Don't Take the 'R' out of the NHPRC

In the efforts to reduce the Federal budget to meet the economic crisis facing the nation, one of the programs in jeopardy is a small grant program that has gone a long way towards helping preserve some of the most precious documentary treasures in our culture.  What follows is the story of one of the key documents that convinced Congress to place the 'R' in the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.  It is a a morality play in itself, as it was one of those treasures that did not benefit from the grant  program that it helped create.  In whatever we do to reduce the cost of government we should be wary of further endangering the cultural heritage upon which our democracy is based.  In establishing priorities for the spending of tax dollars at all levels of government, we cannot afford to neglect the very means by which we learn about past accomplishments and failures.  They are our guideposts to helping us move forward and overcoming the severe economic limitations of the present.  The grant program of the NHPRC for the preservation of state and local records must continue to be one of those key means of guiding the way to a better future for all of us.

The First Volume of the
Town Records of Macedon, New York (1823-1851)
and its Maryland Connections

All meaningful history is local in nature.  It is through local connections and local examples that the fabric of American Society is best explained and understood as long as they are connected and placed in the context of the collective history of the nation.  Macedon New York did not exist in isolation. Those who lived and worked there, and those who passed through, left trails of connectivity to the major and minor issues of the day.  In the period covered by this first volume of the Macedon Town Records, there are are ties to model philosophies of local government, general education, and the ultimately successful efforts to remove the stain of slavery from the nation that deserve further exploration and accurate story telling.

This mold-stained, water damaged  volume of the first records of the town of Macedon is a survivor,  symbolic of the resilience of the local body politic to changing times.  Most of it is nearly legible, despite its neglect over the years. Salvaged once in the1970s and used to convince a local congressman to sponsor legislation designed to save it and other precious public records from further decay, the legislation passed to great fanfare, only to see this volume relegated to a bottom drawer in a file cabinet where it was later inundated by water from a nearby bathroom.  Sally Millick, working with Judy Gravino, the Macedon town clerk, and others who realized the importance of the history it contained, were determined that this time the volume would get proper attention and a permanent archival home.  A conservator cleaned and stabilized the contents.  Kirtas Technologies, Inc., with support from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints,  scanned the pages for the bound volume reprint edition of which this introduction is a part. The Maryland State Archives, scanned the conserved pages for an on-line ebook, and rebound the original in protective polyester for the Town of Macedon as a permanent memorial to a former Macedon Town Attorney, Supervisor, and Wayne County District Attorney, John M. Wilson, and his aunt Sara E. Wilson, who, in the 1960s, saved it from being lost altogether.

The journey to save this priceless volume documenting the first decades of town government in Macedon New York began for me in 1962 with the sudden death of my uncle John M. Wilson who had just been elected district attorney for Wayne County.  He had given Sara E. Wilson the volume along with a 1904 atlas and an 1877 history of Wayne County for safekeeping, which she in turn passed on to me to see to their preservation and use. 

In 1973 my career path led to becoming the Assistant State Archivist for Maryland, after having worked in the offices of Congresswoman Jessica McCullough Weis and Frank Horton (both of whom represented Macedon in Congress), and at the American Historical Association (AHA).  While at the AHA, I served as liaison and staff to a committee headed by Charles Lee, Archivist of South Carolina, that was determined to expand the the role of the National Historical Publications Commission (NHPC) to include the preservation of  records, particularly state and local records.  I convinced my former employer, Frank Horton, the then ranking minority member on the Government Operations Committee of the House of Representatives, to co-sponsor the legislation in the House along with his chairman.  I was able to do so in part by showing him this volume and suggesting that once I had it properly boxed at my own expense, he might want to give it back to the town in a special ceremony at the dedication of the then new canal park on July 3, 1973.  He liked the idea and combined the presentation back to the town with a press release explaining the importance of the new legislation placing the 'R' in the NHPC.  Unfortunately the recipients, the Macedon Historical Society, did not have the resources at the time to care for it properly, and eventually it was relegated to a bottom drawer of a file cabinet at their headquarters that became rusted shut after a plumbing accident.

While not all the pages of the volume are legible here, the recent advances in technology raise hopes that even more will be readable in the future once the techniques of imaging have been refined by Roger Easton, Bill Christens-Barry, Fennella France, and their colleagues.  Fortunately the ink used in the writing of the volume has left a residue that may be possible to extract  in greater detail, although the process at the moment needs further testing and is currently very expensive. 

The journey of the town records from Macedon to Maryland and back, is the story of the quest to preserve permanently the rich local history of the past and to place it in the context of  the struggle to establish a government responsive to the needs and dreams of all its citizens.

The volume itself is but a bare outline of the concerns and actions of local town government in Macedon from 1823, when it was part of Ontario County, until the prosperous pre-civil war years of the 1850s, by which time it had been incorporated into Wayne County. It records the outcome of local elections and provides insight into who was charged with administering local affairs including the assessment of property and the collection of taxes.  Cattle and sheep marks are recorded to help recognize who owned wandering animals and  to help prevent theft.  It concerns itself with roads, schools and the outline of who was elected to conduct the town's business from 1823 to 1851.  Clearly the emphasis in this volume is keeping the roads in good order, resolving disputes over where roads ran, and meeting the educational requirements of the State which called for uniform school districts with overseers, supervisors, standard text books and an accounting of the students served.  Indeed periodically the text books to be found in the school district libraries were listed in this volume.  My grandmother Pearl Wilson (sister-in-law of Sara E. Wilson) was the last teacher at Macedon District #4 school house. She salvaged a couple of the original texts from the trash which she passed on to me, including a well worn copy of one of arithmetic primers listed in the earliest accounting of texts (Nathan Daboll's Schoolmaster's Assistant owned by Orran Green of Macedon), and book no. 67, District No. 4, which is an 1840 history of Spain and Portugal featuring a glowing chapter on the period of African rule over Spain.

The traditions of  education and local government found here are largely New England in origin with the town meeting at the center of local affairs, the town clerk charged with recording all actions of the meeting, and the justices of the peace left to keep the peace among neighbors. Yet no matter how bare the outline,  the stories this volume helps tell of family and place, and their geographical reach is far greater than it first might seem.

Macedon and its residents in the period covered by this volume were active players in the movement to abolish slavery and promote citizenry among all Americans regardless of color.  The Erie Canal brought farmers and nurserymen to the town with its fulfilled promise of affordable transportation of goods and services.  Crops, fruits, and manufactured goods made their way to Albany and beyond.  It was a time of growth and optimism in which religion played a major role.  Macedon was in what came to be known as the 'burnt over region' for the large number of proselytizing religious groups that lived there.  Among them were the Quakers who allied themselves with the increasingly activist and vocal anti-slavery movement.

The Quaker emphasis was on education, improving responsive and responsible local government, and a political end to slavery.  Their chief supporter in all these efforts in Macedon was Gerrit Smith who brought his Liberty Party Convention to Macedon in June of 1847, and Frederick Douglass, the former slave from Maryland who moved  to Rochester the following December.  In Macedon, Gerrit Smith was allied with Asa Smith and his son William R. Smith, who lived across from each other on what is now the Victor road . The house has been identified as still standing by local historians Charles Lenhart and Marjorie Perez. It clearly deserves recognition on the National Register of Historic places, as well as an explanation on the New York web site devoted to the underground railroad.  Judy Wellman, Sally Millick, Charles Lenhart, Wayne County historian Peter Evans, former Wayne County Historian Marjorie Perez and Sue Jane Evans of the Pultneyville Historical Society in fact deserve enormous credit and praise for their efforts to rediscover the Abolitionists, UGRR agents and Afro-American history in Wayne County.  Without their aid and careful research the importance of the connections between Macedon and Maryland would remain broken and forgotten.

With backing from Gerrit Smith and personal visits from Douglass, William R. Smith opened a school in his home for runaway slaves and former slaves to aid them on their way to freedom in Canada and to prepare some who remained for the Abolitionist lecture circuit, part of the 7,000 sought by the Liberty Party as teachers and civil activists.  Willliam R. Smith would later be the unsuccessful Liberty Party candidate for governor of New York, and would fall victim to the stringent Fugitive Slave Law that came in 1850 as a Southern reaction to the increasing success of the underground railroad movement in arousing the ire and fear of slave owners with regard to the loss of their labor force.

Gerrit Smith's allies took a different tact from the abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison (himself a former Marylander whose mother continued to live in Baltimore until her death).  Garrison  believed the Constitution created slavery and ought to be ignored, instructing his supporters to not participate in the political process, but to work to overthrow it.  Gerrit Smith believed in working within the system to a degree, mounting a political party of his own, and ultimately serving a term in Congress as an independent.  As he did not recognize human beings as property, he conscienced aiding and abetting their escape from slavery, working at the same time to change the laws that legitimized the institution in some states, and to mount a campaign of education that would unlock the minds and promote the citizenry of  the enslaved.

For four days in June, 1847, the town of Macedon was the the center of  the political universe, at least for those abolitionists who had formed their own political movement which they called the Liberty Party.  There they nominated Gerrit Smith for President of the United States.  Their proposed reforms extended to the abolition of the post office monopoly opening it up to competition, a measure that would not be enacted for over another century, but their main issue was slavery.  "We hold slavery to be illegal and unconstitutional, and that the Federal Government is bound to secure its abolition by the guaranty, to every State in this Union, of a republican form of government.  If the South demurs, let her, peacefully, withdraw from the Union."   "Give us seven thousand men in this great nation who will hold up by their votes and their teachings, the great fundamental principles and objects of civil government, as God and nature have established them, and we are fully persuaded that it will be the most powerful political party in the nation or the world.  It will be a great teacher of the long neglected but vitally important sciences of civil government, of political morality, of political economy."

William R. Smith was inspired by the principles set forth by the Liberty Party, and would stand as its candidate for Governor, but he was also a man of action who believed that education was the key to good citizenship.  Throughout this first volume of Macedon town records there is a constant refrain that there were no colored students attending Macedon schools,  yet they were taught at William R. Smith's home on the Victor road. Because the Macedon school for free and runaway Negroes founded by William R. Smith, and funded by the Presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, Gerrit Smith, was, in the eyes of Federal law, illegal when it  aided runaway slaves, little has survived of the actual records of the school.  It is known that  in 1848 Smith taught the two recently freed Edmon[d]son sisters, seen below in plaid wraps and bonnets, at a Liberal Party/Abolitionist rally attended by Frederick Douglass.

From the J. Paul Getty Collections, originally owned by Jackie Napoleon Wilson

William R. Smith also welcomed Myrtilla Minor to his home and school as possibly a teacher or at least to be inspired by her association with him and his friends. From correspondence on line from the Clements Library written from Macedon, Minor outlined her future plans as a teacher.  She went on, with support from abolitionist friends, to found the first school for Free Blacks in the District of  Columbia, where she was joined for a time by Emily Edmon[d]son.

It is also known that William R. Smith had a close working relationship with Frederick Douglass, and probably played a role with the Gerrit Smith and Amy Post families in weaning him away from the radical abolitionist policies of  William Lloyd Garrison to the ideals of  Smith and the Liberty Party.  It is not known when Frederick Douglass first met William R. Smith, but by September 11, 1849, he was writing from Macedon  on his way to attend the funeral of Hannah Sexton, wife of a prominent Quaker Banker who held mortgages on many of the farms and nurseries in Macedon and Palmyra.  At least one letter survives from William R. Smith to Douglass in the fall of 1851 which was published in the Frederick Douglass' Paper, when Smith was deeply immersed in the William Chaplin case. In July 1852, Douglass probably went to Smith's house in Macedon to "spend a day ...with a view to aid him in drawing up a statement of the facts in the case [of William Chaplin's default in raising repayment of the bond for his release from prison]."

The story of  the Macedon Abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, the Edmon[d]son sisters and Willliam Chaplin are very much a part of the fabric of the history encompassed by these town minutes.  William R. Smith serves as Inspector of the Common Schools in 1833, 1837, and 1838, and at times an overseer of the roads. William R. Smith's father, Asa, appears in the records as one of the first Assessors as well as often as an overseer of the roads, and as a Commissioner and Inspector of Common Schools. To obtain a fuller account  of Macedon's participation in the effort to abolish slavery, the record needs to be expanded to encompass the lives of those that Gerrit and William  R. Smith took under their wings, sheltering and seeking to teach them to read, write, and be well informed citizens.  The road to freedom leads back to Maryland,  where the citizens of Macedon came face to face with the evils of slavery and engaged their enemy. The records they left behind not only document the road to freedom, they provide an expanded insight into the operations of the legal system in Maryland and the charitable giving of Marylanders in a State where slavery was legal until 1864, and supporters of slavery controlled most aspects of the political world.

Two good books have been written about the ship Pearl, one by Josephine F. Pacheco and the other by Mary Kay Ricks. Abolitionists chartered it with the intent of aiding slaves working in Washington D. C. to escape to freedom.  In the Spring of 1848 seventy-six slaves fled on Pearl, but were caught on the Potomac by a chasing steamship when the wind failed.  On board were the Edmon[d]son sisters, Mary and Emily, children of a free black Maryland farmer and his slave wife (slavery descended through the mother).  As punishment for attempting to escape, the sisters were about to be sold into prostitution at New Orleans, when they were purchased with funds raised by the Abolitionists who had encouraged them to flee in the first place.  Further fund raising efforts by such as Henry Ward Beecher, brother to the future author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, to assist in their education, floundered until a benefactor, possibly General William Chaplin, came to their aid, sending them in 1849 to attend William R. Smith's school in Macedon. It may even be that the mulato woman with the last name of Chaplin in the William R. Smith household on the 1850 census was related to General Chaplin, or perhaps was a false name given the census taker for an escaped slave who happened to be there when the census was taken. For whatever reason, Chaplin became increasingly aggressive in his efforts to free Washington slaves, aiding Garland and Allen, the body servants of Congressman Robert Augustus Toombs and Senator Alexander H. Stephens to escape by coach one night in the summer of 1850, probably on their way to William R. Smith's farm.  They were caught on the edge of the District of Columbia, and shots were fired. Ultimately it was determined that they had passed into Maryland (the penalties were harsher there) and jurisdiction over the case was transferred to Maryland courts.  William R. Smith wrote a a spirited defense of his erstwhile friend Chaplin, attacking the Maryland court system and complaining that excessive bail was used as an unconstitutional deterrent.  When Chaplin refused to raise funds to help pay back the bond that set him free (nearly $2,000 in a day when a normal bond for allegedly attempting to steal property would not have exceeded $250), Smith and Frederick Douglass pondered what they should do next. It was to no avail.  In the meantime, Congress had passed the fugitive slave law which meant that those aiding and abetting escaped slaves faced harsh punishment and the effective use of the courts to suppress those who aided escaping slaves.  It is perhaps no coincidence that when William R. Smith's daughter ran off with a farm hand, and he forcibly brought her back, that he was charged with kidnapping and pursued vigorously in the courts to the point where he was forced to leave Macedon.  In 1854 he left and put his Macedon farm, Hillside, up for sale in the Country Gentleman.

The Country Gentleman, Volume 3
Edited by Luther Tucker and John J. Thomas
Published by Luther Tucker, No. 395 Broadway, Corner of Hudson Street, Albany , N.Y.
January to July 1854, p. 130

Smith ultimately ended up in California, after first relocating to Delaware and the Midwest.  The farm hand certainly did not have the resources to pursue the kidnapping charge against Smith.  Funding may well have come from pro-slavery elements intent on suppressing the educational efforts of Smith and his friends.

The tradition of protecting and advancing the rights of others continued in Macedon, long after William R. Smith found it necessary to leave.  As migrant labor from the South became increasingly important to the planting and harvesting of crops throughout Wayne County in the 20th century, relations between migrants and farmers at time became strained.  John M. Wilson , Macedon Town Attorney and Supervisor before he was elected Wayne County District Attorney, was assigned the defense of a migrant worker accused of murdering his employer.  My earliest memories of  the court house in Lyons are attending the trial in which  my uncle defended Moses Tunstill.  He lost the case at trial, but believed so strongly that justice had not been served that he appealed as Moses's pro-bono lawyer.  He won  the appeal, Moses was freed, and the case  today stands as a precedent  in  N.Y. for the administration of justice to the accused.

All meaningful history is local in nature, but to ensure that meaning is extracted, local records must be preserved and accessible for persistent consultation, review, and extrapolation to stories that engage, intrigue, and educate an ever-growing audience of readers. 

This volume is a survivor. With its restoration to the town, comes a lesson hopefully learned.  We need to better preserve and care for the fragmentary evidence of the past, if we are to chart a better course for the future.  Both the original of this volume and its images need to be placed in a safe and secure environment in which its pages can be transcribed, edited, and annotated in a manner that engages as many interested parties as possible and saves the results in a permanent, update-able, readily accessible, and search-able format. 

As a tribute to the Maryland connections, I have placed the electronic images in an ebook that can be edited, annotated, and improved over time as part of the permanent electronic archives of the State of Maryland at:
http://mdhistory.net/macedon_ny/macedon_ny_town_records/html/index.html. When better images become available, they will be added, and as pages are transcribed and edited they will be accessible through the universally available search engines of Google, Bing, and their successors.

NOTE: First posted June 13, 2010; corrections August 18, 2010, and November 27, 2010, with particular appreciation to Charles Lenhart without whose detailed notes and erudite observations this essay introduction to the first Volume of Macedon Town Records would not have been possible.  Much of the research on the W.R. Smith site and Smith is documented and derived from Judith Wellman and Marjory Allen Perez, with Charles Lenhart and others, Survey of Sites Relating to the Underground Railroad, Abolitionism, and African American Life in Wayne County, New York, 1820-1880 (Lyons, New York: Wayne County Historian's Office, 2009), which is excerpted here with permission of the authors. Judith Wellman also recommends Stanley Harrold's Subversives: The Anti-Slavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865 (2003) on the Edmonson sisters.  The records were returned to the Town of Macedon in a special ceremony before the town board on September 23, 2010. My comments included a charge to the Board reported in the Wayne Post:

“These volumes don’t just simply represent the essence of democracy here, the way in which you all attempt to give the services to the people of this town that they deserve. They also are very much connected with the fabric of the whole of American history. I charge you with the responsibility of seeing to their permanent and long term care and preservation and of making them accessible, but also to help use them in such a way that they teach each generation the importance of local government.”
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For the ebook version of this essay and access to the on line version of the first volume of the Macedon Town Records where any one interested can assist in transcription, go here.

Sustainability and the Public Record

Friday, Jan 8 2010 — Source: The Baltimore Sun

This November, Marylanders will have a once-in-a-generation chance to shake up the political process. Yet few know about it, and even fewer are talking about it. Maryland’s Constitution stipulates that, every 20 years, the General Assembly must place on the general election ballot a binding referendum asking voters whether they want to convene a constitutional convention. If it passes, it could be the most politically momentous event in Maryland during 2010. 

For the last Constitutional Convention in Maryland, see: Guide to the Records of the Constitutional Convention of 1968 and the records of the Convention

In April of 1788, William Paca (in the portrait above which is currently on loan to a joint Maryland Historical Society/Maryland State Archives exhibit) arrived with 22 proposed amendments at the convention in the Maryland State House called to ratify the Constitution of the United States. With former Governor Thomas Johnson's help, he convinced the convention that if they would just listen to his amendments and the arguments for them, he would sign the Constitution without amendments. Maryland ratified the Constitution without amendments on April 28, 1788.  The amendments Paca proposed and the minutes of his presenting them were immediately printed up and sent to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, where they were merged into the amendments proposed by George Mason. Ultimately, of course, what Paca and Mason proposed evolved into the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. In those days we cared about the written framework upon which our republic is based and we cared enough to ensure that the process of making it better was written into the fabric of the governmental institutions created to implement a government accountable to the citizenry. In 2010, Marylanders have an opportunity to say yes to revisiting and revising their state constitution.

The future of our democracy depends upon a well-informed, well-educated electorate willing to actively participate and dynamically improve the electoral and governmental process. In the context of civil debate and dynamic compromise, constitutions and laws, at the local, state, and federal level need to be constantly reviewed and thoughtfully changed based upon authoritative and accountable information.

In the public world, that central cortex of reliable information must come from a publicly accessible archives in partnership with a vibrant public library system, in all of which the cost of delivering that information is within reach, within the economic means, of every citizen of the republic.

For some months now, since my return from advising the Serbian government on the future of their electronic archives, I have been asked by my sponsor, the Jefferson Institute, to provide a one page summary of my views on the present and future sustainability of public archives.

The context for us, of course, is the downsizing of government personnel, an enormous public deficit and public debt, which has increasingly made it difficult to even provide custodial care for the treasures we have in hand, let alone the permanent records, both paper and electronic, that we ought to be incorporating (accessioning) into our collections.

It became clear to me several years ago that there would never be adequate direct funding for the Maryland State Archives. After much planning and careful shepherding of the capital resources allocated to us, we did get a new facility in 1986, a facility that we are proud to point out we brought in under budget, with next to no change orders, and effectively furnished it with compact mobile shelving of our design which not only was acquired under budget, but has been virtually maintenance free since we opened in the summer of 1986 and continues that way.

We ran out of space for permanent records in the year 2000, and since then have had to pay for substandard commercial warehousing to accommodate the annual growth in our permanent record collection. In addition, the State chose to charge us rent for the space we built in 1986. At the same time our operating budget in general funds has been systematically withdrawn to the point where we will have a deficit of $187,000 that will need to be made up from special fund income and a starting deficit for next year of over $1.5 million dollars which also must be made up from special fund income derived from the services we provide the public and state government.

In all, to be sustainable for the present and the future, as a vital information service and keeper of the State's public treasures, the Maryland State Archives has had to move to a business model of operation that requires us to earn approximately 80% of what it costs to keep the doors open and make the records and the information they contain accessible.

How do we do it and how can we continue to be successful at what we have been doing for the past fifteen years or so?

It requires considerable self discipline on the part of a core staff of a dedicated conservation, appraisal, reference, and research staff. Each aspect of our work could consume without difficulty all of the resources that we can muster, if we permitted it. The key to success is

1. convincing government agencies that the Archives is an essential part of their record keeping and that where they need help in moving their permanent records into an imaged environment, we are there, at reasonable cost, to help them do so.
   
2. effectively mining the private and public granting agencies to fund our educational and outreach programs, and
3. using those resources in a well-balanced way to care for, access, and explain the value of the records in our care, in whatever format they are, paper and electronic.

We have developed the first fully functional electronic archives at the State level and have brought into it a fee based service that provides nearly 70% of our income flow. We have the legal framework in place that permits us to set aside 7% of anything we earn into a permanent endowment of which only the interest is meant to be used for educational out reach and explaining to potential users the value of the information the Archives contains.

In order to be sustainable now and in the future, however, the Maryland State Archives must find ways

1) to reduce the rent it has to pay for the storage of records by building adequate state owned and archives operated facilities,

2) enlist more stage agencies (including the Maryland General Assembly and the Office of the Governor) in our crusade to make permanent electronic information created by the State accessible through the archives,

3) allocate staff time to pursuit of significant grants, and

4) continue to balance the work we do as Archivists and Conservation specialists, so as not to be drawn back into solely a warehousing operation in which we provide little understanding of what now have and no programs for taking on what we ought to have.

That may in fact mean a reduction in hands on, in person reference services, and much more emphasis on developing self-service finding aids and placing records on line in a pay as you ask environment. The model there may well be the Google model, where you can find what you think you need revealed in snippets, but for the full document or the full page, you may be required to pay a price.

In addition to public funding, both special income and direct appropriation, we must have an active and engaged Friends group that taps every possible source of private funding for our interpretive and outreach programs.

Population, Maryland
	5,699,478 - Jul 2009 Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division Disclaimer

www.google.com/publicdata


In all, with regard to the Maryland State Archives which serves a State of nearly six million people, I believe our base line budget, adjusted for population growth, needs to be $10 million dollars in today's dollars, supplemented by income from an endowment of $10 million dollars at today's interest rates, with core staff funding from direct appropriation of $3.5 million, making the breakdown viz income of approximately 25-30% from direct appropriation, and 70-75% from service related special fund income. When we began our special fund income model in the year 2000 our budget was approximately $2 million, all in general fund appropriated dollars. Today the split is about 20/80, on an overall budget of ca. $7 million. We have a ways to go, but if we pay attention to the business model, are successful with the grant applications now in the works, and secure capital funding for a new storage, conservation, and interpretation facility, we can get there in the next five years, which is my personal goal.

In 1814, with the Capitol and the White House still smoldering, Baltimore came to successful defense of the nation, and out of Baltimore came intense pressure to reform government and expand the base of public participation. That cause was led by a few generally unsung heroes in the legislature, including the first serious student and historian of Maryland government, John V. L. McMahon, representing Allegany County, Thomas Kennedy representing Washington County, and Henry Marie Brackenridge, representing Baltimore City, allied with the Jewish community who had done much to finance the war and post-war reconstruction. They hammered away at injustice and in favor of a well-educated populace being able not only to vote, but to participate in public office. Only by examining the record, writing and speaking to the need, did they succeed, at least in part.

Let us be certain that as we move forward in the rescue of our economy and the improvement of our governmental system, that we do not neglect the care of the written, and now digital, record upon which its success is based.

Ed Papenfuse, Archivist of Maryland, April 28, 2010

Access to Archives, Classification, and the Freedom of Information Act

Adapted from the Organization of American Historians Newsletter for May 2005.


As former chairperson of the little known OAH Committee on Research and Access to Historical Documentation, and a state archivist/historian, I was asked to prepare a short essay on “access to archives, classification, and the Freedom of Information Act.” This is a daunting assignment, one which two major government commissions (one reporting to the president the last week of March, 2005) have generated volumes of opinion and documentation relevant to the question. To paraphrase Ed Ayers in a C-SPAN presentation on his view of the digital future of research and writing, like a fool, I raised my hand.

I first consulted with the members of our committee who were able to participate in a conference call on March 25, 2005 for what I thought would be a half-hour meeting, and which ended after an hour and a half, producing a transcript that far exceeded my proscribed word limit. We were fortunate to have Bruce Craig leading us. He kept us current with the lobbying efforts of the National Coalition for History (NCH)&emdash;a nonprofit organization that represents the historical and archival professions&emdash;while Nancy Berlage, Walter Hill, and I probed with him such fundamental questions as how the “need to know” standard of the courts should be defined, how the right to know is conditioned by security needs (especially after 9/11), how access should be balanced by personal privacy, how and when executive privilege should be permitted, and above all, how does a democracy based upon majority rule, assure the public at large that it is basing its actions on a reliable, accessible record.

Fortunately, we then had a new Archivist of the United States , Allen Weinstein, who articulated a deep commitment to finding answers to these questions. In an interview, Weinstein made it clear that there is a distinction between any scholarly debate that might arise from his own scholarly endeavors (he welcomes the scholarly discussion) and his devotion to access within the context of a dependable and dynamic archival program. As many of us know, he pioneered in seeking documents under the Freedom of Information Act. He worked diligently to bring all presidential libraries under one coherent and accepted policy of access, and will not release any materials now at College Park that are not covered by such a policy based upon a signed agreement. He embraced advocacy for the revival of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) as a necessary and integral component of what the National Archives is all about. In my opinion, he was the first archivist since the ‘R’ was added to the National Historical Publications Commission to view the Commission as an essential aspect of the total program of the National Archives and to openly advocate full funding for both the records and publications programs. He also made it clear that he seeks broader cooperation among the other keepers of the collective memory of the nation, including the state archives, where a fair degree of entrepreneurial and innovative work has been undertaken to cope with such fundamental issues of access as the creation of permanent electronic archives. Weinstein and at several state archivists openly advocate the management of the flow of permanent electronic information into the archives from the moment of creation&emdash;delegating the advice on who should have access and when&emdash;to thoughtful panels of experts selected by the archives, panels that encompass the broad spectrum of differences that will arise.

While some latitude will inevitably be given to the people we elect to office to make decisions concerning access for the period of time they are in office, we ought not to permit them to do so beyond a reasonably prescribed time limit once they are out of office. Neither presidents nor national security advisers should have the right to close indefinitely, or remove from public view altogether, the record of their work. In the world of HIPPA regulations, we have permitted those who govern to stumble badly in passing laws so poorly written as to ignore that what is private health information for the living ought to become public and freely accessible information at some defined point in the future. That, indeed, is the essential point of all access concerns. In a democracy such as ours, there needs to be a time, a persistently forward moving date, after which all that has been identified as permanently valuable information is totally free and accessible.

Of course, determining what should be retained permanently in the massive rush of information that is generated every day is an even more difficult stumbling block than setting a time for release. In the desire to know what is happening and why, some rush to judgment, and, in the case of some television anchors, find themselves pushed into retirement, obscuring the fact that the questions they raised could not be answered precisely because the records no longer exist for whatever reason, legitimate or otherwise. To have faithful, full, and accurate reporting as history or as current events, a concerted effort must be made to ensure that accurate and complete records are maintained in an archival setting from their inception.

It is worthwhile for historians and archivists to expend some of their energies helping to establish and enforce standards of what we keep and why. If our principal means of communication is currently by Iphone, Blackberry, IPAD and email, then some effort needs to be undertaken to see to it that phone logs and essential electronic communications are both managed well and permanently kept, going directly from the moment of creation to an archival setting that at some defined point is fully accessible to the public.

Historians do need to be sensitive to the fact that Freedom of Information Act requests can paralyze a government agency that is faithfully attempting to do its assigned tasks. Some archivists, including this one, are all too aware of this problem, especially with regard to those requests that appear to be put forward by, or on behalf of, particularly disgruntled individuals who are not necessarily concerned with the best interest of the public at large. It is important that in seeking more rapid and open access to government information that adequate resources are given to the Archives and government agencies to manage, record, and maintain government information in a readily accessible format. It is also important that independent review boards are established to both screen frivolous requests and to provide legitimate guidelines for the release of public information in whatever permanent form it may exist.

If you have a chance, log into C-SPAN’s presentation of Ed Ayers’ March 14, 2005 talk at the Library of Congress on “The Digital Future”. Ayers enthusiastically looks to the future of research in the digital age and the importance of digital archives. It is a thoughtful tour de force based upon his work with the Valley of the Shadow archives and the experiment he did with William G. Thomas III, in writing an article exclusively in electronic form for what Ayers believes is permanent reference on a perpetually authoritative web site (initially funded by the NEH). The problem is that there is currently no such thing as a permanent electronic reference on a perpetually authoritative web site. JSTOR, Google Books, and possibly http://archive.org probably come as close as any experiment in establishing a permanent electronic archives and our efforts to place all land records in Maryland online may prove a viable model. The truth is that the essential records of governance about which historians are rightfully clamoring for access have not been, and are not now, being created in the context of how to make them permanently accessible. To answer the most pressing questions of declassification and access to permanent records requires historians, archivists, librarians, and the public in general to focus on what we currently save and how to save it permanently in a sustainable electronic archives. When we do that, at least, the future of history will be secure. In the meantime we will battle to preserve and make accessible that which by luck and design survives of the archival record.

Celebrating Maryland Day: The Spirit of 1634

As we reflect on this 376th anniversary celebration of the landing on St. Clements Island of those first emigrants to the new colony of Maryland, you might wonder if there is anything new to be said about the lives, the courage, the determination of that first generation, in sum 'The Spirit of 1634.' Those first years have been carefully studied by genealogists, historians, archaeologists and anthropologists. They have been explored and celebrated in hundreds of books and articles. Yet there is always something new to learn, and even retracing the steps of what is known remains an exciting and inspiring adventure.

What is most engaging is the merger of several disciplines as we attempt to get to know and understand what that first generation did and why. Art, a closer look at the surviving documentary evidence, and the analysis of the physical remains in the ground,  coupled with a careful study of the word portraits of one of the best known chroniclers of those first years, Father Andrew White, lead in new directions and exciting new finds.


For example, until a short while ago, most scholars believed that we could never know what the first Governor, Leonard Calvert, looked like, although we have long known that he had returned to England long enough to have his portrait painted. Recently we have had two paintings brought to our attention, both of which are now in the State's collection. The first now hangs in the State House. The second we owe to, Mr. Truman Siemans, whose relative had made a copy early in the 20th century. He found the original on EBAY and bought it for the State's collection. Together they provide a face for Leonard Calvert that we once thought we would ever see.

Siemans'

portrait of Leonard Calvert, gift to the Friends of the Maryland

State Archives

Another new avenue of exploration is the possible architect of the Chapel whose work has been largely overlooked until recently when I began to catalog my books and found a treatise of his, that I had purchased at secondhand bookstore in New England for next to nothing. It is written by Guillielmi Hesi, a recognized Jesuit chapel architect,  and was published in 1636 as the Emblemata Sacra. It is devoted to poems and imagery that would have been familiar to that first generation. We have it available as images on line on the Maryland State Archives web site and when the Chapel is ready for exhibits, the Friends of the Maryland State Archives will be pleased to lend the original for display.

It is not far fetched to make the connection between Father William Hesius and the building of the Chapel at St. Mary's City. While no plans have survived, the paper they probably were drawn on has. The Jesuits brought paper with them that was made in their mllls near where Father Hesius lived and designed the church of St. Michel Leuven, Belgium, built ca. 1650. A number of examples of Jesuit paper with the watermark of a cross, a crown, IHS,and the word MARINAUD, are to be found throughout the Maryland records of the late 1660s and early 1670s when the Chapel was built, upon which are written the inventories of the estates of the Spirit of 1634 generation.

Church
of St. Michelin Leuven

A cherub contemplating his shadow from Emblemata (1636)

For the Chapel walls, there is a recently identified candidate for the alter, based upon the Peter Paul Rubens painting of the crucifixion that we now know George Calvert had hanging in his private chapel before it was given to Queen Henrietta Maria to hang over the alter in hers. While the original was lost during the English Civil Wars there is a lovely engraving of it that could be used for a suitable reproduction:

In these times of economic turmoil and uncertainty, the Spirit of 1634 well deserves a holiday of its own, yet Maryland Day, with a few exceptions like today, has been slipping from public view. Clearly Maryland Day is worth celebrating, not only for what we know about the Spirit of 1634, but also about the adventure ahead in learning more. Yet, with the recent emphasis on long weekends and rolling several holidays into one, most people seem not to be aware that there is an official State Holiday called Maryland Day. The Baltimore Sun, while publicizing this event in its March 26th edition, following Sue Wilkinson's unflagging efforts to get their attention, failed to mention the day at all on the 25th itself. Recently you could only find scattered references to Maryland Day on the web. Two of the most popular returns from Google and Bing, either missed the day altogether, or were celebrating something else.

There is much to remember and much more to learn from the lives of those who stepped ashore on March 25, 1634, having come nearly 6,000 miles over rough seas to start a new life. 

The replica of the Dove under full sail.  Visit the Dove at St. Mary's City

Their journey began on St. Cecilia's Day, November 22, 1633. Driven out by wars and religious intolerance, and drawn by the prospects of prosperity in a new land of abundance, approximately 150 brave souls set forth from Cowes on the Isle of Wight. They disembarked at an island they named St. Clements on March 25, 1634, a day that was sacred to all who landed that day, whether Catholic or Protestant, as the feast of the annunciation. It also signaled the end of the old year and the beginning of the new on a calendar, that would not be changed to ours for another 118 years.  Their purpose, after having successfully negotiated an accord with the natives and exploring the lower reaches of the Potomac for some time previously, was to celebrate a mass of thanksgiving that special day in anticipation of beginning a permanent settlement in the new year.

Journey of the Ark and the Dove, 1633-1634

The 150 or so who launched the new colony of Maryland had little but hard work ahead of them with no assurance that they would succeed. They came with cultural baggage of closely held and antagonistic religious views, to be governed by a Charter that carried a hint of representative government, the details of which were read to them for the first time that day. They came with specific instructions on what to do and how to behave which in large measure they would ignore in favor of new ways of living which included adapting to and incorporating the knowledge and skills of the natives they found already living here. Indeed when commanded to build an English town from which they were to go out to work their fields, they instead inhabited an abandoned Indian village, and soon sought scattered farms and plantations along the manifold creeks and rivers that penetrated the interior. It proved to be a hard life in which large numbers would not survive, leaving few heirs to perpetuate their memory.

Still those that did survive labored on, joined by succeeding waves of immigrants until there was a large enough population in which native born would out number newcomers. Fortunately there was a well-educated priest among them who has left more than one version of his account of this migration of English men and women to Maryland. Father Andrew White would go on to translate the bible and familiar prayers into Piscataway, and probably wrote the draft of the 1649 Act Concerning Religion which we refer to today as the act of toleration.

All but a fragment of his translations are lost, but the concept of religious toleration which he wove into an Elizabethan Statute on Blasphemy pointed the way to the much broader concept of the separation of church and state, and religious freedom on which our civil government is based. Father White writes eloquently of the voyage and the landing. His Briefe Relation contains less of his religious piety than later versions, but all present a vivid word picture of the Spirit of 1634. A sample of excerpts from the most recent translation from the latin of what he sent to Rome is typical of his style:

“On the 22nd of November, 1633, St. Cecilia's day, with a southeast wind softly blowing, we sailed from Cowes, which is a port on the Isle of Wight. ….When the wind was failing us, we cast anchor opposite Yarmouth Castle, which is situated toward the northwest of the same island. Here we were received with public cannon salutes; and yet fear was not absent. For the sailors were muttering among themselves that they were expecting a messenger and a letter form London, and for that reason they also seemed to be devising delays. But God destroyed their evil plans. Indeed that very night , when a favorable wind was blowing … our pinnace [the Dove] … hurried out to sea. And so., lest we might lose sight of our pinnace, we decided to follow. In this way the plans that the sailor considered against us were foiled. This happened on the 23rd of November, the feast of St. Clement, who obtained the crown of martyrdom when he was tied to an anchor and plunged into the sea ….”

The voyage to the Caribbean islands was uneventful and the only lives lost were to partying too heavily on Christmas.

“Wine was consumed in order that this day might be better celebrated,”

Father White wrote,

“and those who enjoyed it too intemperately were seized by fever the following day; they were thirty in number, and from those about 12 died not very much later, including two Catholics...”

This is our only solid evidence that the majority on board may have been protestant, assuming that drinking was indiscriminate as to religion. 1/6th of those aboard by this calculation would have been Roman Catholic, and helps to explain why Lord Baltimore's instructions to his brother Leonard who led the expedition so explicitly required all the passengers not to discuss or debate matters of religion.

When they at least reached the Potomac River they found the native population up in arms:

“At the mouth of the river itself we perceived armed natives. That night fires were burning in the entire region, and since such a big ship had never been seen by them, messengers sent from this side and from that were reporting that a canoe similar to an island had come near, and that it held as many men as there are trees in the woods. We, however continued to the Heron Islands, so called from the unheard of throngs of this kind of bird. The first one in our way we named after St. Clement; the second after St. Catherine, the third after St. Cecilia. We first left the ship at St. Clement's Island, to which no access lay open except through a shallow because of the sloping shore. Here the maids, who had left the ship to wash the laundry, almost drowned, when the skiff turned over, and a great part of my linen clothes were lost, no small loss in these parts. This island abounds in cedar, sassafras, herbs and flowers to make all kinds of salads, also in a wild nut tree which bears a very hard nut, with a thick shell and a small but wonderfully tasty kernel. However, since it is only four hundred acres wide, it did not seem spacious enough as a location for the new settlement.”

Instead, Governor Leonard Calvert, with the assistance of Captain Henry Fleet from Virginia who was fluent in the language of the natives, purchased

“such a charming place for a settlement that Europe can hardly afford a better one. Thus, when we had advanced from St. Clement's about nine leagues, we sailed into the mouth of a river ...[that] runs forward from south to north about twenty miles before it is absorbed by the salt water from the sea, not unlike the Thames. In its mouth one can see two bays, able to hold 300 ships of huge size. One bay we dedicated to St. George, the other one, more inward to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. ...We went up from coast inland on the right side, and about a thousand paces removed from the shore, we gave the name of St. Mary to the designated city. ...in order to prevent any pretext for injury or occasion for enmity, we bought thirty miles of that land from the chieftain in exchange for
hatchets, axes, hoes, and some amount of cloth. ...”

“Is not this miraculous, that a nation a few daies before in generall
armes against us and our enterprise should like lambes yeeld themselves, glad of our company, giving us houses, land, and liveings for a trifle...”

The great adventure had begun with housing and a marketable crop already in place. In fact there was such an abundance of corn that the surplus would be sent to market in Massachusetts, where Marylanders would initiate a reputation for exuberant behavior and found themselves banned from Boston. John Winthrop recorded the encounter in his journal:

“ The Dove, a pinnace of about fifty tons, came from Maryland upon Patomack river, with corn to exchange for fish and other commodities. ...some of our people being aboard the bark of Maryland, the sailors did revile them, calling them holy brethren, … and with all did curse and swear most horribly, and use threatening speeches against us. ...The next day (the governor not being well) we examined the witnesses, and found them fall[ing] short of the matter of threatening, and not to agree about the reviling speeches, and, beside, not able to design certainly the men that had so offended. Whereupon .. a letter [was] written to the master, that, in regard such disorders were committed aboard his ship, it was his duty to inquire out the offenders and punish them; and withal to desire him to bring no more such disordered persons among us.”

For the infant colony of Maryland there would be many years of struggle and near defeat ahead. Many good works have been written about those early years by a distinguished group of scholars including Lois Carr, Henry Miller, Julie King, Silas Hurry, and Tim Riordan, to mention a few. They have documented the determination in the face of uncertainty and economic upheaval that is so characteristic of that Spirit of 1634.

Indeed it has been in the blending of the disciplines of historical research, art, archaeology, and forensic anthropology, that we are continuing to learn more about what the reality of life was like for those who struggled to make a home for themselves and their hoped for posterity in Maryland.

If you have not yet experienced it, be sure to read about the Written in Bone exhibit at the Smithsonian in which the findings in Maryland play such a large part. Under the leadership of Doug Owsley, that exhibit took us on a journey into the lives and deaths of the full spectrum of society, rich and poor, black, white and native American.

One particularly absorbing story in the exhibit is that of Anne Wolseley Calvert, wife of Chancellor Philip Calvert, uncle of the Third Lord Baltimore, whose mansion was one of the largest ever built in Maryland in colonial times.

On December 5, 1990, James Bock reported in the Sun that a team of scientists,
archaeologists, and historians had begun to interpret the remains of three people buried in lead coffins within the foundations of probably the first brick Catholic Chapel in English-speaking North America, one which only recently has been reconstructed on the foundations of the original at St. Mary's City.

The middle of the three coffins contained a woman of 55 or 60 years whose suffering
at the last must have been enormous. She was malnourished and had few teeth. She had been in considerable and constant pain from a spiral fracture of one leg that had only partially healed allowing her to walk with a pronounced limp, but leaving her with two open abscesses that surely made the last two or three years of her life perfectly miserable.


Who was this woman buried with such tender loving care- arms folded and tied with silk ribbon, rosemary, the herb of remembrance sprinkled lovingly over her body? All of the evidence points to Anne Wolseley Calvert, the wife of Chancellor Philip Calvert who lay next to her in the largest of the three coffins. She came with her husband in 1657 and died in St. Mary's City two years before him, in about 1679 or 1680.

We now know that she suffered greatly and we know much about her state of health, but can we also put a face to her memory? From her skull, a forensic pathologist reconstructed the facial muscles and overlaying tissues to produce a striking likeness of a young woman. For the Smithsonian exhibition, Written in Bone, it was decided to reconstruct her face again, this time older, as she may have been at the time of her death. How close these two reconstructions came to capturing the real Anne Wolsely we will never know for certain without a contemporary image.

We do have a clue however, the story of which is interesting in itself. In the
1750s a relative of the Wolseleys came to Annapolis to live. She brought with her a painting of her grandmother the neice and namesake of Anne Wolseley, Anne Wolseley Knipe. When she died the painting passed to her daughter and then to her granddaughter. It then skipped a generation, passing to her great-great granddaughter, the wife of the Honorable George Hunt Pendleton. Pendleton served in Congress, ran as George McClellan's running mate against Abraham Lincoln in 1864, authored the Pendelton Civil Service Act and was rewarded with an Ambassadorship to Germany. Mrs. Pendleton took the painting with her to Germany, removing it from Annapolis where it had been on display for about 150 years.

By 1929 Anne Wolseley Knipe's portrait had disappeared from sight. Because it was of a close blood relative to Anne Wolseley, and might be useful in the reconstruction her image as well as in the hunt for family DNA, two consumate researchers, Jane McWilliams and Elaine Rice Bachmann, were assigned the task of tracking it down. They managed to sort out the innumerable relatives that to whom it could have descended, knowing that in all probability the family tradition of bequeathing it to daughters would have continued. Unfortunately there were a large number of candidates for whom there were no addresses and the hunt ground to a halt.

Then by chance, in the lunch room of the State Archives, Jane and Elaine happened to be talking with a senior member of the staff who had spent her childhood in a small town in Pennsylvania. When Jane mentioned that one of the possible heirs was named Joline and had come from Pennsylvania, the staff person mentioned that her childhood neighbors had had that name and offered to give them a call. They proved to be none other than the descendants of Anne Wolseley's niece. They didn't own the painting, but thought they knew who did, providing the telephone number of relatives in California. The family was so delighted to receive Jane's call and to learn about the interest in the painting that they donated it to the State Archives, returning it again to Annapolis.

From generation to generation the women descendants and close relatives of Anne Wolseley Knipe had carefully preserved both the memory and the artistic rendition of Anne Wolseley Knipe. Now it has a home among the collective memories of our colonial past at the Archives where it joins a revived interest in the role of women who helped formulate what was, and what is Maryland.

Although genetically linked to her name-sake there still remained the question of how much Anne Wolseley Knipe resembled her Aunt? I leave that for you to ponder from two forensic reconstructions and the image of the painting below, but to my eyes there are some striking resemblances, especially given the fact that the portrait was probably a marriage portrait designed to show off the best qualities of the sitter, while the reconstructions were not an artistic embellishment of fact. To put it bluntly, as a contemporary member of the English branch of the Wolseley family explained to Elaine Rice Bachmann, the Wolseleys were known for their big noses.

Anne Wolseley Knipe, niece of Anne Wolseley

First Forensic Reconstruction of the skull thought to be of Anne Wolseley, followed by the second reconstruction of the skull which appears in

the Written In Bone Exhibit at the Smithsonian.

In many respects, Anne Wolseley Calvert, whose own family had suffered persecution in England for their adherence to Catholicism, represents every-woman of 17th Century Maryland with her strong determination to make her way in a forbidding world filled with travails not unlike those of  Maryland's neglected patron saint, St. Cecilia. While the records are for the most part silent about the example Anne Wolseley Calvert set for those about her, we are left with one tantalizing piece of evidence that suggests the devotion she could inspire.

Her husband Phillip spent his life attempting to make the colony of Maryland a reasonably safe and secure place to live, a place where men, who died young and often with minor children, could be assured that the state would properly administer their estates for the benefit of their widows and their children. He did so with the help of a number of devoted clerks, the bureaucrats of their day, often
providing them with lodgings in his own home. When his longtime bachelor clerk, Michael Rochford died in 1679, Rochford chose not to honor his employer, but his employer's wife, Anne Wolseley. Out of a meager estate, he left his most precious possession, his silver watch to Ann, a touching tribute to a woman who had suffered much but who also seems to have been able to have shown kindness to others.

Not everyone agrees that we should go to such lengths as peering into coffins to reconstruct the past. Indeed an individual who may be a Calvert descendant felt compelled to write expressing his concern over what he perceived of as a desecration of a grave. He closed his letter with the familiar blessing "Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord. Let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in Peace."

I tried to explain in reply that until we did the historical research there was no connection with the Calverts and that from the remains alone their could not be. Only by linking the scientific evidence secured from many different disciplines with the fragmentary written evidence that survives could identification of the remains be nearly certain. I said nearly, because so much of the literary evidence has been lost. Nowhere in the records available today, for example, is there reference to these graves as being those of Anne, Philip, and an unnamed female child.

Should we engage in such reconstruction of the past from actual human remains? That is a philosophical question which in my opinion is best answered yes. If we had put as much into life for the benefit of others as Philip and Anne did, if we had suffered as much as Anne and that five month old girl did, I think I would like the world to know it and not be forever forgotten in a lead coffin under an oft-plowed corn field.


When Hamlet contemplated the skull of his friend Yorick, he did so for good reason. When with care and good taste we examine the remains of those who gave so much so that we could live the good lives we do, we do so for good reason as well. "Alas Poor Philip" and Ann, we should. Indeed in many respects Anne and the young girl in the coffin beside her represent every-woman and every-child. We owe it to them and to ourselves to pay them respectful tribute, not to ignore them. It is not a desecration so to do, it is a celebration, the final act of which should be a respectful re-interment in the crypt of the newly reconstructed chapel on the site of the earliest Catholic chapel in English speaking North America. But to celebrate we need to understand why, who and how, with whatever evidence remains for us to examine. Only then can perpetual light shine upon them and only then can they truly rest in peace.

In doing so, through ongoing research and interpretation, we also will know even better why we should remember the Spirit of 1634, and pause to celebrate Maryland Day every March.

Explore more of Maryland History at: http://teaching.msa.maryland.gov/.

The images of the Anne Wolseley Knipe portrait and the first forensic reconstruction are courtesy of the Maryland State Archives. The image of the second reconstruction is taken from Douglas Owsley and Karin Bruwelheide, Written in Bone, Minneapolis: LeantoPress, 2009, p. 59. 

The quotes from Father Andrew White are  taken from White, Andrew, Barbara
Lawatsch-Boomgaarden, and J. IJsewijn. 1995. Voyage to Maryland (1633) = Relatio itineris in Marilandiam. Wauconda, Ill: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers and Narratives of early Maryland 1633-1684: Ed. by Clayton Colman Hall. 1910. Narratives, Original, of early American history, 11. 1910.

The future of Archives

"May these be perpetual"

On the Sustainability of Archives

Opening Remarks 

Before the House and Senate Budget Committees

of the Maryland State Legislature, 

February 17-18, 2010

[Mr. Chairman, Members of  the Subcommittee:  
My name is Ed Papenfuse, State Archivist and Commissioner of Land Patents.  With me today are my Deputy, Tim Baker, and Nassir Rezvan, Director of Administration for the State Archives. 

Once again, we would like to thank the analyst, Ms. Flora Arabo, for a very fine presentation.  As always she accurately and fairly presents an analysis of the budget numbers.

For your reference and further reading, our annual report is provided on our website in the form of the minutes and agenda of the Hall of Records Commission, which we publish electronically following
each meeting at http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/intromsa/hrc/html/hrc.html.
 
This budget testimony and accompanying documents of interest are
posted on our website at http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/intromsa/html/budget.html and on my blog, http://marylandarchivist.blogspot.com.

Our major new outreach efforts this past year have been the collaboration with the Maryland Historical Trust on the reinterpretation and restoration of the Old Senate Chamber in the State House, our assumption, without funding, of the State House Tour Office, and an exhibit with the Maryland Historical Society of  some of the most valuable artwork owned by the State.

Burt Kummerow, director of the Maryland
Historical Society,with the three paintings by Charles Willson Peale 

owned by the State of Maryland that are
part of the "Maryland's National Treasures" exhibit. 

(Baltimore Sun photo by Amy Davis /
February 9, 2010)]

As we struggle with one of the worst budget crises in our history, it is time to address directly the reasons and means for sustaining the public memory in a permanent, well-protected environment, forever accessible and perpetually useful to future generations.

There are not enough resources for government to do all that the public and those in public office think it ought to do, from providing public safety, education, and health care to maintaining the infrastructure of our roads and public buildings. We live on borrowed time and massive loans from abroad. Optimists argue that if
we can only get our economy growing again, it will outpace our debt.

Pessimists tell us that poverty is too widespread and there are too many mouths to feed in a world of massive income disparity and a pervasive lack of personal self discipline. It is likely that truth lies somewhere in between, that to weather the crisis, expectations need to be scaled back, belts tightened, and the American ideal of self-reliance redefined in a collective spirit of entrepreneurial activity that produces jobs and a  renewed optimism that together we can both maintain and improve our standard of living.

In 1916, on the eve of the first Great War to End Wars, George Creel wrote a flattering piece about Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who along with Enrico Caruso was one of America's first great superstars. He argued that the country should hire Fairbanks and send him over the country as an agent of the Bureau of Grins. “Think what would happen” he wrote, “if we learned the art of joyousness and gained the strength that comes from good humor and optimism!”¹

What he wrote then, holds true today, as we cope with budget hearings and snow removal:

We are a young nation and a great nation. Judging from the promise of
the morning, there is nothing that may not be asked of America's
noon. A land of abundance, with not an evil that may not be banished,
and yet there is more whining in it than in any other country on the
face of the globe. If we are to die, "Nibbled to Death by Ducks"
may well be put on the tombstone. Little things are permitted to
bring about paroxysms of peevishness. Even our pleasures have come to
be taken sadly. We are irritable at picnics, snarly at clambakes, and
bored to death at dinners.²

To avoid being nibbled to death by ducks, we need to remember that sensibly investing in the entrepreneurial activities that sustain our memory of the past, can be one of the greatest contributions we make to the future success of the nation, whether it be to help improve our sense of humor or inspire us to re-invent ourselves rather than repeating the sins of the past. With Archives as the central cortex of our public memory, providing the cultural and informational inspiration to explore in meaningful ways what we have done right and wrong, we have a good chance of rising above our current misfortunes. Stifle that entrepreneurial spirit and we are likely to be condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.

In 1796, on the eve of his retirement from the Presidency, George Washington was presented with some mementos of the role the French played in the American Revolution. They will, he wrote, “be
deposited with the archives of the United States, which are at once the evidence and the memorials of their freedom and independence. May these be perpetual!.”³

On another occasion when pestered by historians to make his private papers available, and after agreeing that he would do so at some point, he cautioned:

It ever has been my opinion ... that no Historian can be possessed of sufficient materials to compile a perfect history of the revolution, who has not free access to the archives of Congress, to those of the respective States; to the papers of the Commander in chief, and to those of the officers who have been employed in separate Departments. Combining and properly arranging the information which is to be obtained from these sources must bring to view all the material occurrences of the War.⁴

Beginning in the 1990s, the Maryland State Archives launched a program of self-sustainability for the public records of the state that was premised on two fundamental principles:

1. that the capital resources of the State would provide proper housing for the Archives to prevent their being destroyed by environmental neglect
   
2. that the operational budget of the state would provide salaries for key archival personnel sufficient to not only care for the records as responsible custodians, but also to engage aggressively in seeking out sources of funding that would not impact the General Fund.
   

To date the capital resources of the State have not provided for the proper housing of over half of the archival collections of the State. They are currently housed in flat roofed commercial warehouses lacking in  temperature and humidity controls, easily subject to fire and weather related disaster. Plans for proper facilities are on the drawing board, but have been stalled by the recession. To correct the problem and provide for the future may cost as much as $70 million in capital improvements, but the consequences of the loss of that public memory both in dollars and in future inspiration are far greater.

As to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Archives, we have managed to work with the Judiciary to preserve and make accessible on line one of the most important of our archival responsibilities, the records of private property ownership and sale throughout the state reaching back to the 17^th century and the founding of Maryland. We have done so on initiative of the staff of the Archives, developing a web-based service and electronic archives encompassing 170,000,000 images of land records that are added to daily through the course of real estate recordings at the courthouses throughout Maryland. The service is paid for and maintained up front by those who buy and sell land through a modest fee placed in a dedicated fund generally referred to as the Land Records Improvement Fund, only a small portion of which goes towards the care and maintenance of the records on line at the Archives. In creating the service, with the permission of the Governor and the Legislature, we incorporated an overhead and investment charge designed to partially offset the general reference and research costs of the Archives which enabled us to develop the service in the first place, on the assumption that core management and entrepreneurial staff would continue to be the contribution of the State Government.

Instead, the more we have been able to earn, the less we have been permitted to do, as special fund income was siphoned off to pay for what should be General Fund expenditures, and what was earned above and beyond the immediate cost of service, was drained from our ability to develop additional sources of revenue outside the General Fund. For example, instead of providing adequate housing and maintenance of our collections, including the preventative maintenance of a valuable State art collection, we have been charged rent for the current Archives building and been forced to pay rent for the commercial space housing over half of our archival collections. In addition not only have our general fund allocations been reduced to paying only for salaries, the amount available for salaries has been persistently reduced, making it increasingly difficult to even maintain the services we currently provide, let alone think creatively about providing more efficient ways of preserving and accessing the public memory. In effect, we are being nibbled to death by ducks, instead of being provided with the life support necessary to help educate and inform a public that sorely needs to reflect with good humor and creative spirit on what we can do collectively to solve the problems of today and tomorrow.

Rather than take a further $70,000 from our general fund appropriation, I would request that attention be given to restoring our general fund appropriation for salaries to a level that actually sustains our management staff (approximately $5 million dollars) , removes the burden of rental of substandard space by pushing forward the capital investment in adequate storage, conservation, and educational facilities on site (a capital investment of about $70 million dollars from triple A bonds), and permits us to continue to use the income we generate from fee based services to further support through scanning and placing records on line, employment of a community of challenged individuals that was the hallmark of our land records project. By offering scanning and web-based services to State Agencies, we help economize in the expenditure of public dollars on the creation, storage, and accessibility of public records, employ people who otherwise must struggle for their very existence, and make more readily available the public memory so necessary to the recovery of our economy and the re-inventing of America. By not allocating investment in these goals, we suppress our ability to learn the truth and be inspired by the past, doomed to repeat our mistakes and consigned to a bleak future.

I admit it is one thing to ardently assert the value of an Archives to the future course of our state and nation, and another to prove it.  Are we indeed able to reach the public in meaningful ways that can be measured?

When given the ability to hire and reward with benefits a core entrepreneurial staff, the answer is yes.  Take the Maryland Archives designed service perpetually maintaining and providing access on line to land records.  Even in the midst of the worst snowstorm in our history up to nearly 6,000 patrons a day logged into http://mdlandrec.net, although I will admit that on Wednesday when most of us could not  make it to work and the State closed down, only 3,073 were on line that day.  The rest were probably shoveling snow.

 

 

With adequate management/entrepreneurial staff supported by the General Fund, there is much that we could do to economize state resources while providing additional employment for a large segment of our population that currently finds it very difficult to obtain work.

What this State and this Country needs is a revival of the best elements of the Works Progress Administration focused on its archival heritage.   Through law and executive mandate, all state agencies should be required to adhere to records retention and disposal schedules developed by the Archives working with the agencies.  Those schedules should require each agency to budget a charge similar to that collected by the Department of Budget and Management for communication that would be paid directly to the Archives for the perpetual care of and access to permanent records from the moment of their inception.  In addition, all state agencies would be required to relinquish all scanning of paper and microfilm records to the management of the State Archives, along with any funds appropriated for that purpose. Such centralization of paper and microfilm scanning would reduce by at least 20% the cost of all state agency scanning projects (the amount actually saved during the creation of http://mdlandrec.net) and provide a source of fee derived income for the sustainability of the whole Archives program.
 
With up to date records retention and disposal schedules, with the Archives as the mandated disaster recovery and security back up for all permanent records of the state, and with the costs of maintaining those records for public access in a pay as you go system, considerably less expensive office space would be required for State Agencies, and the overall costs of managing and delivering records for public and governmental purposes could be drastically reduced.

In these dark days of economic turmoil and recession it is time to think differently about how to move ourselves forward.  "Judging from the promise of the morning, there is nothing that may not be asked of America's noon," as long as we do not neglect the very sources of information that help us to think and act wisely.  The Archives stands ready to help with recovery and growth, but it cannot without a secure baseline of appropriated funds allocated to a core staff leading the way, adequate archival storage space, and enforcement of new scanning and records management guidelines that generate special fund revenue sufficient to sustain the Archives.

At day's end, setting aside the statistics and the rhetoric of advocacy, preserving our record heritage and conserving with loving care our treasures, are much like the vision of our founding fathers and mothers for this nation.  They are acts of faith in the future for those who come after us.    Be assured, we will do the very best we can with what we are given in the belief that better times will come .  All I can ask of you today is that you turn aside the recommendations to cut further into our General Fund budget, and approve the Governor's allowance as it now stands.

Notes:

1Everybody's Magazine, 1916, p. 730 ff. Available from Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=nazNAAAAMAAJ&dq=everybody's%20magazine%20george%20creel%20douglas%20fairbanks&pg=PP11#v=onepage&q=everybody's%20magazine%20george%20creel%20douglas%20fairbanks&f=false

2 Ibid.

3http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28gw340313%29%29

4http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28gw270422%29%29