Reading Primary Sources: Indentures

Dan Allosso

One of the most exciting and interesting things we do as historians is look at old documents. Exciting because we get to use all our “detective” instincts, and we’re never sure what we’re going to find. Interesting because along with the data we’re looking for, there’s often a lot more. Sometimes this additional information takes the form of a surprise that completely changes our idea of what happened; more often, it broadens and enriches our understanding of the setting, the people involved, and the times they lived in.

I recently had an opportunity to look at nineteenth-century land deeds, or “Indentures” in upstate New York. My goal was to establish when the people I was studying had arrived in the region. I went to the county records office and got permission to use their computerized database of indentures. This saved me the trouble of pulling a dozen old books off the shelves, since deeds were recorded in the order they were executed, so you need to find them in the index and then go to the appropriate “Liber” and page.

As I expected, the pile of documents I was able to find and print for a nominal fee, told me a lot about when my subjects had arrived in the area, but also a lot more that I hadn’t expected. For example, I found an 1842 record of an agreement between one of my subjects, Roswell Ranney, and Spencer Hildreth and Elijah Bement, “and Julia his wife.” Ranney bought a 106.25-acre parcel of land from these two men, “for the sum of Ten Dollars to them in hand,” as well as “payment & satisfaction of twelve hundred and fifty dollars being a part of a mortgage heretofore executed by Samuel H. And Henry Baggerly and their Wives to the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company for twenty seven hundred dollars.” The location and dimensions of this land were described in great detail, which allows me to not only plot it on a map and know where Ranney lived, but suggests that an acre of prime farmland in Phelps was worth about $12 in 1842, if this sale was at the market price.

But I don’t know that for sure, yet. Because, reading on, I find that there had been a previous mortgage, dating from 1838, between George Ranney, Roswell’s brother, and the late Russell Bement, whose exact relationship to Elijah I don’t yet know. George and Russell, I already knew, both came to Phelps around 1833 from the same town in Massachusetts. George Ranney died about six months after this indenture was recorded, so this land sale may have been part of an attempt to put his affairs in order. But now, to understand the sequence of events, I’d like to know why the Baggerly brothers had a mortgage with New York Life. Actually, until I saw this indenture, I wasn’t aware that the New York City company was involved in real estate lending in this small upstate village—so that’s definitely worth finding out more about.

In a footnote to the indenture, the county official appended a note witnessing the signatures and stating that in a private interview, Elijah Bement’s wife Julia “acknowledged that she executed the within deed freely and without any fear or compulsion of her said husband therefore let it be recorded.” It’s an interesting glimpse at the changing status of wives in 1842 New York, that although she clearly does not have the rights of the men, society is concerned about Julia’s willing participation in this sale.

On Footnotes and Doing History

Lisa Clark Diller

I recently picked up Anthony Grafton’s The Footnote: A Curious History (Harvard University Press, 1999) in an attempt to find more coherent ways to talk to my students about citation and research. I have somehow never managed to read it before now, and I’m finding Grafton’s overt connection between what we are “doing” in history and how we document that work, to be extremely useful. As I think about what I need to do to prove to my reading audience that I know what I’m talking about, I have forgotten what a thin tissue evidence rests on—our assumptions regarding footnotes. The Footnote also contributes to the discussions we’ve been having on this site about conversations between generations of historians.

Grafton reminds us that “in documenting the thought and research that underpin the narrative above them, footnotes prove that it is a historically contingent product, dependent on the forms of research, opportunities, and states of particular questions that existed when the historian went to work” (23). The genealogies of scholarship so neatly mapped out by Dan Allosso last week can also be seen in the footnotes and bibliographies of individual works of scholarship. Who we think it important to cite, what range of sources were important (or available) at the time, and the family of historiographical ancestors we choose for ourselves all reveal our location in time and situate us on an ideological map.

Footnotes reveal our technical proficiency, but they do so within a particular context. While in grad school, I can remember discounting entire volumes of historical research because the footnotes were so “thin.” And one of my advisors at the University of Chicago would warn us to look with grave suspicion on any early modernist who cited too many printed sources. I’m less puritanical in my standards now. And Grafton has reminded me that: “No accumulation of footnotes can prove that every statement in the text rests on an unassailable mountain of attested facts. Footnotes exist, rather, to perform two other functions. First, they persuade: they convince the reader that the historian has done an acceptable amount of work . . . . Second, they indicate the chief sources that the historian has actually used” (22).

We sometimes still operate under the assumption that if we have all the “original sources” our argument will be solid. But what makes history interesting is all the various interpretations that we can develop from the same sources. It is part of why we revisit the same problems over and over again. Interpretation as well as sources give each of us our originality. This is decidedly not the same thing as saying that any interpretation of the documents is as good as another, but it is what keeps me from reading a scholarly tome and thinking that because the footnotes took up 37% of each page I read, no one need any longer do research on that subject. Grafton also reminded me to be careful in judging the scholarship of an earlier generation by the type or quantity of footnotes.

As I sweat through proper citation of digital works and decide how much to include or exclude from my own footnotes, I am glad to remember that this process isn’t simply about showing off my guild credentials. It’s also a way to “out” myself regarding my priorities and methods. The evidence I use won’t be considered equally sufficient for all time; but then again, I don’t expect to answer historical questions and decide their significance once and for all.

The footnote reminds me of the time-laden nature of my queries and verifications.

Digital History Roundup

Randall Stephens

Patricia Cohen, "Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers," New York Times, December 3, 2010

Victorians were enamored of the new science of statistics, so it seems fitting that these pioneering data hounds are now the subject of an unusual experiment in statistical analysis. The titles of every British book published in English in and around the 19th century — 1,681,161, to be exact — are being electronically scoured for key words and phrases that might offer fresh insight into the minds of the Victorians.>>>

Robert Darnton, "The Library: Three Jeremiads," New York Review of Books, December 23, 2010.

When I look back at the plight of American research libraries in 2010, I feel inclined to break into a jeremiad. . . . I hope that the answer to those questions will lead to my happy ending: a National Digital Library—or a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), as some prefer to call it. Google demonstrated the possibility of transforming the intellectual riches of our libraries, books lying inert and underused on shelves, into an electronic database that could be tapped by anyone anywhere at any time. Why not adapt its formula for success to the public good—a digital library composed of virtually all the books in our greatest research libraries available free of charge to the entire citizenry, in fact, to everyone in the world?>>>

Ann Blair, "Information Overload, Then and Now," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 28, 2010

Feeling overwhelmed by too much information? What else is new? The amount of digital data available on the Web every day reaches records of mind-boggling proportions—now more than a zettabyte (1021 bytes) and presumably accumulating at an ever-increasing rate, estimated at 30-percent growth per year from 1999 to 2002.>>>

Daniela Forte, "In Watertown, History Archive Is on Website," Litchfield County Times, November 18, 2010

WATERTOWN—The past is coming alive once again, as the Watertown Historical Society announced last week the unveiling of the Watertown Digital History Archive, now available on its Web site. The archive features newspapers, yearbooks and scrapbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries. . . . The society encourages residents who have old newspapers, yearbooks and scrapbooks beyond the dates the society already has archived to contact it by calling 860-274-1050, or logging on to the Web site at www.watertownhistoricalsociety.org.>>>

"Google Editions: a history of ebooks," The Telegraph, December 5, 2010

Google has confirmed that its own ebook store, Google Editions, will be up and running by the end of the year, potentially transforming the ebook landscape. Here, we look at some of the key milestones in the digitisation of the printed word. [See the e-book/digital history timeline.]>>>

The It Gets Better Project

Heather Cox Richardson

I am fascinated by the It Gets Better Project, a video project started by Seattle writer Dan Savage, who decided to take a stand to stop the frightening rate of suicide by gay teenagers. Desperate to do something to save these endangered kids, he and his husband made a film assuring desperate teenagers that no matter how bad high school seemed with its taunts and

hatred, “it gets better.” They asked others to tell their own stories, also on video, to let students know they were not alone.

That first video has been followed by hundreds of others and has gotten widespread national attention, although the project itself is only weeks old.

The videos are touching and smart, and, I hope, comforting. The people who have made them assure LGBT high schoolers that their lives will get better. Eventually, the films promise, they can hope to have the wonderful lives the videographers enjoy.

But for a historian, the videos are also culturally fascinating. The ones I have watched—and this includes all those selected by Mr. Savage himself to be highlighted on his blog—have a very clear message aside from reassuring youngsters about their ability to survive the jungles of high school, although the second message appears to be an unconscious one.

The life the IGBP promises to young viewers is strikingly conventional. The videos promise college, and an excellent college experience at that. They promise fulfilling careers in a field in which the student excels. They promise supportive friends. And they promise marriage and children. Far from being the call to riot and revolution that opponents of gay rights might expect, these are calls to conventional middle-class respectability.

Those filming the IGBP videos reinforce their verbal message. They are uniformly articulate and smart—who else would record a video?—wealthy enough to have laptops with webcams, and technologically savvy enough to know how to use them and how to cut a clean video. They are also widely enough read to know of the IGBP.

The IGBP is designed to reassure LGBT children that they are valued and have a future, but it also seems to have within it an unconscious call to mold upwardly-mobile, family-oriented professionals. (A parodist has caught this with his own “It Gets Worse” video, purporting to be the story of an uneducated, single, poor, lonely assistant night manager of a Ladies Foot Locker who longs for the days of junior high school when he could make himself feel good by abusing gay students.)

This raises fascinating questions about social change. What effect it will have on a specific population to have such attractive role models calling its members to a wonderful life of education, professional jobs, stable marriages, and children? Would such calls work with different populations who perceive themselves as out of the mainstream of American society? To what extent are these sorts of videos capable of changing the lives of young LGBT people who view them? How will they change the attitudes of straight viewers? (The reaction of the Fort Worth City Councilors to the IGBP video of Joel Burns suggests that observers find the personal appeals in the IGBP profoundly moving in a way they may not find abstract questions of gay rights.)

There is much concern over videos that recruit terrorists. But if it is also possible to use the internet to move individuals for other ends, that also has the potential to change the world.

This revolution is indeed being televised . . . or at least podcast. How it plays out is of great interest to scholars of social movements, as well as to American society.