The Way Things Work

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those thousand words come much easier if you understand the subject. Describing and providing access to a collection of textual documents is difficult enough. The person processing a manuscript collection has to devise descriptions and subject terms that will enable others to find what they’re looking for. A photograph archivist in some ways has a more difficult task when it comes to crafting useful descriptions. What do you do if you have no idea what’s going on in a photograph, even though it looks very interesting? After all, very few people will be interested in a photograph of an “unidentified man doing something." When processing a new collection, an archivist often has to learn something about what things are and the way things work, and each subject carries with it a specialized vocabulary.

Lately, I have been processing the Mines and Mining photograph collection. My “the way things work” book for this project has been Drills and mills: precious metal mining and milling methods of the frontier West (Will Meyerriecks, 2003). I have learned a smattering of mining terminology, and while I am certainly not an expert, I hope that by learning about windlasses and hoists, sluices and long toms, and drifters and stopers, I will be able to provide better access to the collection.

Who knew comic books were State Documents?

Over the past year I have been working on cataloging all of the items we hold in our State Documents Collection. State Documents encompass a lot of different things, from agency annual reports, to college catalogs, to maps and videos. The collection covers the whole history of Montana, from territorial days to the present.


Interesting items from the collection include:

• Inspector of mines reports (include listings of mine accidents and the names of persons who died in mine accidents)
• State Veterinary Surgeon reports (tracing the history of animal care in Montana from territorial times)
• Various college catalogs (include lists of students and what they were studying)
• Legislative publications (from the first territorial session to the most recent session)
• Agricultural promotional items used to attract people to Montana
• Maps showing land use in Montana
• Water resources survey information for all counties
• State Health Department reports
• Department of Agriculture reports about the Great Depression years
• The Montana Reports (cases argued in the Supreme Court starting in 1891)

This is just a small sampling of all the wonderful documents that are just waiting to be explored.

Now about that comic book. Imagine my surprise when I pulled Sprocket Man out of an envelope. After investigating on-line I found that Sprocket Man was introduced on the Stanford campus in 1975 and was re-introduced in 2002. Our copy was produced in 1982 and was sponsored by the Office of Public Instruction and the Department of Justice to help teach folks about bicycle safety.

You never know what you are going to find when you start working with a collection!

Exploring a Montana History Connection Online

Reference requests often lead us in surprising directions, and sometimes the resources we find are all available online. Last week a gentleman sent us a scanned photograph of a man named Grover Cleveland Crosswhite lounging in front of a curious-looking little hut. The sign above the door read “South Butte Camp No. 6127 South Butte, Montana.” The gentleman who wrote us wanted to know where the photograph was taken – and he thought it might be a place where people with tuberculosis were sent.

The first place I checked in my search was the online newspaper archive. I searched for “Camp” and “6127” in Butte, Montana, newspapers between 1900 and 1939. A handful of articles came up – it turns out that South Butte camp No. 6127 was affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America, a fraternal benefit society. The articles mentioned lodge elections and dances, but nothing about tuberculosis.

I next visited the Modern Woodmen of American website and navigated to their “About Us – History” page. In addition to a timeline, I noticed a very interesting link – “Tuberculosis Sanatorium.” I clinked on the link and learned that between 1909 and 1947, the Modern Woodmen operated a tuberculosis sanatorium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The sanatorium served thousands of members free of charge (they only had to pay for transportation to the sanatorium) and it boasted a 70% recovery rate. This web page also includes pictures of the sanatorium, showing small huts just like the one Grover Cleveland Crosswhite sat in front of. So perhaps South Butte camp No. 6127 sponsored Mr. Crosswhite’s recovery hut. A quick search on Ancestry.com returns a Grover Crosswhite in the 1963 Colorado Springs, Colorado, city directory – let’s hope he made a full recovery.

And there we are – another interesting Montana history connection discovered through some online sleuthing.

View a slideshow with interior and exterior pictures of the tuberculosis huts as they appear today and possibly a Youtube video of a 1933 promotional film for the sanatorium:
http://krccnetwork.org/tbs/2010/01/24/tuburculosis-huts-then-and-now/

Prison Record Search Turns into an Interesting Story

While doing a research request for the prison records of Lloyd Peerboom, convicted for burglary in 1930, I was able to piece together the story of his burglaries and subsequent arrest by using the prison records and microfilmed newspapers that are available at the Research Center. 18 year-old Leroy Peerboom and two other young men were arrested for multiple counts of burglary on April 3, 1930. According to a front page news article in the Terry Tribune, the three youths stole clothing, candy and other goods from several businesses in Prairie and Dawson counties, including a pool hall, hardware store, and a grocery store.

The Tribune article notes that these boys had been under surveillance for some time by the officials of Glendive “they residing in a shack…and having no visible means of support.” The three young men were finally arrested after stealing a car and robbing Sawyer’s grocery store in Terry, Montana and sentenced to 5 years in the penitentiary in Deer Lodge. According to prison intake records, Peerboom tried to escape from the sheriff en route and was recaptured a day later. Peerboom was ultimately released on parole on January 2, 1933. The other two youths, Almen and Raymond, were also released on parole before the end of their 5 year term.

When doing a research request, the records will often lead you to find more than you bargained for. In this case, I started by doing a simple search for prison records. When I found out that Leroy Peerboom had attempted to escape the sheriff en route, Research Historian Zoe Ann Stoltz suggested that I check out the Terry Tribune to see if they covered the arrest of these boys. This lead me to a front page article that not only detailed their arrest, but delved into the burglaries they had committed as well.

Sources:

Guide to the Montana State Prison records 1869-1974

Prison Registers, State Microfilm 36

Terry Tribune, April 4, 1930.

Happy little accidents

About a month ago I was contacted by a gentleman from Colorado. He was very interested in a government publication we had from 1879 dealing with mineral surveyors. He mentioned that he is a surveyor and it really helps him to know how things were being surveyed when he has to go out and re-survey an area. He submitted a research request and I sent him copies of the document. A few days later he called to let me know about a cataloging error with the title (it wasn't for mineral surveyors) and to tell me that he had not known that the Special Instructions for U.S. Deputy Surveyors in the District of Montana for the Establishment of Corners, etc., existed.

He commented that this was a "Happy little accident".

Since then he has contacted me to let me know that these "special instructions" do appear in the 1879 Annual Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office (on pages 10-12), in a circular dated July 27, 1878. He also asked if he could send a copy of the document to the BLM office in Washington, D.C. because they were not aware of individual territories putting out these types of publications.

I'm always glad when things work out and am very glad that this "happy little accident" occurred to make us more aware of these types of documents and how they are still being used today. We are still looking for Special Instructions for U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors in the District of Montana for the Establishment of Corners, etc. If you happen to know where a copy exists, please let us know.