(See last week for the exciting beginning!)
I had a rough idea of the types of letters and materials in the Davidson family manuscript collection and an idea of how to proceed with organizing it. Next, I needed a more precise knowledge of the content and to refine their organization.
I began sorting the letters into groups of five and putting them into folders clearly labeled with the date and sender. I tried to place letters from the same sender in the same folder, but since this did not always work out perfectly, the letters were still fairly disorganized.
Although this sorting seemed like a waste of time when I first started, it was invaluable when I sorted through the letters later. Especially due to the “cross hatch” writing that made the names and dates hard to discern sometimes.
When I finished putting all of the letters into their initially-labeled folders, the collection took up two boxes. My next step was to even further refine the collection’s organization.
I began with letters from business associates and friends who were not very close, since there was usually only one or two from each. I went through and created individual folders for each person that sent a letter, keeping the folders in alphabetical order.
Even though most of the writers had only sent one or two letters, after organizing those folders, I was still left with almost an entire box; a few authors had written many letters! As before, I reorganized these letters into folders by sender, beginning with the family members and friends who had sent the fewest letters.
Finally I ended up with only the family members who had sent multiple folders worth of letters. When I finished organizing these last writers, Harold ended up with 6 folders, John with 5, Joseph with 3, Josephine with 4, Mary with 3, and Wilmer with 4.
After physically organizing the collection, I created a finding aid in the archival database. This was the easiest part of the process, since I had kept careful notes throughout the organization process on how people were related and who they married. This finding aid includes a short history of the collection, as well as a list of folders that it includes.
Some final statistics about this collection:
– Approximately 40 hours of processing time,
– 6 archival boxes,
-174 folders of letters,
-27 of the folders are letters from family members or close friends,
-147 of the folders are letters from businesses or friends who did not
correspond more than once or twice.
If you’d like to learn more about the collection, go to the Davidson
College Archives website, and search for the Davidson Family collection
under Manuscript Collections.
–Sarah Adams, student assistant to the Davidson College Archives
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