at the world, but she still seems she still seems remarkably silenced.
13:04:17 But by everything, her family papers when you, when you, when you put up the list with, with the, the range of the family papers, they go on for centuries, and she is like a little blip in this that sort of handed handed a bunch of them off at at the
13:04:35 end. But, but what what what do we know of her, I mean besides that she was, she was an early
13:04:44 scientific illustrator with with seems to me, sufficient talent to do the work based on the materials I've seen that she's done.
13:04:54 But, in what does this tell you from your point of view as of the work that you do.
13:05:02 And that's a great question and I was just going through the chat someone in the audience is at Shepherd university where there's some of her sketches and other material related, so her story, like it's somewhat traceable but it's also really dispersed.
13:05:17 So, it's in her own family papers somewhat.
13:05:24 It's kind of definitely hidden within this correspondence with the librarian, like she does share quite a bit about her life and that's the most of her letters that I've been able to find.
13:05:38 We haven't had time to come through nine Mitchell her cousins papers, who I found things in her collection expressing concern about violent, but not
13:05:49 not as much about herself and she was.
13:05:56 She was also kind of fun to poke around with on Internet Archive.
13:06:00 She was involved with a speeding burning in church I don't know much about but you just couldn't find her name
13:06:09 listed in publications about this church and her, like the people remember her being very devoted to the church and
13:06:20 she in her I found her will, in believe through ancestry. That left her.
13:06:28 Her Firstly, things to a woman who family she had met through the Sweden burger in church.
13:06:36 So, Um, so there's two things I'll say one is your house they were the two things but, um, one is I, one of my other suspicions is that violent may have removed some of her own documentation from the collection because she basically processed it and handled
13:06:57 it so much before passing along. Sure.
13:07:01 I have a suspicion, even before I read the letter saying, I have handled everything.
13:07:08 Please send more folders.
13:07:12 Um, I don't know if it's true or not but I know she like had a very loving relationship with her father and he wrote back and forth so I kind of wonder if she made some decisions about that.
13:07:24 And then the second thing is at the being of Center. Our first women's history archivist Jenny daily.
13:07:33 And I feel like we talked about this in our previous episode, but she was tasked with trying to find women's histories, in these collections that were described as family papers or under a man's family name.
13:07:46 So
13:07:49 I think she really thought the collection is documenting her, her mother as a poet and member of society and shepherds town and plus this like long family history going back to the Revolutionary War.
13:08:04 There's a lot of family genealogy in that collection and violent herself is not centered in the collection. So I think that that does happen with a lot of women's histories is that they are not the star, star of the collection.
13:08:22 And it just, it leaves it to historians and researchers to kind of piece together scraps like I think there's a lot more we could find about her it's just take so much time and digging and guessing, which Fox might have this material and going product
13:08:39 session records of like this collection was required in 1950 so maybe there's some correspondence. Maybe I'll be able to find it.
13:08:50 And I always think that if no matter what you're researching no matter how small it is, you can never use one source anyhow, there always have to be other sources.
13:08:59 It's just when the sources, when the big sources have fairly, fairly limited reflection on her life that you wonder what the other ones will be, but I think it's, it's an.
13:09:13 It's sort of. It's sad because you think there should be more that we know know about her she was a kind of pioneer in her field.
13:09:23 But at the same time I think it's just a. It's pretty normal for most people, meaning most people they will leave very little evidence behind, and the evidence that you you bring together and you just scraped together from all sorts of sources I mean
13:09:38 that's how genealogy works. That's how they put that information together and their papers.
13:09:46 I have a question for you, Kelly I don't know has any of this, digging and researching spawned you to think about future collection development activity.
13:10:01 That was a really interesting question that I hadn't thought about, um, I guess what I have.
13:10:12 I'll answer the question I've been thinking about is how the arc of us and collectors leave traces on collections, you know we're curating we're not neutral we're making decisions about acquiring papers, but it's not always easy to see those fingerprints.
13:10:31 And I think that is a feel we're starting to think about what does it mean to add to a fireman need for example.
13:10:44 This collection was acquired by Hollywood at a price of X dollars, or you know who's doing the acquiring who collected it, who, who is that person that collected it I'm a no white woman in the south and, you know, just my collecting reflect that.
13:11:05 Yes.
13:11:08 So I think that libraries and sort of hiding behind the scenes get behind a little bit of our context, and we still don't want to center ourselves,
13:11:30 necessarily, but just kind of making that work more visible mean I'm just imagine adding like this collection was acquired in 1950 after a relationship was built by Mary Catherine Kern.
13:11:39 You know who was a English teacher, writing her thesis on shadow.
13:11:46 And there's no evidence of that until you dig into the documentation. Yes.
13:11:54 It's just, it's always interesting because you never, you do not know what a collection holds you don't know what a series old you never have any idea, you have this general idea but then you you can't figure it out.
13:12:09 And then the fact is it's not really our jobs to, right. So, so yeah, we're really supposed to leave it to somebody else. I was thinking the other day it's archives are not they're not stores, they're fragments of stories.
13:12:23 And if you want to tell the story. You've got to find all the pieces, and the pieces are going to be in the same place.
13:12:30 And in this one, I just keep waiting for an extra place, there's something. Come, compelling about her.
13:12:40 Men partly it's just it's just her drawings that.
13:12:44 I mean I can't draw like that so it's that but it's that there were other women probably doing it at that time. And so how did she come to do this I mean, how do you how do you choose what you're going to do in life any
13:13:02 piece together that she loved to draw and loved art and love nature and animals and studied art. So, but I don't know how she connected with the scientists that she worked with Sony and she went on like a month long collecting specimens, like a trip where
13:13:20 she was researching marine life and illustrating that but also collected a lot of specimens.
13:13:31 For the institution.
13:13:32 So,
13:13:35 kind of resonates with like the Ammonite story.
13:13:41 The movie was
13:13:45 sort of, I mean I feel like that was sort of invisible work as well, right, because she's just going to be credited as like her first initials and last name and the documentation around that.
13:13:56 If you get a chance to read the books or listening get a chance to read the post by Dr. Elizabeth Harmon talks a little bit about how she was able to find other little bits and pieces in their internal documentation and reports about the value of the
13:14:12 work that she was doing just really important, we're about out of time, not for the entire session because we want to leave time for some question and answer opportunity, but I will insert this little thought I had since I work at the Fashion Institute
13:14:32 of Technology I work with a lot of creatives.
13:14:35 And, with that in mind, it came to me that maybe violet was her favorite color.
13:14:43 I love that idea.
13:14:49 Guys, you're recreating the past.
13:14:51 Pretty good, pretty good.
13:14:53 So we don't have any, any questions per se that we can answer this one about. When will this be the slides be made available on the conference page which the mirror of people in charge can answer for us.
13:15:08 But folks if you have any questions you can pop them into the q amp a and we can, we can read them off.
13:15:21 Now, Kelly has answered that question by giving you a link to the our perfect to the, to the slide slideshow.
13:15:30 Excellent.
13:15:33 While we're waiting for other questions to come in.
13:15:37 Kelly I was also thinking, you've mentioned a few other collections that have like direct reference to this one but what other collections in your care would resonate with a researcher in.
13:15:52 In the same vein.
13:16:00 That's.
13:16:04 I don't mean to put
13:16:07 you know I was, I was thinking of another collection that kind of tells the story without necessarily telling the whole story. There's a woman named Claudia Scarborough who lived in Durham, North Carolina, she was African American businesswoman, who ran
13:16:25 a nursery school for black families. And there's these gorgeous pictures of the teachers and the children at the school and it's still in existence, and there's a lot of
13:16:41 kind of like financial business records and some family correspondence, but not as much about you know who she was herself, but I feel like she sparks a lot of curiosity and me and admiration for the work that she did and enabling the middle class, black
13:17:00 women and families to be able to work and earn money for their families while knowing that their children are being educated and cared for a really healthy set setting.
13:17:20 According to the pictures I saw were just wonderful little classrooms and how that's kind of a. There's a lot of stories like that in the Durham area. Black Wall Street might be a familiar term is kind of the black neighborhood and local economy.
13:17:34 Black business leadership in an area that was run through by highway 147, which can be a familiar story a lot of places, but I feel like there's a lot of folks like that and our collections that
13:17:55 just give you a glimpse into the boy lives without the whole picture.
13:18:02 Well, I try to I try to always think about it as fragments, as I said before that everything is made out of fragments. So you're never going to get the entire picture but you're going to get part of it.
13:18:15 You know, it's it's an important to remember that.
13:18:19 One of the most famous poets of all time Sappho.
13:18:22 She left behind only fragments because they were trying literally to erase him. And so almost the only thing that was left of her was where she was quoted by men.
13:18:32 So men were quoting her poetry and then that would stay in, there's maybe only one complete poem, and that was, that was a problem sets. And so this is, is this isn't a new thing for womankind.
13:18:48 But, perfect, opening the fact that one of the things that also kept us coming back was trying to like interrogate her life as a single woman who never married and doesn't have any records of courtship.
13:19:06 I'm always telling one of our interns just like just trying to make her gay like I feel like she had this connection with women's women's friendships.
13:19:15 She maintained for independence. And
13:19:21 what you know, we all try to, like, imagine people's past but like a lot of queer historians have talked about.
13:19:36 Why do we assume that historical characters are straight there, you know, there's not evidence that she, she was either straight or gay, but I think that her wonderful tweed suit picture and some of the pictures are currently her life.
13:19:47 She was either whatever she was I feel like she did live gender non conforming life for her time.
13:19:57 I think it's kind of fun to imagine what that really meant for her.
13:20:07 Beyond, I'm very interested in what she was wearing in that photograph. I'll have to revisit it on my own time.
13:20:16 Can you realize,
13:20:19 Oh, I'm sorry.
13:20:22 Say that again. What was the date of the photograph again.
13:20:30 Know what, I don't have it right. Okay, that's fine. Don't worry, we, we shouldn't have given you a test. Yeah.
13:20:35 Well, this has also been a interesting pandemic project, like I said before, like, I started looking into this and getting most excited to put her back up again.
13:20:48 I'm getting interested in her at a time where I couldn't actually access her collection
13:21:05 has frequently.
13:20:59 And I was mentioning this before we started at sheep after she was no longer working at that I say that I don't think I said this in this session after she was not like working in DC Smithsonian she was able to have some of the specimens sent to her.
13:21:35 To illustrate from home so she was also a, an innovator there and look for the 1918 pendant pandemic which is another possible threat to pull.
13:21:35 Notice, notice how we see things through our own lenses.
13:21:42 It's like, I almost never thought of the 1918 pandemic before and now I think about it all the time, and you don't you working from home.
13:21:50 It wasn't even a real concept that you know, ever, ever occurred occurred to me. And now I spent most of the year doing that. So it's.
13:22:00 We always come to it from different perspectives and so you never know what you're really seeing. So I like archives or information in the end. And we've got to figure out what they mean.
13:22:11 Yeah, we're all collage, artists, yeah. at the end of the day.
13:22:16 We're here.
13:22:18 That's great.
13:22:20 So ladies and gentlemen. They want us to end a little bit early so that we have enough time for people to do whatever they need to do between sessions because the sessions are right up against one another.
13:22:32 Yes. So with that in mind.
13:22:34 Let me first thing. Thanks, Kelly for the for the story. And for coming to join us today, and then I'll tell you what we do at the end of these things when the regular podcasts which.
13:22:51 Ladies and gentlemen, this has been another episode of an of an archivist tail.
13:22:56 Thanks for coming.
13:22:58 You'll be able to hear this, you know, pretty soon online in case you want to hear it again.
13:23:04 And we hope to have more episodes coming out pretty soon. So take care until then don't forget the rest of the conference, my mind joy.