Archival Internship at Historic Sandusky

My name is Michaela White, and I am an English and History student at the University of Lynchburg. During the fall semester of 2024, I undertook an internship at Historic Sandusky, which is owned by the University of Lynchburg. As part of this internship, my director, Greg Starbuck, advised me to create a collection of letters from the records of Charles M. Blackford (1833-1903), a lawyer and Captain in the Confederate Army. The collection comprises 378 letters sent to or received by Charles M. Blackford from the years of 1860-1861, and then over the course of 1865-1866. The collection had previously been donated to Sandusky and had not been altered since donation. I worked on this collection from August 26, 2024, until December 11, 2024.

The collection was originally donated as a single book, which I took apart in order to preserve the letters that the book contained. The letters had been pasted into the book with an adhesive substance. However, only the side of the letters were pasted, to allow a person to read both sides with minimal covering of the contents of the letter. Therefore, I took apart the binding of the book and cut away the paper of the book, keeping the letters themselves fully intact. Taking apart the book was necessary for the preservation of the letters for numerous reasons: the friction of turning the letters was causing the letters to wear away, the weight of the other pages was damaging the letters, and the edges of the letters were becoming tattered from sticking out of the book. When the book came to me, there was no leather cover or back, and had only leather binding the spine.

However, this leather was largely torn during the unbinding process. The letters were then carefully placed inside of plastic sheet protectors and put inside four separate binders. The letters were then ordered according to the order they were placed inside the original book.

Following the preservation of the physical letters, I began working on scanning the letters in order to have a digital record. All of the letters were scanned front and back, and labelled accordingly with the number of the letter (as established above) and a letter signifier indicating the page of each individual letter (ex: Letter 1a, Letter 1b, etc.). I have personally scanned from letters 1-299 with an Epson 12000XL scanner with 600 dpi resolution in 24 bit color.

Finally, I created a catalog in order to organize the letters and their contents. The catalog contained the following information: the letter’s number, the date written on the letter, the name of the letter’s sender, a description of the sender if known, the form of address used for the recipient of the letter, the form of address used for the sender, the company associated with the letter if applicable, the location the letter was sent from, the recipient of the letter, if there was a transcription available of the letter, and other notes. Additionally, from letters 206-283 I added keywords associated with the letters, but after consulting with the Jones Memorial Library, I discontinued this practice.

Minimal research has been done regarding the peoples and companies mentioned in the letters. For the first 81 letters, I have highlighted in beige any senders or locations that I could not identify or was not sure of. Additionally, for any word that I could not be certain of, I have indicated this uncertainty with a question mark next to the word of concern. Any letters of particular note either for the Blackford family specifically or in the context of the Lynchburg area, I have highlighted in red for priority transcription. Finally, any cell left blank indicates that the letter did not contain the necessary information or I could not find the necessary information.

To read more about Michaela's work at Historic Sandusky visit https://www.lynchburg.edu/history-and-english-double-major-researching-19th-century-letters-for-sandusky-internship/