American Antiquarian Society

In a few days, I will hand in a revised version of my semester research paper. So now I can safely admit that this is my first semester doing serious archival research. Not my first semester doing serious research, but my first semester in the archives.

Where I went. I spent most of my time in the Massachusetts Historical Society. This Historical Society is housed in a beautiful old building on Boylston Street in Boston, an easy bus ride from my apartment. The first time that I was there, I walked into what appeared to be an exhibit room. It turned out to be the office of the librarian, but he was kind enough to give me a tour of library and to show me John Quincy Adams’s diary, which was sitting on his desk for a photo shoot.

I visited two other archives as well. I spent a day at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is just a couple hours down the Mass Pike. Since the AAS has probably the largest collection of materials on early America, I’ll likely be back often. I also spent a long morning at Yale’s archives in the Sterling Library. Because the research didn’t take the whole day, Kellen took me to lunch at the Educated Burgher, and then on a tour of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and of New Haven’s Grove Street Cemetery.

Who I saw. While I was at the MHS, it was nice to run into a fellow Brandeis graduate student and friend on a couple of days. While I was at the AAS, I saw from the sign-in sheet that I was sitting next to a BIG NAME historian of early American religion. I googled him to make sure, and it turns out that there are actually two historians by that name, and the one who was there was not in my field.

What I brought. I’m not sure that used the most efficient method while I was in the archives. I’ve seen some people suggest that the best procedure is to photograph everything, leaving all the reading for later. Perhaps that is the only thing to do if you have tons of material and very limited time. But I much preferred actually reading and taking notes on as much as possible, while photographing anything that I thought I might quote directly or that I thought I might be misreading.

Besides the computer, pencil, and cameras, the other essential tool was a sports coat or blazer. The extra pockets are very useful for keeping things in when you have to put your bag in a locker, though the librarians might look at you with suspicion. I see that Shane Landrum will be giving a talk on tools to use in the archives, so perhaps he will have some insights into what might be better.

What I read. Most of what I read were the sermons and papers of the ministers who played a prominent role in my paper: J. S. J. Gardiner, Timothy Dwight, William Bentley, and the like. I did fairly well with the handwriting, I thought. Timothy Dwight had terribly messy handwriting, but it was very easy to read. William Bentley’s handwriting looks very neat, but I nearly wept after the first two hours spent on one page.

My most important finds were several diaries that recorded listeners’ thoughts about the sermons I was reading. I found them on the last day of research, just a couple weeks before I turned the first draft of the paper in. I had looked for diaries earlier, but hadn’t found anything worthwhile. Then I read a post on the Massachusetts Historical Society blog about how to find all of the diaries in their collection by year. From there, it was easy to find quite a few diaries, several of which had very helpful material. In retrospect, I learned three things. First, I should have asked the reference librarian. Second, serendipity is more a part of research than I might care to admit. And third, the most powerful digital humanities tool is probably still the library catalog.

Photo courtesy of mike.benedetti.