A Day in the (Texas Collection) Life: Thomas DeShong, Archival Assistant

Brann-Davis, Waco Daily Telephone
We preserve newspaper clippings such as this one from the William Cowper Brann collection to provide firsthand witness insight into events such as the Brann-Davis shootout in Waco, Texas in 1898.

The Texas Collection turns 90 this year! From 1923, when Waco physician Dr. Kenneth Hazen Aynesworth made his initial donation of materials on Texas history, to 2013, The Texas Collection has grown by leaps and bounds.  But we realize that all too often, people aren’t quite sure what goes on in a special collections library and archives. So over the course of 2013, we will feature monthly posts from our staff—from faculty to student workers—offering a little peek into the day-to-day work of The Texas Collection. (It bears noting that we’re not all originally from Texas, eitherbut as this post notes, there is something for everybody here at The Texas Collection!) Meet recent Baylor grad (M.A. in history), Pennsylvanian, and archival assistant, Thomas DeShong:

When I arrived at Baylor University to further my education, I was largely unfamiliar with the world of archives. As a student of history, I realized that such repositories typically held interesting primary sources just waiting to be cited in the end-of-semester research paper that was inevitably due for each class. However, I was not aware of the multifaceted roles that archivists and librarians perform in order to preserve such history until I found myself with a graduate assistantship at The Texas Collection. Two years later, I am here celebrating the 90th anniversary of the institution while studying to become a certified archivist.

Transcription, Hiram Carlton
Letters written in the 1800s often are difficult for modern researchers to decipher. We can’t afford the time to transcribe all handwritten letters (there are so many!) but make exceptions for important collections like the Hiram Carlton Civil War letters.

There are three primary tasks that I perform as an Archival AssistantDigital Input Specialist at The Texas Collection. The first, which I have enjoyed the most, is processing. Once printed materials have been donated or purchased, it is important to preserve the original documents in the most efficient and effective manner. Papers need to be stored in acid-free folders. Photographs should be housed in clear, Mylar sleeves. Newspaper clippings might be preserved more easily through digitization. Finding aids need to be written so that the public can know about the valuable materials waiting to be researched.  The act of preserving history is fulfilling and exhilarating. The Texas Collection, as its name suggests, houses materials pertaining to Texas history from the Spanish colonial era to the present day. My time here has allowed me to explore collections dealing with Texas governors, the Civil War, Baylor University presidents, missionaries, history professors, inventors, and even the Waco Branch Davidians.

Preservation work is vital to extending the lifespan of materials, but the crux of archival work is making materials accessible to the public. Texas Collection archivists have been appointed the weighty task of maintaining the cultural heritage of Baylor University, the greater Waco area, and Texas. To do this, it is necessary to describe what materials comprise our vast holdings. For the past several months, I, along with many of my co-workers, have been inputting inventories and finding aids into an online archives management system called Cuadra Star. The culmination of this work will occur in the upcoming months as The Texas Collection presents its Cuadra Star database to the public. This effort serves as evidence of The Texas Collection’s persistence in sharing with the public the vast amount of historical resources it can offer.

Waco map
The Frances C. Poage Map Room contains tens of thousands of maps relating to Texas, from early Spanish colonial maps to modern city maps.

My third major responsibility, one that has been recently bestowed upon me, is to manage The Texas Collection’s substantial Frances C. Poage Map Room. With maps ranging from colonial Texas until the twenty-first century, researchers are bound to find something to pique their interests. Most of these maps have now been organized and are searchable on BearCat, the Baylor University Libraries’ online catalog.

Not many people today can claim that they love their jobs, but I certainly can. The Texas Collection has something to offer anyone with the slightest interest in Texas history. I encourage you to celebrate this 90th anniversary with me by coming down and exploring the rich history that The Texas Collection holds!

By Thomas DeShong, Archival Assistant—Digital Input Specialist

Sharing Student Scholarship Online: Finance at Baylor, 1900-1920

For the first five weeks of the spring 2013 semester, we’re putting up teasers about the fascinating Baylor history that Higher Education and Student Affairs students analyzed and shared on the class’ blog. So far we’ve explored students and student organizations and curriculum at Baylor. This week we’re exploring Finance at Baylor, from how athletics activities were financed, to fundraising tactics employed by Baylor administrators, to how students earned money to pay for their Baylor education. Did you know that…

HESA Baylor History blog

  • In 1915, alumni and Baylor’s athletics association raised $9,000 for a new bath house and grandstand to support Baylor football and other athletic endeavors. (With inflation, that would be around $200,000.) The 1915 grandstand seated only 1,000seems small to us today, compared to the efforts for the new Baylor Stadium, but that was pretty big at the time. Read about how athletics were financed in the early 1900s at Baylor.
  • J.B. Tidwell (for whom Tidwell Bible Building is named) didn’t come to Baylor initially as a Bible and religion instructorhe gave up the presidency of Decatur College (another Baptist institution) in 1909 to serve as Baylor’s Endowment Secretary. In 15 months on that job, he raised more than $90,000which would be more than $2 million in today’s dollars. Learn about the tactics Tidwell and other Baylor fundraisers used to persuade donors and organizations to support Baylor.
  • About one-third of the Baylor student body worked on campus to help pay for their education. Jobs ranged from library assistants to grounds keeping to teaching. Not so different from today! Explore other ways that Baylor students financed their education in the early 1900s.

We hope you’ll explore these blog posts and enjoy the benefits of the HESA students’ research and scholarship. If you’re inspired to dig deeper, most of their sources can be found in the University Archives within The Texas Collection and in our digitized materials available online in the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections.

Background on this project: Students in the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) masters program have taken on the challenge of creating original scholarship that adds to what is known about Baylor’s history between 1900 and 1920. As part of Dr. Nathan Alleman’s Foundations and History of Higher Education course, students were grouped under the five class themes: curriculum, finance, students/student groups, access, and religion. In collaboration with Texas Collection archivists and librarians, students mined bulletins, newspapers, correspondence, and other primary resources as they researched their topics. Final papers have now been posted on a University-hosted EduBlog site and grouped by their particular sub-topic so that patrons, researchers, and other interested persons could benefit from these students’ work. This is the first installment of an annual accumulating project–please visit again for future installments.

Research Ready: January 2013

Each month, we post a processing update to notify our readers about the latest collections that have finding aids online and are primed for research. As we did in December, we have a few special entries from the Archival Collections and Museums class that worked on an archival processing project with us here at The Texas Collection. (Read more about that project from a student’s perspective.) Here’s the scoop for January:

Simons-Stoner-Rose Family Papers
During the Civil War George F. Simons served in the Confederate army Company K, 2nd Texas Infantry Regiment, and participated in the Battle of Shiloh. He received this certificate of parole in 1865, which can be found in the Simons-Stoner-Rose Family Papers.
    • Bertie Routh Barron Papers, 1897-1972, undated: These papers contain correspondence, financial documents, literary productions and photographic materials pertaining to Barron’s life, particularly the time she spent at Baylor Female College.
    • De Cordova Family Papers, 1845-1956: The chronology of the collection ranges from 1845 to 1956, but the bulk of the materials originated from 1845 to 1863 when Jacob de Cordova was most active as a land agent in Texas. Most materials are correspondence or legal documents related to land sales in central Texas, particularly Bosque and McLennan counties. (Archives class)
    • Olive McGehee Denson Papers, 1916-1957, undated: The bulk of the Denson papers are scrapbooks about Texas and church history. There are also photographs from Independence, Texas. (Archives class)
    • James M. Kendrick Jr. Papers, 1922-1945: Kendrick’s papers include various items of correspondence between family and friends of Kendrick, as well as some financial and legal documents. There is a large number of literary productions, comprised of an assortment of documents and Kendrick’s own diaries. Also present are several photographs and artifacts pertaining to his time at Baylor University. (Archives class)
    • Harry Raymond Morse Jr. Collection, 2000: This collection consists of four cassette tapes containing oral history interviews related to the Waco Tornado of May 11, 1953.
Southwest Conference meeting minutes, April 24, 1922 (page 1)
These minutes are from the papers of Henry Trantham, who served as Baylor University faculty representative to the Southwest Athletic Conference from 1916 to 1923, and from 1925 to 1941. Trantham was the president of the conference from 1918 to 1919, and from 1938 to 1941, and in that position he assisted in the establishment of the Cotton Bowl Association.
  • Simons-Stoner-Rose Family Papers, 1828-1977, undated: The Simons-Stoner-Rose Family Papers are comprised of original correspondence, legal and financial documents, literary productions, military records, printed materials, family histories, and photographs pertaining to five families (including Wells, Simons, Kay, Stoner, and Rose) in Texas from its pre-republic days to the late twentieth century. (Archives class)
  • Henry Trantham Papers, 1894-1962, undated: Trantham’s papers consist of correspondence, administrative and academic materials, and other loose materials related to Baylor University and the Greek and Classics Departments, the Southwest Athletic Conference, and the Rhodes Scholarship program. (Archives class)
  • Charles Wellborn Papers, 1945-2009: This archives contains sermons and other materials primarily from Wellborn’s time as pastor of Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco, Texas.

Sharing Student Scholarship Online: Curriculum at Baylor, 1900-1920

For the first five weeks of the spring 2013 semester, we’re putting up teasers about the fascinating Baylor history that Higher Education and Student Affairs students analyzed and shared on the class’ blog. Last week we explored students and student organizations at Baylor. This week we’re looking at Curriculum at Baylor, with topics ranging from external and internal influences on the courses offered at Baylor, how faculty and student organizations influenced curriculum, and the changing role of Latin in a Baylor student’s education. Did you know that…

HESA Baylor History blog

  • A bill introduced in 1919 could have ended the teaching of German at Baylor? In the wake of World War I, a Texas senator tried to pass bills forbidding the teaching of the language in any Texas schools, public or private. (He did not succeed.) Learn more about the various groups that influenced or attempted to influence Baylor’s curriculum in 1900-1920.
  • The courses offered in Baylor’s Oratory department were affected by student interests as reflected by student organizations. (For example, the literary societies we mentioned last week emphasized debate, and the oratory curriculum was adjusted to hone student speeches from “speaking pieces” to “masterpieces.”) Read more about the synergistic give-and-take between faculty curriculum development and student organizations.
  • In 1905, prospective Baylor students had to have taken four Latin classes to be considered for admission. By 1920, no Latin was required at all for graduation. Discover how the emphasis on Latin and classical education declined at Baylor.

We hope you’ll explore these blog posts and enjoy the benefits of the HESA students’ research and scholarship. If you’re inspired to dig deeper, most of their sources can be found in the University Archives within The Texas Collection and in our digitized materials available online in the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections.

Background on this project: Students in the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) masters program have taken on the challenge of creating original scholarship that adds to what is known about Baylor’s history between 1900 and 1920. As part of Dr. Nathan Alleman’s Foundations and History of Higher Education course, students were grouped under the five class themes: curriculum, finance, students/student groups, access, and religion. In collaboration with Texas Collection archivists and librarians, students mined bulletins, newspapers, correspondence, and other primary resources as they researched their topics. Final papers have now been posted on a University-hosted EduBlog site and grouped by their particular sub-topic so that patrons, researchers, and other interested persons could benefit from these students’ work. This is the first installment of an annual accumulating project–please visit again for future installments.

Sharing Student Scholarship Online: Students at Baylor, 1900-1920

Although Baylor was a university by charter, it was not until the first decades of the 20th century that the institution, like many others in the United States, began to develop some of the hallmarks of university life and function that we now associate with them. These include intercollegiate athletics, a rich variety of student organizations, diverse students and curricula, and the development of endowments and other financial pillars to sustain and advance the institutions.

HESA Baylor History blog

This year students in the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) masters program have taken on the challenge of creating original scholarship that adds to what is known about Baylor’s history between 1900 and 1920. As part of Dr. Nathan Alleman’s Foundations and History of Higher Education course, students were grouped under the five class themes: curriculum, finance, students/student groups, access, and religion. In collaboration with Texas Collection archivists and librarians, students mined bulletins, newspapers, correspondence, and other primary resources as they researched their topics. Final papers have now been posted on a University-hosted EduBlog site and grouped by their particular sub-topic so that patrons, researchers, and other interested persons could benefit from these students’ work. This is the first installment of an annual accumulating project–please visit again for future installments.

For the next five weeks, we’ll put up teasers about the fascinating Baylor history this year’s HESA students analyzed and shared on the class blog. We’re starting with the Students at Baylor group, which covered student government, athletics, literary societies, and Homecoming. Did you know that…

  • In the 1910s, the Student Self-Government Association’s responsibilities included student discipline. For example, when a student raised a “Fish 22” flag on the university flagpole, the organization’s Judicial Council voted to suspend him for the remainder of the term. (It was May, so the punishment isn’t quite as harsh as it sounds.) Explore the rise of student self-governance at Baylor.
  • Baylor football had a new coach every year for its first few years, due to wage disagreements and poor team performance…and then the whole program was canceled due to nationwide concerns about the brutality of the sport. The loss of football moved students to poetry–read the mournful verse written on the occasion and learn more about the beginnings of Baylor athletics in the early 1900s.
  • The Philomathesian, Erisophian, Calliopean, and Rufus C. Burleson Literary Societies all offered generous scholarships to members who excelled in speech and debate activities in society competitions. Find out the other benefits of literary society membership and how Baylor students socialized and learned in these predecessors both to Greek organizations and debate at Baylor.
  • Baylor’s Homecoming Parade was not an annual feature of Homecoming till 1945, and in some years, it was called a “pageant.” The first parade, at the first Homecoming in 1909, was hailed as perhaps the most remarkable event of the weekend. Learn more about the origins of some of Baylor’s fondest Homecoming traditions.

We hope you’ll explore these blog posts and enjoy the benefits of the HESA students’ research and scholarship. If you’re inspired to dig deeper, most of their sources can be found in the University Archives within The Texas Collection and in our digitized materials available online in the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections.

From Museums to Archives: A Graduate Student Journey

In fall 2012, The Texas Collection worked with Julie Holcomb’s Archival Collections and Museums class within Baylor’s Museum Studies program to provide hands-on experience with processing archival records. You can read more about some of these 14 collections in Research Ready: December 2012 and the upcoming January 2013 entry, but we thought we’d ask a student to share her archives experience. Guest blogger Danica Galbraith, a second-year Museum Studies master’s student, gives her perspective:

For those who do not know the subtle differences between museum collections and archival management, it would seem that such a jump from museums to archives would not be overly challenging. At least, that’s what my cohorts and I thought when this class began. However, we quickly found that what is done within the walls of the Texas Collection is very different from what we initially envisioned.

James M. Kendrick, Jr., undated (probably 1940s)
Galbraith processed the papers of James Kendrick Jr., a Wacoan, Baylor student, and WWII veteran.

Armed with tentative knowledge about archival processing, ethics, and theory, along with much needed help (and some emotional support) from Dr. Holcomb and Paul Fisher, Processing Archivist at the Texas Collection, we began processing our assigned collections. Some collections were only a few document boxes, while others took up an entire length of a table. Each brought its own complications, roadblocks, and frustrations.

In order to process our collections, we were required to create an initial inventory. Then we grouped and described the records by series based on theme or material type. This differs from museums because in that setting, each item in a collection is given its own accession (or identification) number, and then cataloged or described individually. Another big difference between the two is that in archives, some items are disposed of due to redundancy, condition, or irrelevance. While this is common practice in the archival world, it left our heads spinning!

Personally, I was given the task of processing the James M. Kendrick, Jr. Papers, a records group which initially included five document boxes filled to the brim with random clutter and materials spanning from correspondence to financial productions and everything in between. I would be lying if I said that I was not overwhelmed that first day of processing in late August.

"Principles of Accounting" textbook, owned by James Kendrick, 1940s
Items of interest in Kendrick’s papers include his very worn copy of an accounting textbook, which can be used to learn how business education was taught in the 1940s.

However, I soon found that by operating at a slow and steady pace––taking each box and each material type one at a time––that the collection was not as frightening as I originally thought. Furthermore, as I began to piece the collection together I realized I was learning a lot about Kendrick.

James M. Kendrick, Jr. came from a prominent family within the city of Waco: his great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, his grandfather was an esteemed Baptist minister, and his father was a strong presence in the early Waco business community. However, Kendrick’s records did not focus on grand achievements, nor did it initially scream of overwhelming historical significance. My collection mostly focused on Kendrick’s time as a student at Baylor, and his journey from adolescence to manhood.

Letter of recommendation for James M. Kendrick from Baylor professor Monroe S. Carroll, for application to Naval Reserve, 1942
While Kendrick was going about his schoolwork, he also was looking into possibilities for military service during World War II. This recommendation notes that Kendrick comes from “one of Waco’s most substantial and patriotic families.”

The archives offered very interesting insight into the world of a college student in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and highlights the all too real ups and downs of a Baylor student required to balance school work, campus organizational responsibilities, family life, and friendships. While Kendrick was living during a time torn by WWII, and actually entered the service after graduation in 1943, I felt that, even in 2012, I could relate to many of his daily dilemmas.

Overall, I gained some wonderful experience out of the class, as did my other Museum Studies peers. Not only did we learn some great lessons about archival processing, we also gained some great connections within The Texas Collection, as well as an online publication with our finding aids on The Texas Collection’s website. I urge you all to go take a look at what we accomplished!

By Danica Galbraith, Museum Studies graduate student, Baylor University