RLP 284: University Archives with Sam Howes

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 284 University Archives with Howes Haus Welcome to Research Like a Pro a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder Accredited Genealogist Professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at family Locket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a pro A Genealogist guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA, join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research, and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (43s):
Today’s episode is brought to you by find a grape.com. The best place to search online for burial information for your family, friends, and famous people. Hi everyone, welcome to Research Like, a Pro

Diana (54s):
Hi. Nicole, how are you today?

Nicole (57s):
Well, I’m good and I’ve enjoyed a nice time with my family over Thanksgiving and now I’m ready to get back to work. How about you?

Diana (1m 8s):
Yeah, I’m doing the same thing. Getting back to work. I did have fun over the Thanksgiving break writing a blog post about our trip to New York where we visited several sites on the Erie Canal in Niagara Falls and did some research connecting that to an Ancestor who had mentioned much later in life that they had visited Niagara Falls on their way between New York City where they landed from England and their way out to Utah territory in 1868. so it was really fun to look and see what the railroad network was, find some timetables in the newspaper of the time, listing schedules for the train going up to Niagara Falls.

Diana (1m 49s):
It was just neat to connect to my Ancestor that way through travel.

Nicole (1m 53s):
Travel. Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that, that they stopped there. That’s that’s cool.

Diana (1m 58s):
It is so cool. I just don’t know how I thought they got all the way from, you know, their landing point New York City to Utah, but I didn’t think that would be the way, so that was fun. We always wonder about migration paths and luckily I had that little snippet that gave me a clue.

Nicole (2m 17s):
Great. Well today our announcements, we have our last Webinar series for 2023 and it’s from Candy Richer, one of our Research Like, a Pro study group members in peer group leaders. She’ll be talking about proving the mother of Cornelia Robertson Hickerson, A DNA case study, which focuses on Texas, Tennessee and goes over a lot of different types of records like census and marriage records, newspapers, and also deals with burned counties. And she’ll be talking a little bit about making a GFI network graph and using matches from several of the large DNA companies. Well, for next year’s Webinar series, there will be 10 presenters in addition to Diana and I sharing case studies following the Research Like a Pro process.

Nicole (3m 5s):
And many of the presentations include DNA evidence. We just launched this. So if you haven’t signed up for the Webinar series for 2024, you can do so on our website and it’s $60 and some of the presenters include graduates of the Research Like, a Pro Study groups, and some of our professional researchers here at Family Locket. So some of the names include Steve Little, Alice Childs, Mark Thompson, Melanie Witt, Jessica Taylor Morgan, and more. So we hope that you’ll join us And. that will be a fun Webinar series with monthly webinars. And the syllabus is a research report.

Nicole (3m 45s):
Also, the next Research Like a Pro with DNA study group begins February, 2024 and you can register for that beginning December 1st to become a peer group leader for that. You can email us and let us know that you’re interested. There’s also an application on our website and every Monday we send out a newsletter with our latest posts, videos and podcast episodes. So be sure to join our newsletter to get access to that every Monday.

Diana (4m 11s):
All right, well today we have a guest. We have Sam Howes here with us, so welcome Sam. how are you doing today?

Sam (4m 19s):
I’m good, thanks for having me.

Diana (4m 21s):
Well, we are excited to have Sam back. He was a guest in Research Like a Pro episode 142, which we were recorded in 2021. So it’s been a minute since we talked to you about two and a half years. And when we talked to you then you were at the Main State archives as an archivist there and now you have a different job. And so we are excited to learn about that. You are still in Maine though, correct. And you’re working at Bates College as an archivist, so I am so curious to hear all about what you do and how it can help us in our genealogy to learn more about college archives.

Diana (5m 4s):
So can you tell us just a little bit about how you got there?

Sam (5m 8s):
Yeah, so I worked in a University Archives during my undergraduate studies, so I kind of liked the environment And. that was always my intention to sort of find myself somewhere like this. So an opportunity came up in 2022 and I jumped on it and was able to take it and stay in Maine at the same time, which is what I really wanted to do. so it worked out pretty well.

Diana (5m 32s):
That is wonderful. Do so you didn’t have to move at all?

Sam (5m 36s):
Nope.

Diana (5m 37s):
Oh great. Yep.

Sam (5m 38s):
Great.

Diana (5m 39s):
That works out well and getting into a place that you want to get to. Fabulous. Yeah.

Nicole (5m 46s):
Well that’s really neat. And so tell us more about what a college archivist does.

Sam (5m 51s):
Yeah, so I’m basically responsible for the official records of the college. So typically, you know, the, the most basic records are gonna be your more administrative records. So that will be things like the trustee meeting records, records from the president’s office, but it’s also gonna be, you know, the different departments and vice presidents of those departments and the records that they keep people like alumni and then things like student government and different committees that exist on campus. They’ll keep minutes. It’s mostly minutes to be completely honest, but, so it can be boring, but there can be some fun stuff in there too. Things like, you know, programs for different events and things like that.

Sam (6m 33s):
So there’s, there’s some fun stuff in there, but it can be boring at times. It’s, that’s the administrative stuff anyway.

Nicole (6m 40s):
Right, okay. So of course as a college archivist you’re going to keep track of everything that the college keeps and organize that minutes things for the students. And you mentioned all the vice presidents. What are some of the different vice presidents that you have there at the college?

Sam (7m 0s):
So you’d have people who are in charge of like student affairs, admissions, so then with admissions you end up finding, you know, the admissions material that was sent out to prospective students in some cases, some communication with them, but that’s usually confidential. So we might have some of that stuff if a student themselves kind of donated it back. We do get some of that. But then, like I said, just brochures, campus maps, you see how things have changed over time. It started in 1855 originally as the main state seminary. So you know, some of those maps, it’s fun to go back to 1855 and see that there was just two buildings.

Nicole (7m 42s):
Wow. So the main state seminary, two questions. Did it have like a religious feeling if that’s a seminary and then is it a state-sponsored college?

Sam (7m 53s):
Yeah, so it is a, a private institution now. It basically was at the time, but it did have some funding from the state and it was started by free will Baptists. so it, we do have a strong tie historically with the free will Baptist religion and in 1864 it was changed over to become Bates College, but there’s still the main state seminary still existed within the college and then it became the Cobb Divinity School until think around 8 18 99. so it, there was always that religious element as well along with it.

Nicole (8m 32s):
Oh, well thanks. That’s interesting to kind of hear the history and it’s so crazy that names change so much over the time that a university or school exists. Yeah.

Diana (8m 43s):
Okay. So I’m really curious about these minutes of meetings and wondering how far back do those go? Do you have historical minutes of meetings in this administrative work?

Sam (8m 56s):
Yeah, so it kind of depends. Not everything was kept for, you know, whatever reason. Maybe things were just lost over time. We certainly have the trustees minutes right back to the beginning and we do actually have some confidential material as part of these minutes. So we tend to have a standard period of, for 20 years after something is created, it’s considered confidential unless we’re explicitly told it doesn’t need to be. That’s just sort of a colleague policy that we’ve established. The trustees records on the other hand have a 75 year hold on them before they can be seen publicly. So there is some of that to consider with some of these administrative records as well.

Diana (9m 40s):
Interesting. So if someone had an Ancestor who they now worked in the college administration, then there could possibly be some records for them to look at. I’m just thinking about my dad who attended Fresno State University and was in charge of their religion day and thinking, oh my goodness, I wonder if there are any records of that big event and his role in that would be so fun to track that down. Is this typical that these types of records are kept in all the different colleges?

Sam (10m 14s):
Yeah, I would say so. And again, it’s hit or miss, kind of like how there’s, you know, burned counties for some of those government records. Sometimes things just either weren’t kept or maybe they did actually have some kind of a disaster of some sort. But yeah, typically this kind of stuff would be there. And then the type of event may, like in the case you just described, it can also be hit or miss what, what level of detail there may be for an event like that.

Diana (10m 43s):
Fun to think about, well what about student records? What can we find out about students? I know I contacted a university in England for some student records say I think it was 1920s and they didn’t have anything. So, you know, I’m always curious about how long do people keep those kind of records and I guess it’s just like what you described. Yeah, it’s hit or miss.

Sam (11m 7s):
So in theory the records would be kept sort of permanently now, especially like a transcript for a student. We don’t necessarily have them all the way back. They’re kind of again, hit or miss back in the 18 hundreds. But we do have some stuff there. We also have some other records which can kind of fill in some of those gaps. We have some class records that are kept, and this is sort of more things that are produced afterwards. so it may be like a newsletter that’s sent out to all the members of a certain graduating class and then whatever stuff they might have someone from that class may have sent in. We also have what we call the Bates people files. And this is just stuff that if it’s come in from another person, but it’s not necessarily part of the official record, we kind of build this collection out with that information.

Sam (11m 57s):
So we use that a lot for sort of the more personal information about people. It’s just, again, it’s sort of self submitted or someone may find something and even maybe unrelated to them and they send it to us, you know, we’re getting donations quite regularly. But yeah, the official record of individual students is not necessarily super complete, but we do definitely maintain lists at least. So we know who graduated every year and we have college catalogs which list everyone who was a student in a given year.

Diana (12m 31s):
Okay. So a way for to track down people, at least in that instance that they actually attended and were a student. So that’s good to know. I don’t know why I really didn’t think about college records, so I’m so glad that you are teaching us all about this. It’s something that could really help us go more in depth on an Ancestor to learn more about them.

Nicole (12m 53s):
Well, I was just thinking about all those yearbooks that we had Mom, when we went through your mom’s stuff and there were a whole bunch of yearbooks and they were for her sister and we were like, should we keep these? Should we donate them? And now I’m curious, like for your institution Sam do, do they have all the yearbooks for every year?

Sam (13m 11s):
Yeah, so we do have yearbooks for basically every year. I will say the yearbooks didn’t actually start until I think 1899. What we have before then are sort of various photo albums that, you know, the old photo albums where you could put like the cabinet cards into them. It seems to be that many of the students maybe would’ve been given one because a lot of them have very similar, like for for one year they’ll all sort of have similar Bates class of whatever engraved into the cover. So we think that it may be something along the lines of they would get the album and then people would kind of pass out the individual photos to put in them.

Sam (13m 52s):
We don’t quite know exactly how that worked, but I know that like even though they’re the same style, you know the pictures are gonna be in any order within it. so it seems like it was very much self put together. I would also say we don’t have them complete, we seem to have kind of a big gap in the 1890s or maybe we have some in the 1890s, but they’re not identified so we just hadn’t have the picture. So there’s some of that. But definitely I think 1866 is the first year we seem to have one of those albums.

Nicole (14m 27s):
Neat. That’s really cool that you would have those. Yeah. Well you mentioned a little bit of privacy concerns and waiting tens for most minutes and things, but how does the family education rights and Privacy Act impact records access?

Sam (14m 44s):
Yeah, so we, like I said, the confidential stuff about the more general policy that’s college imposed. But FERPA is federal legislation that dictates how a student’s educational records can be released or not. And FERPA applies to any educational institution that receives any type of federal funding, which is most places receive some. So that is essentially universal across the country. And, that basically means any student educational information is not accessible to the public.

Sam (15m 25s):
It does technically expire upon the death of the student, but until then it’s legally protected. So the other thing with that is colleges can sort of decide to extend that beyond death if they want. You know, they can keep them confidential kind of at their own choice afterwards, at least in a more private institution. I don’t know about a completely public institution, they may follow that and just say there’s no reason to restrict these. But I know for us, we typically would refer any request for a college transcript or anything through our registrar and they will decide if they want to release it or not.

Nicole (16m 9s):
Gotta love those records custodians, they’re like, Hmm, do I wanna let this one out or not? Yeah. Well that’s good to know and be aware of that federal legislation that would impact the record access so before they die you wouldn’t be able to get it.

Sam (16m 26s):
Right. And I will add that one of the pieces of information that is specifically allowable under FERPA is what they, you know, deem directory information. So any of like the lists of students, you know, their address, where they were from, I think even their birthday, which actually surprises me is technically public unless I think the student is allowed to request that that information not be public. But otherwise it would sort of automatically be considered public, which is why we have, you know, student directories and yearbooks are fine, things like that.

Nicole (17m 1s):
Got it. So if we had an Ancestor who attended university or you know, Bates in let’s say 1930 and they passed away in 1970 and we wanted to access that transcript, we could reach out to the college and since they’re passed away, we could probably see it at this point.

Sam (17m 18s):
Right. And my understanding is the registrar, you know, if it’s someone from their family requesting it, they’ll usually let you see it. So they reserve the right to withhold it, but they typically are pretty forthcoming.

Nicole (17m 31s):
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Diana (17m 34s):
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Diana (18m 17s):
It’s a rewarding way to spend time outdoors while helping others find the burial locations of their loved ones. All right, Sam, while we’ve talked about how to find records of people who are involved in the college such as students or administrators, but I know that I have wanted to look for manuscript collections and all sorts of different things. So can you give us an idea of the other kind of records that you have there at Bates College or that you think other colleges would also have?

Sam (18m 50s):
Sure. Yeah. So we do have a pretty large manuscript collection. I’ll actually say that our collection as the archive started with the Edmund Muskie papers. And for anyone who doesn’t know, he was main governor in the 1950s, later a senator and was Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter. He was actually a Bates alumni and at some point in the eighties he decided to transfer his archives to us. So that was essentially the, the founding of the Bates Archives up until that point. And even up until like 2000, the college records were actually just part of the library collection.

Sam (19m 30s):
And then it was around 2000 when all of that became one thing and we became the archives for the college and the Muskie. So the Muskie collection actually takes up a probably near half of our total total holdings. So it’s quite extensive. So in that case, we have, like I said, a lot of his papers, but we also have things like people who were writing to him and things that he may have been helping them as like when he was a senator. So we actually were just able to kind of get some information to a family who were, who had contacted him I think back in the seventies for some help with an issue and we were able to find that information and get that to them.

Sam (20m 13s):
So that’s sort of the official government records. But then we also have several manuscript collections that are just kind of assorted. It’s usually related to probably like an alumni, but not always. In some cases things get tied in to other collections that are already here. So one of the things that we also have a large collection of, because of our history with the free Will Baptist Church is we have a lot of free will Baptist records. So that includes publications, things like missionary reports to like India and stuff from the late 19th century. So there’s some kind of cool random information there.

Sam (20m 54s):
We also have the Morning Star, which was the Free Will Baptist newspaper And that ran from the 1820s to the 1910s I believe. And it was published at around the country in different places throughout that time. But that’s a really good resource for looking at what the Free Will Baptist Church was doing, who was kind of going where you can kind of track some people through that. Especially helpful when you have lovely obituaries and and marriage notices. And there are actually some, from my experience, there are some people in there who had pretty detailed obituaries that I’m not used to seeing from like the 1840s.

Sam (21m 36s):
So that’s been actually a pretty cool resource and we have one of the most complete runs of that paper here and we’ve been working on digitizing that and putting them online as well.

Diana (21m 48s):
Oh, that sounds like a fabulous resource. Yeah. Well I’m looking at the website for the special collections there and I am always fascinated to see what is in the manuscript collections. And here’s one that I just thought I would do a call out for, and this is part of the Free Will Baptist Collection. It’s the Jonathan Woodman diary and apparently this Reverend Jonathan Woodman traveled throughout England in 1848 as a delegate to the General Baptist Conference in England. And so this is his diary where he visited several General Baptist churches in London, attended missionary meetings, tempus meetings, and meetings with members of the British Anti-Slavery Society.

Diana (22m 33s):
So that sounds absolutely fascinating. It’s just so fun to see these different sources that, who knows if that was your Ancestor, wouldn’t that be so great that you’d know where that was? Yeah, maybe somebody listening is related to Jonathan Woodman, so there you go.

Sam (22m 50s):
For the most part, we don’t have many actual church records, but there are a few small ones. I think there’s one from the town of Litchfield and from around 1800 and you know, there’s lists in there, people who were kicked out of the church for one offense or another and good stuff there too.

Nicole (23m 7s):
Yes. I did have a question about kinda how these things were acquired. It sounds like anything related to the free will Baptist Church was kind of probably donated because of the school’s origins, but some of these other things you mentioned the Muskie collection that was donated because he attended there. Why do you think people are donating to a university library instead of say like any other public library or state library?

Sam (23m 34s):
I think some of it is just depending on the resources available. You know, we’re pretty stable in terms of being able to take care of our materials. I think that always helps. But it’s also just a lot of times I think it’s being tied into things that we already have in one way or another. So because Edmund Muskie was very involved in the Clean Water Act, which was enacted in 1972, we’ve actually got some sort of environmental related collections here. And I think again, it’s kind of falls into that category. So we actually use that stuff quite regularly with, you know, teaching classes. So yeah, I think a lot of it is that it just kind of ties in with the existing collection and so they, whoever is looking to donate might be aware of that and they will combine us.

Nicole (24m 22s):
Cool. So that just kind of indicates the broad type of records that might be available. Right. So what kind of subjects might we find in the manuscript collections at Bates or at other universities?

Sam (24m 35s):
I’ll talk a little bit about my experiences here and then also my own research and from working at other places. But yeah, definitely it’s always worth checking in any college, even if you don’t think anyone in your family went for one. I found loads of people since I started working here that I’m related to who attended that, I had no idea. Oh. So that’s been fun. Apart from that, you never know what kinds of other collections there might be there. So ours are very much rooted in alumni and faculty members who worked here, but then also the free Will Baptists and sort of that environmental stuff. So ours is a little bit more limited. We do also have some local government records on loan.

Sam (25m 17s):
It’s technically the City of Lewiston’s records, but we store them here so that the teachers that can actually use them. And they’re actually the school records for the City of Lewiston and they’re actually really interesting as a census record because they actually took a census, I think every year for about 20 years, like 1913 into the thirties. And it’s basically includes everyone or every household, the children of school age. So between five and 21 I think. And so we actually have this sort of secondary census, which is a really cool record that I certainly need to look more into myself.

Nicole (26m 2s):
Wow. Yeah.

Sam (26m 3s):
Yeah, it’s kind of a shame it doesn’t cover that dreaded 1890 timeframe, but that’s all right.

Nicole (26m 10s):
Why couldn’t they just take a bunch of extra censuses that year? I know.

Sam (26m 14s):
Come on. But yeah, so my other experiences would definitely be, you know, my undergraduate degree was at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. They, they are basically the depository for all of the Baptist churches in the Atlantic provinces. So if you’re looking for Baptist records in Atlantic Canada, like they’re definitely the place to get in touch with. Here in Lewiston we have the University of Southern Maine has a sort of a local branch, I guess you could say here. And they have a pretty good collection of Franco American records because Lewiston is very, very French Canadian heritage here. And then the other one I’d recommend, again, this is in Maine, so that’s my, that’s my experience.

Sam (27m 1s):
So this would be at the Fogler library at the University of Maine. I look in their catalog all the time because they have so many manuscript collections that are not necessarily topically related to each other, but loads of just random family papers and other things like that. So it’s really worth, I think it’s really worth just looking at any random college or University Archives to see what could be there.

Nicole (27m 27s):
That reminds me of Archive Grid. Do you know if some of these collections are included in that?

Sam (27m 32s):
I don’t know how many main collections at least are in there. I know ours actually is, they’ve pulled our data from our fighting aid and I believe, I think it’s just the main historical society is as well. But yeah, I haven’t used that that much because I feel like a lot of the places I’m looking for haven’t kind of incorporated their data in there yet, but I, I am trying to remember to check it more often.

Nicole (27m 60s):
Well that’s really good to know that Archive Grid covers some, but not all. So we can check additional collections and things based on kind of geography probably.

Sam (28m 12s):
Yeah. Nice.

Diana (28m 14s):
Yeah, I was just checking Archive Grid and I put in just for fun to do a search. Two things. First I tried Jonathan Woodman and it did pull up his diary. So if you didn’t know where that was and you just had his name, you put that in, you would know right away. It’s at Bates College. But the other search I did was for free Will Baptist And that brought up a lot of collections there at Bates College. Yeah. But it also has different collections. One at the Smithsonian, one at the Detroit Public Library Main Historical Society. So I think a subject search is also really fabulous to see just where some of these broad collections of maybe whatever church religion I, I’m trying to think of other kind of broad subjects, but I think it’s really worth exploring archive grid and seeing if there’s something for your family.

Diana (29m 8s):
I know I’ve tried putting in surnames before and if you have a really common surname you’ll get thousands of hits, which is not helpful. But you know, it’s just another place to learn how to research. But I love, I have loved this discussion and learning more about college archives. We have got the diary of my William, Henry Kelsie Sr down at BYU and I was able to go in and so here’s another question for you. When I wanted to go view that in person, you know, this is a hundred and now it’s 170 year old diary, I had to go through quite a bit of a process to be allowed into the room and I had to fill out a form talking about why I wanted this to look at this, what was my purpose for using it.

Diana (29m 53s):
And then I had to have a little interview with the person in charge there and then they let me in. So do you have a system like that as well for people that want to view some of this ephemera that’s special in your archives?

Sam (30m 7s):
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think we’re that strict here. We do have a form a researcher form, but we, we don’t typically go through doing an interview or anything like that, you know, we’ll definitely do sort of the basic, if you’ve never been to an archive before, especially you know, the basic sort of information about how to handle, you know, delicate objects. And certainly if something’s in really fragile condition, we may do certain things like we might actually handle it for you and just you tell us what you need to see. We’ve done that with a class recently actually for the, for this collection that’s made out of like palm leaves and all bound together that’s so fragile that we said you can come look at it, but we’re gonna do all the handling of it.

Sam (30m 51s):
Interesting. so it may, sometimes it’s condition based, how much,

Diana (30m 54s):
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Well, and I would imagine that you would give the advice that if someone is going to visit in person, to contact you first to see what you have to do, if you have to jump through any hoops to get in and see the time and all of that good stuff is, do you agree, is there something else people should do if they’re going to visit in person?

Sam (31m 15s):
Yeah, I think getting in touch first is always the best solution. I know most places that I’ve worked or places that I know who I’ve done research, a lot of times they have multiple storage locations that may not be just like, you know, walk into the next building. So it’s very good to, if you know, you wanna look at something contact in advance to make sure it’s ready for you, I think that’s always the best way, the best way to do it. So that way you make sure it’s there and someone doesn’t have to go attempt to get to another building and find it or, you know.

Diana (31m 46s):
Right, right. And also just so that you know, you maybe establish a connection with the archivist from the beginning and you’re not just showing up expecting them to drop everything they’re doing and help you. You’ve given them a heads up, you’re coming and you want some help.

Sam (32m 1s):
Yeah. And if we’re not sort of caught off guard with someone coming in, like if you email us in advance, we may, if you give us some information, we may be able to be like, oh, well there’s also this collection that maybe you didn’t come up with when you were searching in our catalog. And we might say, oh, we also have this that’s related. So it’s very, I think, very helpful to establish that connection with the archivist in advance.

Diana (32m 22s):
That makes sense. Perfect sense. Well Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us from your experience as a college archivist. It’s been such a fun discussion and we always love thinking about these other places where we can get information about our Ancestors. It’s so fun. Yeah. Well we hope everyone listening has enjoyed this and we wish you the best of luck and all you’re doing there, Sam, and we’ll talk to everybody next time. Bye-Bye

Nicole (32m 50s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DA on amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at family Locket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at family Locket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.