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These past couple weeks I have been jumping around from helping at collections over at the Center in the Square location to helping with exhibits over at Link. While being at collections I’ve been accessioning items that have been donated and I’ve been able to see a few gems. For example, there where a bottle of whiskey donated that super fascinating because of the back story. On the very top of the bottle it has written on it, “made spring 1912, bottled spring 1918” In the donor’s letter they said that the man who bought this whiskey bought it the night before the Prohibition law was in place and he never opened the bottle.

Another day while accessioning in collections I found a donation that had “postcards” in it, but Ashley decided that these were not postcards, but they are instead just hand tinted pictures. The one I found is a picture of the incline that used to be at Mill Mountain. My mom told me when I was younger that there used to be an incline machine that would take you all the way to the top of the mountain, I used to think it was the coolest thing ever but could never picture what it would have looked like.

While working at Link one morning, I was told to inventory the items that were in exhibits, so I had to look for accession numbers on every little thing. In the one exhibit that is suppose to be about areas around Roanoke from 1840 to 1858. I came across a letter that was from a man named E.L. Stuart dated January 2^nd, 1854. In the letter Staurt talks about how he is willing to sell this man his slaves for $150 because another man had not responded back about the offer he gave him.

I’m excited to see what else I can find in the museum!

Since I’m local to Roanoke, I decided that over spring break I would continue to work at the museum. One day I came in and Ashley told me that I would be continuing on inputting objects from the inventory excel sheet into Past Perfect. I don’t mind doing this task at all and my view is not that bad either. Even though looking at the computer screen for 3 hours was not that fun, I keep reminding myself that this skill is something that I could put onto a resume.

 

As I have been inputting inventory records into Past Perfect for a couple weeks now, we realized that the majority of the objects had no pictures, this is important for the Past Perfect page. So Ashley decided that it would be a good idea for me to get my hands on learning how to take these clothes from collections and dress them on mannequins. This was quite the task because I was constantly afraid I was going to tear some since the clothes I was working with that day were uniforms from World War 1. So that day consisted of dressing a small girl mannequin in male uniforms then taking pictures of every detail about the items. One box that I pulled off the shelf was a doughboy uniform that had the medals received in an envelope. I got to take a couple pictures of some of these with my phone, I found them to be so fascinating.

 

Another day I got to look at photographs and search for them on Past Perfect to find out where they are supposed to be filed. I got to see so many incredible photos, some were of the old Lakeside amusement park that used to be near Salem. There were tons of Hotel Roanoke from all kinds of years, one of the oldest ones I can remember were from the fire in July of 1898. I was able to take a picture of the photograph that was from the fire. In the photograph you see everyone I assume who had to escape from the fire out in the lawn and then some bystanders underneath a roof pretty far from the hotel. I just thought this photograph was something special simply because of the huge fire. I am not sure what Ashley has planned for me this week but I am excited to find out.

These past two weeks I have been working at the Link Museum location. Usually at this location I am working more with the exhibits. These past two weeks I have either been writing condition reports for some photograph collection that is to be shipped out in a few weeks or I was looking at our inventory list and typing them into Past Perfect.

The condition reports have been interesting, I have learned how to examine something so closely and to write down every little issue with the frame, mat, plexiglass and the miters. During this time, I was able to look at O. Winston Link’s work. I never heard of Link before so looking at his photographs of the railroads in the 1950’s was definitely something that I found interesting. Link mainly focused on taking picture of the railroad systems, locomotives, railroad work, railroad life, the stations, anything about a railroad and he’s photographed it. It has been tedious work but I’m glad that I’m almost done with this task and will hopefully be back to looking at collections.

One day last week, I was told to start taking our inventory list and compare it to a minor inventory that was done in 2011 and then take the combination of those and catalog those into Past Perfect. Before I even started Ashley warned me that this was going to be frustrating because the person who worked in her position before her was not organized. I found that to be extremely true, objects were missing a picture, some where completely not the same, some did not have an accession number. Overall, I have enjoyed this task because I get to see more descriptions of objects that are in collections that I might have not personally seen. This is something that I’ve enjoyed doing because it is definitely helpful for me to learn how to navigate through the Past Perfect program. This week I am to finish doing condition reports on the Link photographs and after that who knows but I am very excited to get back to work.

These two weeks of my internship have been extremely educational. Ashley showed me how to navigate Past Perfect and I have started with newspapers from the 19^th century. I got to measure the newspapers and type up their locations, condition reports, and other various information. After I usually do a couple of the maps we begin on inventory again, this week I got to see a few interesting objects. For example, I saw a young boy’s bathing suit from the 1920’s, I was shocked to learn that most of the bathing suits from this time period were made from wool, I do not see how that was comfortable. Another fascinating clothing item I saw was a woman’s cape from 1861. Attached to the cape was a tag, it was not the original tag but it did say that this cape was $30 in confederate money. I found a money converter website online called, http://www.in2013dollars.com/ and I’m sure there was a difference in inflation from a U.S. dollar and a Confederate Dollar but $30 in U.S. money in 1861 would be equal to $773.90 in U.S. dollars now. This cape was very fancy and looked like it would be very expensive, also had been kept in fantastic condition.

A couple days after I came across the cape, I found a folder that contained Confederate money, bonds, and coupons. This was something that I could not pass up on to take a photo of. I found this to be ironic since I found the tag about the cape.

A few other things I found were about Roanoke College, one day when I was going through the maps to be entered into Past Perfect, I came across a magazine that was in pretty bad shape, there was no issuing date on there but on one page it mentions Roanoke College. It is just a brief three paragraph article that talks the beginning of the College and then about the accomplishments that the College is known for. From looking at the article’s pictures the magazine might be from the 50’s or 60’s.

Today, while I was searching through a donation I found a book called, The First Hundred Years Roanoke College 1842-1942, by William Edward Esienberg. I did not get the chance to look through the book since I found it three minutes before it was my time to leave. It just find it ironic that I keep on finding objects that correlate to each other days apart, it’s really interesting.

Ashley explained briefly that next week I will be doing something different, something with the actual exhibits at the Link location. I’m excited to see what is in store for me!

I have really enjoyed the start of my internship at the Roanoke History Museum. I was placed to work with Ashley Webb. The Roanoke History Museum is moving from it’s previous location in the Center in the Square building to the Link Museum in Roanoke. So to start off my internship, I have been helping set up exhibit rooms in the new location. Since they are moving locations, everything in collections has to be accounted for. A volunteer named Wendy, another intern from Hollins named Laura, and I got to be in charge of going through the shelves of items and looking for the identification number then cross-referencing in a donation log and then typing up everything in an excel document.

 

My next two days consisted of Laura and I going through each item on the shelves. Some of the items that stood out in my mind were World War 1 American Red Cross nurse uniforms, one that we looked at had small stains which looked like it could have been blood. Another item that I remember was a wedding dress with handmade lace and beadwork, it was worn in the 1830s. Next week, I should continue on doing inventory but Ashley said I could also be working on more exhibits in the museum.