1913 Flood Survivors: A Before and After

My goal in this post is to show you some cool “before” and “after” photos (or at least before OR after photos) of some survivors of Dayton’s 1913 flood—no, not people, but buildings! I thought it might be of interest to highlight some of Dayton’s older downtown buildings that “survived” the flood and (perhaps even more impressively) still survive today (i.e., they haven’t been torn down in the interest of so-called “progress”- but that’s a whole other entry).

But before I dive into the photographs, I wanted to address the radio silence of the past nearly two months. I suppose perhaps I was a little bit “blogged out” after writing a zillion (or so it seemed at the time) posts about the 1913 flood on the blogs at work: if you haven’t already done so, check them out on Wright State U. Archives’ Out of the Box blog and the Dayton Daily News Archive blog.

And on top of being “blogged out,” I had rather run out of steam on the whole topic of the 1913 flood (and still kinda am, though I’ve set it aside for you today because I don’t want to put it off any longer). I’m a little sick of talking about it, to be perfectly honest! I know, I know! That sounds horrible. But for about a month it seemed like I was eating, sleeping, and breathing the topic—ok, not really, of course—and I did that because it was an extremely important event in Dayton’s (even Ohio’s) history, and the commemoration of that event deserved my full attention and to be “done up right.” And so I did. (If you don’t believe me, see my previous entry.) And I don’t regret that. But…I’d really love to not talk about it anymore for a while.

After this entry, of course.

And so…onward, as promised, here are some of Dayton’s historic downtown buildings that survived the flood and that can still be seen today. So the next time you’re downtown and you see one of these, I want you to gaze up at it, appreciate the fact that it’s been there 100+ years, and maybe muse about how long it took to shovel all the flood mud out of it…

[All of the before/flood photos are courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library's Local History Room. You can see all their 1913 flood photos online. The present-day photos are courtesy of yours truly, unless otherwise stated. For all photos, you can click on the photo to go to the associated Flickr page with more info.]

Doubletree Hotel (southwest corner Third & Ludlow- it was the Algonquin Hotel in 1913)
Third Street Post Office (now the Federal Building, south side of Third St., between Ludlow & Wilkinson)

Algonquin Hotel & Post Office, 1913 (Image courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, 1913 Flood postcard #37)

For a current photo of the Doubletree Hotel, check out this photo taken in 2010 by Flickr user Flyer E901; if he gives me permission, I’ll img src it here instead of just linking… Don’t ask me why I don’t have a pic of the Doubletree myself; obviously I was right next to it when I took this picture of the Federal building:

Federal Building, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

Conover Building (southeast corner Third and Main)
Memorial Hall (northwest corner First and St. Clair)

You can see them both in this flood photo below. The Conover Building is the really tall  building near the center of the photo (not the one with the clock tower- that’s the Callahan Bank Building); Memorial Hall is the rounded topped building in the upper right of the frame.

Main Street in Dayton, 1913 (Image courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, Montgomery County Picture File #806)

And here are two more recent photos of the Conover Building and Memorial Hall:

Conover Building, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

Memorial Hall, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

Emmanuel Catholic Church (Washington St.)
Sacred Heart Catholic Church (northwest corner Fourth & Wilkinson)
Holy Trinity Catholic Church (Fifth & Bainbridge)

I couldn’t find great flood photos of these, so you’ll have to trust me on this when I show you these pics of the steeples in the distance that that’s really what I’m showing you!

Okay, in the pic below you can see Emmanuel Catholic Church — the two very tall steeples on the right of the photo. And actually, I wasn’t even going to include Sacred Heart in this because I couldn’t find a pic, but I realized you can see it in this picture: it’s the low dome in between the tall towers of Emmanuel and the single campanile-looking tower of Union Station at the far right. (And somewhere, I know I’ve seen a great panorama of Dayton looking south from about Deeds Point, and you can see Sacred Heart plainly, but I can’t seem to find that. Maybe it wasn’t a flood pic…)

Looking north from the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, 1913 (Image courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, Montgomery County Picture File #911)

And, in another “take my word for it” silhouette-type photo, here is Holy Trinity Church- the tall steeple rising up on the far right of the frame:

Fifth and Eagle Streets, 1913 (Image courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, Montgomery County Picture File #996)

As for the “now” photos, I don’t seem to have any good ones myself of Emmanuel Church (but check out this one from Flickr user catholicsanctuaries) or Holy Trinity (but here’s a  great one from Flickr user SyntheticTone), but here’s one of mine showing Sacred Heart:

Sacred Heart Church, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

These next three, the flood photos don’t show much of the building, so again you might have to take my word for it that it is where it says or that the building is in there somewhere (because I know it must be). The photos depict primarily the clean-up or debris.

It’s like people 100 years ago weren’t concerned that someday I might come along and wish I had flood photos of these building so I could write about it; how inconsiderate of them, trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and not taking enough photos. (Although, really, there are QUITE a lot of photos, even during the actual flood, which when you think about it, is kind of amazing.)

Dayton Arcade (Third Street entrance, between Main & Ludlow)

The Arcade is the building on the right in the photo below. You can probably recognize some of the stonework from the facade.

Dayton Arcade, 1913 (Image courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, Flood Postcard #39)

Dayton Arcade, Third Street entrance, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

Dayton Daily News building (northwest corner Fourth & Ludlow)

See that bright white building in the background that looks kind of like a bank (there’s a great historical explanation for that, btw- another time, perhaps), just to the left of that bally lamp post? Yeah, that’s the DDN building.

Debris on South Ludlow St, 1913 (Image courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, Montgomery County Picture File #799)

Dayton Daily News building, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

Not sure how much longer the DDN building will look like this, though, since it was recently announced that Sinclair Community College is planning to incorporate the block into some kind of dormitory project; allegedly, the original (bank-looking) portion of the DDN offices will be “preserved,” though. So if you haven’t seen it before, you should go see it ASAP before it changes too much!

Delco building(s) (E. First St., east of St. Clair, now part of Mendelson’s)

Okay, full disclosure: I’m not sure the two photos I’m showing here depict the same exact building. There were several Delco buildings around the same area, and the one in this flood photo may not be the same as the Mendelson’s one I’m showing next. But you get the idea…

Flood repairs at Delco, 1913 (Image courtesy of Dayton Metro Library, Montgomery County Picture File #1074)

Mendelson’s building, from the rooftop parking lot at the Reibold Building, 2011 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

And finally, last but not least, here are three more buildings that I couldn’t find before/flood photos for, but trust me, they were around during the 1913 flood, and they are still around today:

Old Court House (northwest corner Third and Main, built in 1850)

Old Court House, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

Victoria Theatre (southeast corner First & Main, built in 1866 & rebuilt a few times afterwards)

Victoria Theatre, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

United Brethren Publishing House (northeast corner Fourth & Main, built in the late 19th century; now called the Centre City Building)

United Brethren Publishing House aka City Centre Building, 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

(You can also see the back of the UB Building in the background of my “now” photo of the Conover Building above.)

*****

Well, there you go, folks- a little photo tour of downtown Dayton with emphasis on buildings that survived the 1913 flood (as well as humanity’s need for tearing down old buildings to build newer, usually uglier, ones). There are certainly others I could have chosen, most of them smaller and a little less grand, but there nonetheless.

Actually, here’s one such building (quite old), now that I think of it (a bonus!):

120 N. St. Clair St., 2012 (Photo by Lisa Rickey)

But I was trying to think of grandiose buildings that it would be easy to locate “before” (or flood) pictures of. I still seem to have failed at finding as many of those before photos as I really wanted, but nevertheless. It’s something. And I hope you enjoyed it.

1913 Flood Centennial

What kind of Miami Valley archivist would I be if I didn’t acknowledge the centennial of the 1913 flood on my history/archives blog?

This week marks 100 years since flood waters ravaged the Miami Valley, bringing widespread devastation to cities like Dayton, Piqua, Troy, and Hamilton, as well as many other parts of Ohio (including my hometown of Portsmouth). This particular flood was so severe in the Dayton area (which was rather used to floods) that area residents finally said, “We’re not going to just sit back and take this from anymore, Great Miami River!” Within months, a fundraising campaign generated over $2 million towards the creation what is now the Miami Conservancy District, a system of dams and other mechanisms that control the rivers and have successfully prevented flooding since its completion. (Hooray!)

I’ve worked in Dayton-area archives long enough to know that the 1913 flood has been remembered on many days and in many ways ever since, as an important event in our area’s history. But we do love anniversaries—and the 100th is a very special one, after all, since it’s such a nice, round number!

There’s been a lot going on to commemorate the 1913 flood this year. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve already been involved in so much of it that I damn-near forgot to even mention it here, because I feel like my “1913 flood commemorating” mojo is virtually exhausted by now! But like I said, what kind of Miami Valley archivist would I be if I didn’t say something on my own blog as well?

So…well…to avoid re-inventing the wheel here, I think I’ll just point you to some of the things that I and others have been working on…

Most of the 1913 flood commemoration activities that I was personally aware of are mentioned in an article I wrote for the Spring 2013 issue of the Ohio Archivist (the newsletter of the Society of Ohio Archivists- see page 28). But I certainly want to point your attention to the official commemoration web site 1913flood.com.

We’ve done some cool things where I work at Wright State, too—so much so that we’ve even dedicated an entire section of the WSU Special Collections & Archives web page to the 1913 flood. There are a couple of exhibits listed, one of which is a web exhibit done a few years back called The Flood Menace. There is also info about the 1913 flood traveling exhibit a couple of my colleagues created–what it is, pictures, how to borrow it, etc. There’s also a lengthy Resource List detailing what research materials about the flood can be found at WSU and other area archives. (Don’t forget to check out the neat flood stuff we’ve got on our Campus Repository—interviews with flood survivors, for instance!) Oh, and there’s also an in-real-life flood exhibit (that I just happened to make) on the first floor of the Dunbar Library from now until about June.

I think one of my favorite projects I’ve personally done to remember the flood is the transcriptions of flood diaries and letters that will be on the WSU Special Collections & Archives blog Out of the Box this week. (I just love letters and diaries; I can get lost in them so easily.) We’ll be following flood survivors Margaret Smell, J.G.C. Schenck Sr., Edward and Nellie Neukom, and Milton Wright (yes, that Milton Wright- father of the famous Wright brothers!), through their flood experiences, reading about those experiences in their own words. Where applicable, I’ve added some small explanations, and I also hunted up some great photos from our collection to help illustrate their stories. I recommend checking out this intro to the diary/letter series, and there will be daily updates from the writers from today through early April.

As you may recall, I have written about the flood here before. I wrote a blog post about it a couple of years ago: “Remembering the 1913 Flood” (March 24, 2011). Then there are those super-cool geo-tagged maps I made using Flickr and Geo-Slideshow [May 9, 2011], for the flood photos and postcards at the Dayton Metro Library (where I used to work). And don’t forget the 1913 flood before-and-after exhibit at the Dayton Art Institute, which, although mentioned in my SOA article and on the 1913flood.com web site, bears repeating because I was privileged to see it in February, and it is super-awesome.

Obviously, there’s plenty more out there besides what I’ve mentioned here. (And let’s face it, I’m going to be a little biased towards the projects that I’ve personally worked so hard on—certainly not to undercut how hard everyone else has worked on their projects, but this is my blog, so why wouldn’t I toot my own horn a bit?) There have been tons of really great articles about the flood and the commemoration activities in the Dayton Daily News (and I’m sure many other area papers) lately.

DDN writer Meredith Moss did a great spread about the flood in last Sunday’s newspaper (over one whole page in the print edition); you can read the online version here, and you might just see a few quotes from yours truly in it. (Normally, my supervisor and head of the archives Dawne Dewey answers the press inquiries, but a combination of circumstances—one being that Dawne was out that day and another being that someone told the reporter to ask me because I’d been doing a lot of flood activities lately—led to my name being the one in the paper this time.)

Well, I think that’s about all I have to say about the flood for now. I hope anyone with an interest in this particular part of Dayton’s history takes notice of all these projects and events going on this spring, because there’s lots of great stuff to experience and absorb….and it might be another nice-round-number-of-years (25? 50? 100?) before there’s so much terrific culture being dedicated to the 1913 flood once again.

Un-Review of Dayton Art Institute’s 1913 Flood Exhibition

[I hate the term "review." It has this overtone, like if you're not sufficiently critical, you haven't really "reviewed" the thing. So this is not a review in that sense. It's "I experience this super-cool thing, and I want to share it with you," whatever that's called.]

Last Thursday, February 21, was a busy but fun day for me. After the Miami Valley Archives Roundtable meeting, I was fortunate enough to have been invited to attend a special preview of the Dayton Art Institute‘s new exhibition commemorating the centennial of the Great 1913 Flood: Storm, Watershed, & Riverbank.

Dayton Art Institute

Dayton Art Institute – Storm–Watershed–Riverbank

(The 1913 Flood was a defining moment in the Miami Valley’s history. It was a horrible disaster, but it ultimately led to flood control measures that have successfully averted such a thing happening again: the creation of the Miami Conservancy District. To learn more about the flood, check out 1913flood.com or even Wikipedia for a basic overview.)

The exhibition consists of three parts:

• Storm: Paintings by April Gornik
• Watershed: 100 Years of Photography Along the Great Miami River
• Riverbank: Exploring Our River-Centered Development

Storm: Paintings by April Gornik, consisted of several large scale (we’re talking LARGE scale, like 6 feet by 8 feet!) paintings depicting various kinds of storms, weather, and other natural waters. They were really beautiful. You can see many of April’s paintings on her web site, although my favorite one from the exhibit, “Light Passing” (1987), doesn’t seem to be on there.

After a transitional area showing three enlarged lantern slide views of the flood, as well as a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad map with notations about flood damage, we embarked upon the second part of the exhibition: Watershed: 100 Years of Photography Along the Great Miami River.

The Watershed exhibit consists of “before” and “after” photographs showing a scene from the flood, paired with a recent photograph taken at the same location and angle. The photos showed scenes from Piqua all the way down the Great Miami River to Hamilton.

The “before” photographs had been gathered, enlarged, and reproduced from the collections of many Miami Valley archival repositories, including Wright State University Special Collections & Archives, Dayton Metro Library, and many others. (I gleefully recognized many of the Dayton photos!)

The “after” photographs were created by Dayton photographer Andy Snow, who created more than 5,000 digital files for this project.

Photographer Andy Snow giving us insights to help us more fully appreciate his photos.

Mr. Snow was present on the tour to share his insights about the photos and the project. He shared lots of interesting stories and pointed out details that helped us more fully appreciate what we were seeing. He told us that he manipulated some of the photos slightly in order to make them “pop and sing,” saying, “I like singing photographs.”   He also gave us some historical context, including a lesson in historical photography equipment (examples of which is included in the exhibit) and the reasons why in old photos, the sky looks gray. He also referred to Dayton as “the Silicon Valley of the time,” in explaining why its destruction was such major nationwide news.

Angela Manuszak of the Miami Conservancy District, who was integral to the project, was also present on the tour and also gave us great historical context to help us better understand and appreciate what we were seeing.

Angela Manuszak of Miami Conservancy District sharing snipptes of the flood story to help give us context.

For instance, she pointed out that there are no known photographs of the river’s cresting in Dayton because it happened in the middle of the night. She also said that the Miami Conservancy District was the largest privately-funded infrastructure project in the world at the time; it was designed to protect against a flood equivalent to 140% of what the 191 3 flood was! (And it has worked!)

Here are a few pictures to give you a taste of the Watershed exhibit. (And I apologize that these are not the greatest — I’m no professional photographer, and my little pocket camera can’t even begin to do these things justice anyway. That’s why it’s really just a taste, even of these very photos, because the real ones look so much more amazing. Oh and also – Mr. Snow said it was OK for us to take pictures! Plus, I like to think I’ll make you want to visit and see the rest, if I show you a few ideas of what you’ll find.)

Before and After view from the hill where Dayton Art Institute is today. (Yes, it’s blurry; it’s not your eyes.) This pair was just awesome. You’ve got to see it!

Some of the 72 original hand-tinted lantern slides on exhibit from the Miami Conservancy District’s collection.

Everett Neukom’s Beaver Power Building photo (This was one of my favorite pairs, too, because I recognized the photo on the right immediately as one taken by Everett Neukom- it came from our Neukom collection at WSU.)

Near the end of the Watershed exhibit, there was a sitting area with the chairs pointed at a large flat-screen TV that was showing the Before/After photos fading into one another. I almost walked right by it, thinking, “Oh, I’ve seen this,” but after my brief conversation with Mr. Snow, he encouraged me to check it out, that it gave a little different perspective on the photos. And it really did: in some cases the photos were framed so perfectly that when the Before faded into the After, certain details that existed in both photos (like a church steeple, for instance) were lined up perfectly. It was almost like that part of the photo was simply turning color and having its surroundings changed, while it remained the same. VERY COOL. Thanks, Mr. Snow, for encouraging me to take a second look at that– it really was worth it. Plus, hey, it gave me an excuse to sit for a minute.

Also in talking to Mr. Snow, I asked if these were the same photos that will be featured in the 1913 Flood before/after book that I’ve been hearing about — the real title of which I couldn’t remember at the time, but which is, for your information A Flood of Memories–One Hundred Years After the Flood: Images from 1913 and Today. The answer was, yes, but only about 1/2 the images in the book were featured in the exhibit. So there’s MORE. Yay!  He said the book should soon be available for sale in the book stores at Dayton Art Institute and Carillon Park (which incidentally also has a new permanent exhibit on the 1913 Flood opening March 23).

The third part of the exhibition, Riverbank: Exploring Our River-Centered Development, had maps and sketches and sallelite images showing the development of the Great Miami River corridor over the years. The giant satellite map was pretty awesome. And I also enjoyed seeing a publication from the 1960s of proposed development of the river area near where Sinclair currently is– apparently, they wanted to put some kind of stadium or theater there at one point. (It’s always fun to see those architects’ or city planners’ renderings of proposed building projects from Back in the Day that never quite came to pass, knowing what’s there now.) There was also an interactive component with a big map of downtown Dayton and an invitation to answer the question “What would entice you to spend the day on the river?” on a Post-It Note and stick it to the map. (I admit I didn’t do this part; I was already late for a reception I was supposed to be attending upstairs, because I just couldn’t tear myself away from the photos…)

The Storm, Watershed, & Riverbank exhibition runs February 23 through May 5, 2013, and museum admission is $12. If you are interested in a visual history of the 1913 Flood, you don’t want to miss this. It was absolutely amazing.

[In addition to the official exhibition info on the Dayton Art Institute site, you might also be interested in this article from the Dayton Daily News: "Dayton Art Museum to Commemorate Historic Flood in New Exhibit," 17 Feb. 2013.]

MVAR Recap 2/21/2013

Yesterday was the most recent meeting of the Miami Valley Archives Roundtable (or, MVAR), an informal gathering of archivists in and around Dayton, Ohio. This time, we met at the Heritage Center of the Clark County (Ohio) Historical Society.

The Clark County Historical Society’s Heritage Center on a much warmer, sunnier day (photo by me, 2 Oct. 2011)

Our hosts were curatorial assistant Natalie Fritz, curatorial technician Mel Glover, and director of collections Virginia Weygandt. There were 20 people in attendance.

*****

As MVAR Chair, I started off the meeting with a couple of announcements—really, follow-ups from our previous meeting (11/15/2012) and the subsequent survey I sent out afterwards asking for input about creating an MVAR web site and collection membership data.

The response to the idea of a web site was almost entirely positive, and as a result, I created a free WordPress site for MVAR in December. So, now we have an official web presence for the Miami Valley Archives Roundtable! The URL is: http://miamivalleyarchivesroundtable.wordpress.com/. The site currently consists of the upcoming meeting dates & locations, as well as a list of upcoming relevant conferences. (I suppose one could argue that these little updates I write might go on there instead of here, now, but I’d rather like to keep them as “unofficial” records of the meeting, so I’m not sure they belong on the group’s “official” site.)

The second announcement was actually more of a non-announcement: Basically, that I have not made any further effort to collect data for a membership list, so no, you didn’t miss that email/memo/form/etc. I haven’t had a chance to go any further with that just yet!

After the announcements, we did the institutional reports.

*****

The institutional reports consist of each person in attendance taking a turn, stating their name, position, and institution, and sharing a little bit about what they have been up to lately, archives-wise. (The label “institutional reports” may make it sound formal, but it’s really not!) Here are some snippets from the reports that I hope my peers won’t mind my sharing:

I, Lisa Rickey, MVAR chairwoman and an archivist at Wright State University Special Collections & Archives, shared several bits of news, most of which seem to pertain to the upcoming 1913 flood centennial–which, honestly, is not that surprising, considering how many flood projects I have swirling (ooh, bad pun) in my head (and on my desk) at the moment.

I am currently working with a couple of our public history grad students on two related 1913 flood projects: an archival resource list (it’s going to look different soon but here’s the link anyway for now) and a virtual gallery (using Flickr). We just sent invite letters out to area organizations about these today, so hopefully many repositories in the area will contribute to help make them successful. We have a few submissions already, but we’d love more!

I’m also working on a series of blog posts to be posted during the days of the actual flood centennial- letters and diary entries posted day-by-day from 4 different flood survivors whose manuscripts are now in our collections at WSU– so watch for that on the WSU Archives’ Out of the Box blog the last week in March. We’ve also created a special 1913 flood section of the WSU SC&A web site to aggregate all the various 1913 flood stuff listed in various places on our web site (manuscripts, exhibits, blog posts, etc.).

In other WSU-blog-related-but-not-1913-flood-related news: our Dayton Daily News Archive blog more than doubled its previous high (of about 500) on single-day site views on February 9th (with nearly 1,300 views!). That was the weekend of Winter Storm Nemo that pummeled New England, and I noticed the news and weather crews kept referring to “the Blizzard of ’78.” Well, I guess it got lots of people curious, because they were Googling “Blizzard of 1978″ — and our DDN Archive blog post on the “Blizzard of 1978″ is the first hit on Google for that search term (even above Wikipedia)! Over 1000 of those 1300 views on Feb 9th were for the Blizzard of ’78 entry.

In other non-blog news, our University Archivist Chris Wydman was interviewed by the WSU Newsroom for an article about the history of the WSU tunnel system. A day or two after that, Channel 2 (WDTN) brought a film crew in to ask him about it, but so far, we have yet to see that footage anywhere.

And finally— good Lord, I am long-winded this time!—in personal news (OK it’s still career stuff but specific to me, not WSU), I will be giving a session on “Promoting your Collections Online” at the Ohio Local History Alliance’s Region 7 Meeting in Wapakoneta on March 16th. And I am also writing an article for the spring issue of the Society of Ohio Archivists’ newsletter Ohio Archivist about the various 1913 Flood commemoration activities.

*****

Okay, enough about me…seriously. Here are some snippets from the other attendees’ institutional reports:

Jennifer Gerth of the Marianist Archives told us about a very interesting reference question she recently answered (aka a family mystery she helped solve!). She also told us there will be an upcoming exhibit for the flood centennial: Hope on the Hill: Marianists and the 1913 Dayton Flood.

Gillian Hill, Joan Donovan, and Robin Heise, all at the Greene County Records Center & Archives, told us some fascinating stories from the slave emancipation records they are working with. They have been transcribing them and hope to do a digitization project with them in the future.

Cindy Manz, former (retired) records manager at the Miami Conservancy District, told us about a family photo scanning project she has undertaken for a friend.

[That prompted me to also share about the home movie film indexing project I've been doing on my grandfather's films, which we had digitized in December. Should be very helpful, and thankfully most of the 30+ films are only 2 minutes long!]

Roger Lucas, a representative with Indoll Dayton (filing, storage, and record conversion solutions), has been working with the WSU circulation desk renovation. He also mentioned that there may be several used high density mobile shelving units coming up available soon for a low price—at which statement many ears perked up!

Tina Ratcliff, records manager at the Montgomery County Records Center & Archives, told us that — surprisingly — few of the county records seem to even mention the 1913 Flood. (They’ve looked!) How strange!

Virginia Weygandt, Mel Glover, and Natalie Fritz, of the Clark County Historical Society (our hosts for the meeting), had lots of good news to report. They were recently able to repair a leak in the roof, and an office that had received some water damage was in the process of being repaired. (OK, so water problems are never good news—but getting them fixed certainly is!) They have just finished up an OHRAB-funded project to re-house probate court records; they’ve filled 200 banker boxes with over 8000 folders in the course of 2 years. They even won an OHRAB Achievement Award for the project in 2012 (see photo below)!

Natalie showing us the OHRAB Achievement Award they recently won for their probate court records project.

They also recently received a grant of $3000 from NEH for some new boxes. In exhibits news, they currently have an exhibit up called Newsweek 1983: Revisiting the American Dream, for the 30th anniversary of a 1983 Newsweek magazine article that put a spotlight on Springfield as representative of America in general. A dramatic performance “Spotlight on History” also accompanied the exhibit opening on Feb. 15. They will also be holding their annual “Night at the Museum” event on March 9th.

Betsy Wilson, who writes house histories and researches historic properties, told us about a really interesting home she’s currently researching, as well as an architecture research project she has in the works.

Galen Wilson, of NARA, is currently working on a team charged with rewriting federal records retention schedules. He also serves on the OHRAB and mentioned that there’s still time to apply for one of the 2013 OHRAB grants. Then he shared a great anecdote about “deaccessioning” some of his personal papers.

Bill McIntire is “the new Lisa (me)” as reference librarian/archivist at the Dayton Metro Library, where he started in January, after having been the DDN Archivist at WSU. He said he’s still learning the place.

Jen Haney is also getting used to her new job as “the new James [Zimmerlin]” at the Warren County Records Center & Archives, where she recently started as the records manager. (James accepted a position as records manager at CareSource, though he has been around to help Jen with the transition.) Jen said that, among other things, they are working on adding some search capabilities to the web site.

Gino Pasi, one of my fellow archivists at Wright State University, talked about the 1913 Flood traveling exhibit we recently started sharing with the public. The exhibit opening on January 24th was a great success. He also told us about an ongoing project with the Five Rivers MetroParks, who have enlisted volunteers to help them gather and organize their records, as well as select materials for their 50th anniversary celebration (this spring), before sending those materials to the WSU Special Collections & Archives. As collections manager, Gino has been working with them on the project.

Collette McDonough, archivist at the Kettering Foundation, told us about some really interesting photo processing projects she’s been working on recently. She also said that she is looking for a volunteer to help re-house photos, but there’s a possibility that the position might eventually become paid.

*****

After the institutional reports, we went over the list of relevant upcoming conferences, which you can find on the “Relevant Conferences” page of the new MVAR web site!

*****

Future MVAR Meeting Dates (you can also find these on the MVAR web site under “Upcoming Meetings”):
May 16, 2013: Jamestown Opera House (Jamestown, Ohio)
August 15, 2013
February 20, 2014

We still need hosts for all of the above meetings except the May meeting. If you want to volunteer to host a meeting, please contact me! Otherwise, take your chances, because if nobody volunteers, I will have to start cornering people individually with cold calls!

Also: I used to not put the locations on here, but according to the survey from November, people don’t seem to think it’s a problem to go ahead and post the locations publicly online. I guess nobody’s worried about crashers, or mass murderers with an axe to grind against all archivists everywhere and looking to take several out in one shot. (Some imagination, right?) Anyway.

*****

Next was the tour. I had been to the Clark County Historical Society’s Heritage Center museum and archives a few times before, but it had been a while. They showed us around some of their storage areas, including showing us examples of the probate court records– some of the re-housed ones, as well as some of the not-yet-re-housed ones (see photos below).

Mel showing us a probate record that has yet to be re-housed

Mel showing us one of the re-housed probate records

The library and archives reading room at the Clark County Heritage Center

We also checked out the archives reading room (see photo above).

*****

After the tour, we had lovely box lunches from a local bistro. They were pretty tasty— especially the dessert!

And so another great MVAR meeting came to a close!

Book Un-Review: Intimacy and Italian Migration

I hate book reviews. I hate writing them. I don’t really like reading them. But I recently finished reading a history book I picked up at the library (with my fancy new Wright State University staff library card!) several weeks ago, and I wanted to tell you a little bit about it. So…whatever you want to call that.

A few years ago (it must have been pre-2011 because I wrote about it), I decided I finally wanted to get down to business on trying to understand more about my Italian American history: really specific stuff about Italian immigration, legal hoops they had to jump through, typical family life, etc., etc. And in the course of that, I read two books that were extremely helpful and interesting: Coming to America (1990) by Roger Daniels and Italy’s Many Diasporas (2000) by Donna Gabaccia.

So when I saw a new book with Donna Gabaccia’s name attached to it on the library’s “New Books List” in December, I decided to check it out (literally – I know, haha, library humor). The book is called Intimacy and Italian Migration: Gender and Domestic Lives in a Mobile World (2011) and is edited by Gabaccia, as well as Loretta Baldassar.

I have to say, it wasn’t what I was “hoping” for or what I expected—but that’s my own fault, honestly. If I had investigated a book review (sigh) or even the back cover or the table of contents, I might have realized it probably wasn’t going to include what I was hoping for (more on that in a minute). But I it was like an “impulse buy” (er, impulse borrow) based solely on my existing positive (and, I emphasize, still positive) opinion of Gabaccia. Kind of like if you checked out J. K. Rowling’s new book simply because it was Rowling and then acted all surprised when it wasn’t like Harry Potter, but if you’d read the description, you would have known that. (I have not read Rowling’s new book, just FYI.)

Anyway.

The book includes many interesting articles on Italianness and gender roles, motherhood, marriage, and domesticity. I think my two favorite chapters were “Calculating Babies: Changing Accounts of Fertility Decisions among Italians in Melbourne, Australia” (by Pavla Miller) and “Love Crossing Borders: Changing Patterns of Courtship and Gender Relations among Italian Migrants in Germany” (by Yvonne Rieker), both of which included a lot of oral history and interviews, not to mention subject matter that I found particularly intriguing.

I was also pleased to read in general about “chain migration” — which may have been mentioned in those two previous books but I had perhaps forgotten — and there was talk about “campanilismo,” a term I know I’ve read about before and find positively delightful. (That must sound like an insane way to describe how I feel about those words, but I suppose it comes from having observed something in your own family history over and over again and then finally finding out there’s an actual TERM for it: what joy at finally putting a name to something!)

Intimacy and Italian Migration was a very interesting, informative, and well-written book, but as I said, not what I was hoping for — which could be somethin that simply not exist. If, after I’ve described it, anyone can give me a recommendation for something that may cover what I seek, I’d be glad to have it!

My grandfather Renato was born in Italy. He came to America on the eve of his 21st birthday (that’s a whole other thrilling tale) in 1934. His mother Pia and younger brother Vasco had already immigrated to America in 1933. But his father Quinto came to America in 1920, when Grandpa was 6. To the best of my knowledge, based on the records I’ve found and the story I was always told, Quinto stayed in America for years — like a decade — before returning to Italy to (basically – though it involved a lot of hoops – again, a tale for another time) bring his wife and two sons to the U.S.A.

I remember the first time I heard — from my parents, many years ago — that that’s how it went down, thinking, “What the hell? That seems kind of weird. To just leave your family for years?” Now that I’m older, learned a lot more history, and read the aforementioned books, I realize it wasn’t weird at all for that to be the way with Italian immigrations. Apparently, it was downright common. But my initial knee-jerk reaction of “My god, that must have sucked!” still seems pretty valid. I’m sure it did suck. On many levels.

And so, I’ve wondered from time to time, about a lot of different aspects of how that…worked (or, didn’t work?), particularly with regard to my great-grandparents’ relationship. How do you go from being married with two kids to just not seeing each other for 10 years? Did they write letters? Did they even know how to read/write? I honestly have no idea; it’s probably more likely for him than her, but I really don’t even know. Even if they knew how? Could they afford it? It can’t have been cheap to send international letters, not to mention the time lapse of sending them trans-Atlantic by boat. This is all assuming, of course, that they…well, liked each other. I mean, part of me wants to make the terrible joke about the stereotypical Italian couple that drives each other crazy—(cue movie reference to that scene in Under the Tuscan Sun where Chiara’s mother says of her husband, “I hate him half of the time”!)—but I mean, hey, with all I just learned about semi-arranged or downright arranged marriages in Italy back in the Day (or, quite a long time after what one would really consider “The Day” – scary recent), it’s entirely possible that…hell, maybe they never liked each other to start with? I’m just saying…I have no idea. (They look relatively content in this pic from 1938, though, don’t they?)

Quinto and Pia, 1938

But that’s some of what I was kind of hoping to read about when I picked up Intimacy and Italian Migration…something “older,” I guess, than what most of the chapters actually discussed. And perhaps it simply doesn’t exist, for the simple truth of the circumstances under which those relationships were forced to take place. If you were a highly educated and filthy rich 1920s Italian, you weren’t going to be in that situation because you either (a) didn’t need to go to America for a “better life,” because yours was pretty darn good already; or (b) if you did need/want to go to America, maybe you had the money to plunk down for all those passenger fares right from the get go (all U.S. anti-immigrant laws and quotas aside, of course- again, a thrilling tale for another time); or (c) at the very least, you could probably go home to visit more often or afford to send lots of letters, and your probably-also-higher-society wife could probably read them and write them (I’m guessing?). But poorer immigrant husbands and wives were probably too busy working, taking care of themselves and (in the wives’ case) the children (to whatever extent possible), without a lot of time (much less knowledge or resources – I don’t know if the particular two in question had it or not) to write or keep letters or diaries that I so wish I could read.

I’ll probably wonder forever. Because some things just don’t exist. I’m pretty sure that if Pia and Quinto had left letters or diaries that I could read, I’ve have them in my hands by this point. But if there’s anything out there along the same lines (but from different people), I’d be interested in reading that.

I suppose my interest in history has (almost) always come back around to being interested in people “I know” — or have seen pictures of in the family photo album or their names on my family tree — or have held their handwritten documents in my hands. This is just another instance of that. I hear (true) stories, and I want to fill in the blanks.

Okay, not a great way to end a book un-review, but… I’ve run out of steam. Honestly, that’s not quite true, but if I don’t cut it off here, I could ramble for hours (pages) about these people. And I’m sure nobody wants that. Or, if you do, ask me questions, and I’ll write more.

Memento scribere

Memento scribere. Remember to write.

Maybe I need to write that on my hand (though I’d have to do it repeatedly thanks to hand-washing). Or perhaps (probably) it would be more effective to make it an Outlook task. Actually, I used to have such a thing, but it’s been tossed by the wayside for the past few months.

My new job (which I started in November) has…shall we say…routinely absorbed much of my naturally existing “writing mojo.” So…not a ton of writing mojo has been leftover for this, my public blog, or even my private writings. But that’s OK. For now. It will balance out eventually, I’m sure; hopefully it won’t be too long, because I miss this place!

In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that you can “find me” over on the blogs of the Wright State University Special Collections & Archives…just in case you are really jonesing for some of my writing.

The Out of the Box blog is our “general” blog for the archives- highlighting collections, making announcements, etc. And then we also have the Dayton Daily News Archive blog, which is exclusively for materials (including LOTS of photos) from the Dayton Daily News Archive (an extremely large newspaper morgue archive that WSU SCA has had for a few years now). If it says it was posted by “Lisa,” then I probably wrote it (unless it says otherwise).

So anyway… I will try to get back into remember to write mode, but until then, please continue “glancing backwards” vicariously through the blogs where I have been writing. And there’s no ignoring those — that’s (part of) what they pay me for! — so it’s certainly part of my agenda (“things that must be done” – sorry, this former Latin student couldn’t resist another Latin lesson for ya!).

Granularity of history

Since last weekend was the Thanksgiving holiday, I got to spend some time with my family. We spend a lot of that time sitting around, just talking. I don’t know how it is with your family, but sometimes the menfolk in ours have a little trouble getting a story in edgewise between me and my two sisters and mom.

But at one point last weekend, my Dad was all wound up about this show he’d been watching on The History Channel called The Men Who Built America. I hadn’t seen the show (although by the end of the weekend I had watched several episodes from Dad’s DVR!), but he was excitedly telling us all about it.

This in and of itself was rather exciting to me, because my dad is an engineering/technical type, and I have not often seen him chatter excitedly about history stuff the way he might about something with capacitors.

Anyway, Dad was giving us the details The Men Who Built America, which is a multi-part story about the interwoven lives (and fortunes) of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Ford, and Morgan.

Finally, at one point, he exclaimed that it was all really interesting, and he had never heard most of this before, although he had heard of all the people involved. He was fascinated at how the show really plumbed the details of those men’s lives, really digging deep into everything to develop the series.

And that’s the really neat thing about history. Most people will only ever learn just a surface-scratch of all the history that’s actually out there to be learned.

I don’t happen to have an American history survey course textbook on hand, but I’d be willing to bet most of them would only spend a few paragraphs talking about Rockefeller, etc., mostly as a side note to a greater concept regarding the Gilded Age or monopolies. Whereas there is actually tons more stuff (interesting stuff) that could be said about them, even more than what that mini-series can tell you in several hours.

What do you think history is made of? Sure, in the books it’s made up of broad strokes and grand, sweeping concepts. There’s that. But what are those made up of? The words, actions, and ideas of people. All kinds of people. Rich and powerful people like John D. Rockefeller…and ordinary people like pioneers, Civil War soldiers, immigrants. That’s all history, too, of course.

The broad strokes of history are made up of teeny, tiny pieces of…life. Think of it sort of like the top part of an hour-glass. Most people see only the pile of sand. But if you want to look closely enough — the grains are there. Teeny, tiny, individual little grains of history that make up “the sands of time.”

“a drop in the ocean” by conskeptical, on Flickr (Used in accordance with the stated Ceative Commons license)

The grains could be actions, events, people, documents. In most cases, the grains, the details…they’re out there. Sure, much has been lost, but there is SO MUCH that has been saved and preserved. If you really want to “dive in” to the history of any topic, odds are, there is an archives out there with something you’d find interesting (i.e., documents with delightfully intricate details you’ve probably never heard before).

Trust me. I’m an archivist. The grains of history are sort of my thing.