Archival ponderings

I wonder why it is that I am determined to find my great-great grandfather’s name on the passenger lists from Germany. I’m glad I found NARA the National Archives and Records Administration on Sand Point Way. We are all sleuths, we visitors to these microfilm stacks, hoping to unearth ancient data of the U.S. Census, naturalization and passenger arrival records, Native American records or African American slave ship records. The volunteers are a rare breed, too–friendly, helpful, not overly interfering.

On the passenger lists I’ve been perusing, the handwriting is terrible, the ink faded. I presume they were using steel-tipped pens but dipping them in ink wells. The fountain or reservoir pen didn’t come into common use until around 1880. Check out this Early Office Museum web site where you’ll find cool facts about the history of the pen.

I’m glad I know Michael Harm was barely 16 when he traveled across the Atlantic, because I can scan the age column for the number 16 much more easily than the name column, where the handwriting is faded and barely legible. As I cruise through page after page of German names, the song: “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” plays relentlessly in my head. By the way, that particular ditty seems to have originated in vaudeville acts of the nineteenth century (Wikipedia). What a glorious distraction research can be.

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