Archives Month in Full Swing

MHS librarians Anne McDonnell and Virginia
 Walton work to save Helena banking records, 1955

Who do we think we are, anyway? Well, we are archivists seeking to celebrate the work we do! October is Archives Month across the country, and this year the staff of the MHS Archives wanted to spotlight the long tradition of “history keepers” in Montana going all the way back to 1865 and the founding of the Montana Historical Society. A couple weeks ago on Oct. 7 we kicked off our celebration with a light-hearted program revealing the men and women of Montana who were critical to collecting and caring for the superb historical collections we now hold at the MHS archives and photo archives. Rich Aarstad, archivist and oral historian, began with a tale of the original “Beard of Directors,” reviewing the efforts of the Montana pioneers (and mostly bearded men) who founded and led the Historical Society through its first decades of existence. State Archivist Jodie Foley, then illuminated the audience on the “maternal branch” of the Society’s history as she celebrated the long line of female library professionals who began applying professional standards to the care of archival collections. The MHS archives came into its own during the “Age of Acquisition” in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as explained by Archivist Jeff Malcomson. The Montana Legislature in 1969 declared MHS the official state archives, while at the same time MHS administration hired professional historians, like Brian Cockhill and Lory Morrow, for the first time to work solely with the archives collections. Archives acquisitions quickly increased through the 1970s and 80s, right on through to the significant collections of today. Caitlan Maxwell, electronic records project archivist, concluded the presentation by describing the coming of the computer and its impact on the MHS Archives. She demonstrated the multiple ways computers are used to make the Archives collections accessible to the public and users around the world.  The MHS Archives and photo archives have come a long way, and we look forward to carrying on our mission into the future.

Montana Post now in Chronicling America

The Montana Historical Society is pleased to announce that the complete run of the Montana Post (1864-1869) is now available on Chronicling America (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/). Ever wonder what the weather was like in Virginia City in 1865 or what those vigilantes were up to? Dig in!

The Montana Post and other Montana newspapers published prior to 1923 are being digitized as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) which is a partnership between the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities and state partners. More information about the Montana Historical Societies participation in the NDNP project and titles selected for digitization is available at: http://montanahistorywiki.pbworks.com/Montana-Digital-Newspaper-Project

The Daily Yellowstone Journal and Anaconda Standard should be included in the next Chronicling America update (December).

Caution! Researchers at Work

Summer is a busy time at the Montana Historical Society. The tables in the Research Center are overflowing and the microfilm readers are humming. Each year hundreds of researchers make the trek to Helena to do research. Some of these folks are working on family history, some are discovering the history of their homes, and some are writing dissertations and books. The Research Center promotes research and discovery of Montana history by offering two different research fellowships each year (for more information on these fellowships, please see our website at http://mhs.mt.gov/research/library/bradley.asp).

Bradley Fellow Tashun Wisemiller researching
the history of tourism in Montana
(Photo by Tom Ferris)

This summer there are two James H. Bradley Fellows spending time conducting research in our collections. Tashun A. Wisemiller (pictured here), is a Ph.D. candidate from Arizona State University, originally from White Sulphur Springs. He is researching tourism in the region between Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, from 1900 to 1950. Tash has spent a little more than a week exploring the ephemera and vertical files for information on tourism and promotion. (For a look at a Montana Dept. of Transportation pamphlet Tash examined in his research see "Headin' for the Hills," PAM 3247) Dr. Andrea Radke Moss, a history professor from BYU-Idaho, is our second Bradley Fellow and is digging into materials on Montana's involvement in the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Andrea has spent hours pouring over the records of the Montana Board of World's Fair Managers. She is looking specifically at the women who were involved in planning and implementing the Montana exhibit.

Our patrons, no matter what their topic or how deep they are digging, help to reveal Montana's history. Although we preserve and provide access to the original books, documents and photographs, the reason we are here is to help researchers like our Bradley Fellows discover and explore Montana history.
[written by Molly Kruckenburg]

A Polish aristocrat in Montana

One of the most fun things about being an archivist is the unexpected things you discover. I was cataloging a trivial little item (SC 473) consisting of an 1894 application for a position as City Engineer of Helena by a man named Michael A. Meyendorff. (ho-hum)

Well, I decided I needed a little information about Mr. Meyendorff. Wow! Turns out he was the son of a Polish nobleman, Baron Meyendorff. In the early 1860s the Baron and his sons, including 13 year old Michael, took part in a failed uprising against the Russian occupiers of Poland. They were all arrested and sent to Siberia. When they were released several years later, Michael came to the United States and studied engineering at the University of Michigan. In 1876 he came to Helena and briefly ran a cigar store before being hired by the U. S. Assay Office. In 1894 he was indeed hired as City Engineer (as our little item had indicated). He later went to Denver where he was a fraud investigator for the U.S. General Land Office. He got involved in all sorts of controversy because of his pursuit of fraud among coal operators.

All this because of a silly little item in the archives. Who would have guessed that such an fascinating man lived quietly in Helena in the 1890s?

[Image from Univ. of Montana digital edition of Leeson's History of Montana, p. 745]

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.