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I finished my internship a week earlier than I anticipated. This past week was my last week at the museum and it was an emotional, yet rewarding experience. Looking back on what I learned throughout my internship, I can confidently say that working in archives and collections is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I continued working on a gift that was recently given with photos, the rifle, two bibles, documents and postcards like the one pictured above.

I thought it was extremely interesting that there was a home-like building behind the Roanoke County Courthouse that is now West Hall for Roanoke College. My curiosity got the best of me and I started questioning a lot. Unfortunately, they had to be put on hold because my time ran out. I was lucky enough to be able to have such a fruitful internship experience and a great internship advisee/boss, Ashley W.

The past two weeks, I’ve focused on accessioning, packing and labeling photographs. I would add the photo and its accession number to Past Perfect and simply describe what was happening in the photo. The photos were mostly portraits of family members from the Lawson/Alls family. I was only able to name a handful of individuals because of the descriptions on the back, written in black ink or graphite. In terms of labeling and packaging, I would write the accession number in the bottom right corner on the back and place it into a tan folder with the same number written on the to for easy access.

Last Friday, I was tasked with finding a photograph that was not in it’s original spot (bottom photo). During the search, I came across a photo of the Lutheran Children’s home, an orphanage that eventually became Elizabeth College where the fraternity houses are. I thought that it was pretty cool. I searched through many boxes and each folder individually and was unable to find the photo in the three hours I was there.

This was my first week back after a two week hiatus. Since I’m getting back in the groove of things, I was assigned a short project of photographing and labeling hats and hatboxes, as well as entering them into Past Perfect.

First, I labeled the hats and hatboxes. Since hats is an article of clothing, I had to write their identification number on book tape and then sew that on the hat (just enough to where it can be undone if necessary).

Photography took a majority of my time because I had to focus on getting as many angles as I possible can (a lot of photos were taken for fourteen hats). With those photos, I organize them into the Collection Images, edit and insert the photos into Past Perfect. Entering the information and images into Past Perfect will be a side project I’ll continue as I work on my main project.

Since my last post, I’ve been accessioning new objects and archives and moving objects and such in storage. I walked into the archives room and saw this rifle and was instantly intrigued. My internship advisor asked me to do some research on it since we were unsure on the model and make of the rifle at the time. When she was gifted the rifle, the donor said that US SPRINGFIELD was engraved on it, but she couldn’t see it, so she was not 100% positive that he was telling the truth. He indeed was.

After careful speculation, I was able to identify the make of the rifle, an United States Springfield Percussion Musket Rifle. You can barely see the engraving, but there is a flying eagle with US Springfield engraved next to it. I didn’t know what year it was because that was completely engraved out. I got some context clues from the rest of the gift. The man that used this was a Confederate Solider. I dug further into my research and found that it was an 1861 US Springfield Percussion Musket. I wasn’t done yet. I researched the battles that Anderson Damewood, the Confederate solider fought in. Damewood fought in the Battle of Middle Creek and Battle of Chickamauga.

One question was bugging me though. How did Damewood get the rifle? US Springfield supplied 99% of the Union. I have my theories. Since the rifle doesn’t look exactly like an 1861 US Springfield rifle, it was definitely damaged during battle. The lower barrel band was handmade and the ramrod is missing. The theory that makes the most sense is that an Union solider was killed with this rifle in an explosion and Damewood got ahold of the rifle and fixed it up so it was usable again, hence the handmade lower barrel band and missing ramrod. The Confederate Army did not have top-notch weapons like the Union; they just used what they owned. By using this rifle, it gave Damewood an advantage.

Shortly, I’ll be creating a mini-exhibit once I return to my internship soon. More updates coming soon.