Panel 1: A Shared Past: Public Outreach and Interaction
Event Title
From Artifact To Exhibit: Analyzing the Shirley-Eustis House Ephemera Collection to (Re)Discover Its Tenement Period
Location
Campus Center, Room 2540, University of Massachusetts Boston
Start Date
29-3-2014 9:00 AM
End Date
29-3-2014 10:30 AM
Description
This presentation was canceled.
What historical data can a collection of newspaper fragments, product box-tops, and other paper-based artifacts yield about the life and lifeways of Roxbury’s residents between 1870 and 1915? As it turns out, the answer to this rhetorical question is: a great deal.
In fall 2011, Shirley-Eustis House Executive Director Patricia Violette uncovered a collection of ephemera in the attic, which she invited the author to study. In reading the news, transcribing box-top fragment information, and delving into the daily life of the resident in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I realized the collection offered a unique insight into a little documented period of the site.
Historically, the Tenement Period (1870-1915) has been interpreted as an era in which the residents destroyed the home. Mary Paul Caner contended that “[t]he heavy foot of Progress strode up Shirley Street leaving a trail of dingy little tenements, [and] a rabble of dirty urchins,” many of whom lived in the house. Although contemporary photographic evidence contradicts her assessment, this unique collection of ephemera ultimately served as the key to identifying residents, determining how they had lived, and assessing what impact their tenancy had had on the physical structure of the home.
This paper describes the steps through which these “snippets” of historical documentation became the basis for an exhibit design detailing the lives and lifeways of the residents and proving conclusively that while progress may well have marched up Shirley Street, the residents themselves represented the middle class population Sam Bass Warner describes. Additionally, the process itself is an example not only of how new approaches to studying history can advance interpretation, but also to how the use of “old” data in “new” and innovative ways can provide the public with visual, visceral, and personal strategies for interacting with their past.
From Artifact To Exhibit: Analyzing the Shirley-Eustis House Ephemera Collection to (Re)Discover Its Tenement Period
Campus Center, Room 2540, University of Massachusetts Boston
This presentation was canceled.
What historical data can a collection of newspaper fragments, product box-tops, and other paper-based artifacts yield about the life and lifeways of Roxbury’s residents between 1870 and 1915? As it turns out, the answer to this rhetorical question is: a great deal.
In fall 2011, Shirley-Eustis House Executive Director Patricia Violette uncovered a collection of ephemera in the attic, which she invited the author to study. In reading the news, transcribing box-top fragment information, and delving into the daily life of the resident in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I realized the collection offered a unique insight into a little documented period of the site.
Historically, the Tenement Period (1870-1915) has been interpreted as an era in which the residents destroyed the home. Mary Paul Caner contended that “[t]he heavy foot of Progress strode up Shirley Street leaving a trail of dingy little tenements, [and] a rabble of dirty urchins,” many of whom lived in the house. Although contemporary photographic evidence contradicts her assessment, this unique collection of ephemera ultimately served as the key to identifying residents, determining how they had lived, and assessing what impact their tenancy had had on the physical structure of the home.
This paper describes the steps through which these “snippets” of historical documentation became the basis for an exhibit design detailing the lives and lifeways of the residents and proving conclusively that while progress may well have marched up Shirley Street, the residents themselves represented the middle class population Sam Bass Warner describes. Additionally, the process itself is an example not only of how new approaches to studying history can advance interpretation, but also to how the use of “old” data in “new” and innovative ways can provide the public with visual, visceral, and personal strategies for interacting with their past.
Comments
PANEL 1 of the 2014 Graduate History Conference features presentations and papers under the topic of "A Shared Past: Public Outreach and Interaction."