The National Archives has a program of presentations called Know Your Records through which archivists, volunteers, and others share their knowledge of our records with you, the public. It is a great way for interested individuals to learn what we have and how to use what we have to their advantage.
The Text Message, in part, is supposed to have the same mission–sharing our knowledge of NARA’s textual holdings with the public. It has successfully done that for over a year now highlighting interesting or topical records. Often, but not always, the focus has been at the record or series level. I thought it would be great if we could highlight something at the Record Group level that we are actively working on.
At any one time there are several Record Groups being processed between the civilian and military textual units. For instance, currently we at Archives II are processing RG 286, RG 131 (in planning stages), RG 306, and other smaller side projects. All interesting Record Groups with interesting and informative records. Yet, as a processing archivist with the job of preparing series for public access, I don’t–we don’t–always have time to search for that gem worthy of writing about. But all records matter, not just the gems.
With that in mind I will be presenting RG 286, the records of the United States Agency for International Development. My colleague, Alan Walker, earlier described processing the records for the overseas Missions of USAID. He has diligently been working with those records exclusively while I have been sorting through the records of USAID headquarters here in Washington.
This project began with close to 1500 individual undescribed entries. Unlike many other Record Groups, RG 286 had no preliminary inventories or even basic box lists from which to begin. We simply had to open boxes, walk the stacks, and sort through those entries. Part of what a processing archivist does is to make processed series out of what seems like chaos. This involves pulling together records that were accessioned separately and, sometimes, separating those that were accessioned together. To date, we have processed almost 900 new series that have been entered into our Archival Research Catalog (ARC).
The United States Agency for International Development was established on November 4, 1961 from several predecessor agencies (RG 469) formed as World War II ended and as we began our effort to rebuild our allies in Europe. It started with the Marshall Plan in Europe, but developed into US technical, financial, and military aid efforts around the world.
President Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act which has been amended several times over the years to meet the changing needs of the developing world. The agency itself has also evolved. Through the 1960s and 70s, USAID was under the Department of State. In 1979, the International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA) was formed and USAID became a part of it until, finally, USAID became an independent agency in 1998. You can find more on the history here.
The records often reflect the history of the agency and its continual evolution throughout the years from the Marshall Plan to Point Four and, finally, the birth and growth of USAID. They fall broadly into two categories: records from the geographic bureaus and those from what aid called their functional bureaus. The regional bureaus comprise the major areas of US involvement in the world: Asia, the Near East, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. The functional bureaus are those that oversee major program areas like food, democracy, humanitarian assistance, or health. There are also administrative bureaus that oversee policy formulation, management, and the nuts and bolts of running an agency.
The offices in these several bureaus were often the repository for official copies of records generated in the field. Researchers should note, for instance, that Project Records are temporary for the Missions but not in the Headquarters. So, if looking for a project overseen by the Mission to Afghanistan the records are most likely in those of the Bureau for the Near East.
The next post will address what you can expect to find in the records and the best way to research in RG 286.
As we make our brunch reservations, choose the perfect greeting card, and make the rest of our preparations for Mother’s Day this Sunday, let’s not forget the women, the mothers of our nation, who took a stand for women’s rights and blazed the trail for future movements. Men such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and John Adams for example, are revered as founders of our nation, but these great men could not have changed the course of history without the support of women.
In 1976, during the Bicentennial of the American Revolution, the United States Information Agency (USIA) released a video entitled, “Women and the Spirit of ’76, 1976” (National Archives Identifier: 50455). The purpose of the video was to showcase the American Revolution as a catalyst for the modern Women’s Movement and to recognize the women of 1776 as its leaders. Abigail Adams, Phyllis Wheatley, Mercy Otis, and Molly Pitcher were among the women who were honored.
When I stumbled upon this video footage, Abigail Adams stood out to me. It was easy for me to see why USIA would acknowledge Abigail Adams as an advocate for Women’s Rights. Her correspondence to John Adams is famous for passages such as this, below, that reminded her husband that women were worthy of the same freedoms as men:
I long to hear that you have declared an independency — and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
I can not say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over Wives. But you must remember that Arbitary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken — and notwithstanding all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters, and without voilence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet
It was not until the 20th century that women were adequately remembered as Abigail intended, and the 19th Amendment (National Archives Identifier: 1633885) to the Constitution was passed on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920.
Henry Dunant administering aid on the battlefield in Solferino, Italy (by Charles Édouard Armand-Dumaresq), from ARC Identifier 6060466, part of the series "History Files, 1895-1998" (ARC Identifier 5835043)
The series “History Files, 1895-1998″ (ARC Identifier 5835043) contains records relating to the history of the American Red Cross and the Red Cross movement. Historical subjects covered include the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India; aid to Jews during World War II; aid to refugees in the Ottoman Empire in 1922; children’s relief in Serbia in 1944; and medical service to Israel in 1949.
These are only three series of many found in Collection ANRC that researchers with a historical interest in the American Red Cross and the Red Cross movement in general should look to when conducting their research. Happy World Red Cross Red Crescent Day! Come to Archives II in College Park, Maryland to research these and other records relating to the history of the Red Cross movement.
Today’s post is written by Stephanie Stegman, the special media projects volunteer at the National Archives at Fort Worth. This is the third post in a three-part series. (If you missed them, follow these links to the first and second posts.)
Cargo – it was the main business of the New Orleans Custom House. After the captain submitted his manifest, employees inspected the vessel’s cargo and appraised the cargo’s value. Then, they collected taxes or stored merchandise in the Custom House’s bonded warehouses. These records of commerce are part of Record Group 36 preserved at the National Archive at Fort Worth.
Before the Civil War, there were two different types of cargo that came into the Port of New Orleans. Each required a different list, or manifest. The Cargo Manifest was for all goods onboard the vessel with a description of each package, its contents, and the owner or shipper.
ARC ID 6210353Cargo manifest of S.S. Texas from Galveston to New Orleans arrived March 5, 1860
The second dealt with human cargo. Slaves were not recognized as passengers (who were listed on a separate form) but, rather, cargo “held to service and labor.” The Slave Manifest was for all enslaved persons (and occasionally free persons of color) onboard with a list of each person’s name, sex, age, height, color, and owner. In 1860, the Steam Ship Texas made weekly trips between the Galveston and New Orleans. On one such trip, the S.S.Texas had both types of cargo: 140 bales of cotton and 28 slaves from New Brunsfels, Texas near San Antonio.
ARC ID 6210358Front and back of Slave manifest of S.S. Texas from La Salle to New Orleans arrived March 5, 1860
Louisiana’s state-owned slaves also participated in state commerce as they worked to clear obstructions along the Mississippi river ways. However, Slave Manifests are the only records in the New Orleans Custom House’s collection that show the city’s booming slave trade before the war. The 1807 slave trade law prohibited the importation of slaves from foreign countries into the United States. Therefore, the master of the ship had to sign the Slave Manifest to testify to the validity of his human cargo, just like he signed for merchandise.
After the Union captured New Orleans in May 1862, President Lincoln reopened the port to commerce and the U.S. Treasury declared some goods contraband of war. In September, the Foreign Entry and Clearance Clerk at the New York Custom House warned his superior that, while not contraband, other goods had the potential to impact the war. The clerk estimated over 25,000 oz. of quinine and other “indispensible medicine[s]” had been shipped from New York to New Orleans since June. “[M]any other articles sadly needed in the Rebel army, it is believed, have found their way into rebel hands,” wrote the clerk, “…and if so, the opening of these ports may be considered of doubtful benefit, and may perhaps be the means of prolonging the war.”
ARC ID 6016161New York Customs Collector Ciran Barney wrote the U.S. Secretary of Treasury Salmon P. Chase about the concerns of clerk Sidney J. Norton.Collector Ciran Barney to S.P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, 09/18/1862
With Union loyalists in charge of the Custom House, goods entering New Orleans still went through inspection and appraisal. In November 1862, the Brig Poinsett entered the Port of New Orleans bound from Boston. Its manifest showed 269 tons of cargo and a crew of 9 men. The charcoal was not allowed to land while the cherry juice and cordials, subsequently, were confiscated by a Customs House inspector after he discovered that they were, in fact, whiskey.
ARC ID 6016138Coaster’s Manifest for Brig Poinsett of Boston, 1862
Commerce continued during the war, but the volume and type of cargo had changed.
Today’s post is written by Stephanie Stegman, the special media projects volunteer at the National Archives at Fort Worth. This is the second post in a three-part series. (If you missed it, the first post can be found here.)
Today’s topic is paperwork. Paperwork was a vital part of daily life at the New Orleans Custom House, charged with documenting all vessels entering the port as well as collecting revenue from duties and warehouse storage. It offers a glimpse at what work was like at the largest U.S. sea port in the years before the Civil War. Employees wrote letters, filled out forms, collected cargo and slave manifests, inspected vessels and their cargo, and many more activities that made up their different job descriptions. This work product is part of Record Group 36 preserved at the National Archives at Fort Worth. (Click on any image to enlarge.)
Inspector of Hulls Certificate for Steam Vessel Barataria, 1857 ARC 6016141.
In 1860, the Port of New Orleans was the only port of entry for the prosperous Collection District of New Orleans. Formerly known as the District of Mississippi, the New Orleans District included most of the shores, inlets, and waters within the State of Louisiana as well as the waters and shores of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, except for those within the limits of the State of Mississippi.
Presidential Appointment of Horse Browse Trist as Collector for the District of Mississippi 11/18/1803 ARC 6016136. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Horse Browse Trist as the first collector or chief executive and revenue officer for the Collection District of Mississippi.
Business was brisk at New Orleans Custom House, located on Canal Street a few blocks from the Mississippi River. Collector Francis Hanson Hatch was the person in charge of administering and collecting revenue for the district. In 1860, Hatch reported 2,845 vessels entered from foreign or coastwise ports. 2,242 vessels cleared with imports totaling over $25 million. Exports totaled over $101 million, including cotton and tobacco, the two largest domestic goods. With receipts from duties, storage, and the Marine Hospital Fund, the New Orleans Custom House had $2.5 million in total revenue for the year.
List of vessels arrived from foreign ports at the Lighthouse at South West Pass, April 1858 ARC 6016157. The New Orleans Collection District included a network of lighthouses along the waterways, called the Eighth Light District of the United States. Collector Hatch described these lighthouses as “exceedingly important for the convenience and security of the commerce of the State.”
Work at the New Orleans Custom House continued even as civil war was imminent. Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861. Federal employees at the U.S. Custom House, Courts, and Mint all held their posts and sided with the State of Louisiana. Then, the question became, “Who would pay them?” After resigning from the U.S. government, one of the Inspectors of Steamers wrote to Collector Hatch and requested his salary be paid.
Inspector John C. March, Inspector of Boilers, wrote to New Orleans Collector F.H. Hatch in Feb 1861 ARC 6037239.
In March 1861, when Louisiana joined the Confederacy, Custom House employees received their full salaries. They even used the same payroll form. On the printed heading, Collector Hatch crossed out “United States” and wrote in “Confederate States.”
Payroll for John C. Marsh, Inspector of Boilers at the Port of New Orleans, March 1861 ARC 6036300 John C. Marsh received a monthly salary of $166.66 as Inspector of Boilers.
While the paperwork stayed the same, life at the New Orleans Custom House fundamentally changed during the Civil War. After fourteen months, Union forces captured New Orleans in April 1862, and Collector Hatch and other Confederate employees were out of work.
Today’s post is written by Stephanie Stegman, the special media projects volunteer at the National Archives at Fort Worth. This is the first post in a three-part series.
Electoral projections are a popular topic these days, and everyone has an opinion. In July 1860, two engineers in Louisiana exchanged their predictions on the upcoming presidential election. Regionally and politically divisive, the 1860 election was a four-way race between Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge, and John Bell.
The search had started with this one hand-written document. What happened next was a scavenger hunt, of sorts, to find other records in the New Orleans Custom House collection, part of Record Group 36 preserved at the National Archives at Fort Worth. Each record offers a clue to help answer the question: What was work and life at the New Orleans Custom House like in the years before and after the outbreak of the Civil War?
Since 1856, Custom House employees had worked on the first floor in the building while it was still under construction. Located on Canal Street, just blocks from the mighty Mississippi River, the new building encompassed an entire city block and housed employees from the U.S. Custom House, Post Office, and War Department.
Before he became famous as the general who fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (G.T. for short) was Captain and Brevet Major of the Topographical Engineers of the U.S. Army. A New Orleans native, Beauregard was superintendent of construction for the new Custom House at New Orleans. In the summer of 1860, Beauregard and Captain Johnson Kelly Duncan of the Board of Public Works in Baton Rouge made their predictions on the upcoming election.
Both Beauregard and Duncan were graduates of West Point and civil engineers who had worked on government projects in New Orleans. Beauregard later would resign to become the Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and transfer the construction of the New Orleans Custom House to English architect Thomas K. Wharton in January 1861.However, Beauregard only served his new post five days before resigning to join the Confederacy. Duncan would be commissioned a colonel in the Confederate States Army and later a brigadier general before he died of fever in December 1862.
In 2011, employees of the New Orleans Custom House once again returned the building on Canal Street after damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As for the scavenger hunt, it continues. What other records will be found that can provide clues to life and work at the New Orleans Custom House during the Civil War? Stay tuned.
This week in 1775, the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts militia and Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith’s group of British troops suffered casualties, but it is still unclear which side fired the first shot that began the American Revolution.
While they all reveal differences in their accounts, they uniformly maintain the consensus as stated by Captain John Parker, that the British “fired upon and killed eight of our party, without receiving any Provocation therefor from us.” To read more about these depositions and to perhaps come to your own conclusion see, Massachusetts State Papers, 1775-87 within the Papers of the Continental Congress. The National Archives also offers teachable texts featuring John Parker’s deposition.
My grandfather was an avid pilot and builder of airplanes. As a child, I remember walking into his garage to check on the progress of his latest Taylorcraft aircraft. Other than this limited exposure to airplanes (and the commercial flights I frequent) I am not by any means an aviation enthusiast. Yet when I came across the donated records of Leo G. Bellarts, I found myself engrossed in his story and his records. If you don’t know who Bellarts is, don’t worry, I didn’t either. As I was looking into the map collection donated by Lincoln Ellsworth, I accidentally pulled another accession dossier from the box as I was grabbing one of Ellsworth’s. My eyes were immediately drawn to the collection title: “Records Relating to the Last Flight and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart.”
Many of the donated records here at the National Archives are of people who experienced amazing adventures firsthand. For example, the polar collection of donated records is quite extensive and you can see a sampling of this on view right now at the National Archives Public Vault exhibition in downtown D.C. Robert Peary’s explorations of Greenland and the North Pole will be up for several more years. Knowing that the Archives collects some fascinating and sometimes thrilling personal records, I was excited to see what the Bellarts collection would hold.
Kimberly at work in the stack
While the Bellarts collection is small (only one scrapbook), it packs a whopper: the original radio log showing the last transmissions received from Amelia Earhart before she disappeared. This simple document is the rough copy of the radio log with notes and edits. One can see where the radiomen aboard the United States Coast Guard cutter Itasca “x”-ed out and retyped transmissions. The log begins on July 1, 1937 and ends on the afternoon of July 2nd. Earhart’s call sign KHAQQ is seen clearly throughout July 1. However, beginning at 8:00am on July 2nd, Earhart’s transmissions are recorded as intermittent and the log shows the Itasca trying to get a fix on her. Then, the last transmission came at 0843 after a period of silence. According to Bellarts’ account, Earhart’s signal strength was at the highest registration and was coming in so loud that Bellarts ran up to the bridge expecting her to come in for a landing. Instead, the sky was clear with no plane in sight. Bellarts also recalls, “The last time we heard her voice it was so loud and clear that you could hear her outside the radio shack. We heard her quite a few times, but that last time, it sounded as if she would have broken out into a scream if she hadn’t stopped talking. She was just about ready to break into tears and go into hysterics, that’s exactly the way I’d describe her voice, I’ll never forget it.”
It is a good thing that Bellarts had the foresight to save these pages, as they would have been disposed of as they are temporary records. Traditionally, the smooth logs (meaning cleaned up and retyped) are the permanent records. So even though Bellarts had a disposable federal record in his possession for almost 40 years, he ended up saving a noteworthy piece of aviation history.
Amazingly enough, NPR just released the story that a new search for Earhart’s plane will commence this summer. The privately funded group The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) will be heading to the Pacific island Kiribati in July. Perhaps this group will be able to recover Earhart’s plane and help solve one of the great aviation mysteries of the 20th Century.
In June 1941, W. G. Campbell launched a sweeping investigation. As the Commissioner of Food and Drugs for what is now known as the Food and Drug Administration, he commanded all his Chief of Districts to determine, once and for all, the composition of:
chocolate milk.
In a letter explaining the severity of the confusion, he explained that most “chocolate milk” was mixed at dairies, but some used milk and some used skimmed milk; some included sugar while others utilized one or more syrups; and some relied on chocolate while other dairies utilized cocoa powder or cocoa butter. Further, many soft drink manufacturers also created a product they called “chocolate milk” for retail sale or for service at soda fountains, and their product was entirely different, being based in most instances on dried skimmed milk reconstituted in water and heated in bottles rather than pasteurized.
With so much deviation from one product to the next, it was impossible to determine proper serving sizes, nutritional content, or labeling requirements. Campbell wrote:
For the present, we desire each Station to make a limited investigation in its station headquarters or nearby, dealing primarily with the chocolate-flavored products distributed by dairies where the starting product is milk or skim milk….We are particularly interested in the milk ingredient,– is it whole milk or skimmed milk; is it butter fat adjusted, and if so, how and to what fat content; what does the manufacturer call whole milk; is the milk pasteurized or the finished product; is any preservative used at any stage of preparation….The various ingredients (cacao products, flavors, sweetening agents, emulsifiers) other than milk should be carefully looked over, described, and their labeling reported.
What follow in the records are reports from across the country describing in detail the preparation of milk and milk products. The reports are fascinating, and shed light on the history of food politics, legislation, and cultural preferences. Milk, for example, was standardized as whole milk — that is, with no fat removed. Most products were made with whole milk and skimmed milk was something to be especially noted. Percentages of fat removed varied by dairy according to the tastes of local diet markets, but most people drank whole milk. This affected the chocolate composition of chocolate milk: where manufacturers could not obtain real chocolate, they substituted cocoa butter. Its high fat content didn’t yield a smooth blend with whole milk, so coca butter-based chocolate milk had to be made with skimmed milk. Conversely, where a dairy’s milk was too thin and real chocolate couldn’t be successfully blended, reports note a variety of emulsifiers included in ingredient lists. In earlier reports, tapioca was popularly used. As World War II affected food rationing, later reports show Irish moss (the source of carrageenan) used as a thickening agent in place of the unavailable tapioca. Vanillin replaced vanilla, and artificial flavors appeared more frequently.
Although no final report is included in the records, it’s clear that there was no single standard for a chocolate milk product, and that as the War affected rationing, the base commonalities of the drink dissolved even farther.
Do you drink chocolate milk? Do you know what’s in it? And did you ever think about how many of today’s unpronounceable food ingredients may have had their origins in the resourceful recipe-making of World War II-era rationing?
In her 2005 study Drawing The Line: Nature, Hybridity and Politics in Transboundary Spaces, geographer Juliet Fall recounts a parable from a tumultuous corner of Europe: “A local tale told of a man who was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, christened in Czechoslovakia, married in Hungary, had his first child in the USSR, and died in Ukraine, without ever leaving his village” (p. 270).
The story manages to find humor and absurdity in the frequency of social and political upheaval, despite the tragedy and terror that were part and parcel of these transformations. In this way, you might say this parable is typical East-Central European comedic fare. I thought of this story as I came across some documents from the Records of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States (Record Group 299) last week. The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission is an independent federal agency charged with determining the validity and monetary value of claims of U.S. nationals for loss of property or for personal injury caused by foreign governments. In the second half of the twentieth century, the commission administered numerous claims programs for American-owned property in Eastern Europe lost through war or nationalization. Frequent national border changes could create some real confusion for both the claimants and the administrators of the claims programs.
In letters from the series Correspondence Relating to the Polish Program (ARC 6004085), a family attorney and a Department of State official share an exchange about which country controls the territory of the community Galicia Dolina Weldzirz—Poland or the Soviet Union. In this case, it was the USSR, and the official informs the attorney that it has become nearly impossible for persons in the Soviet Union to communicate with relatives in the United States.
In another exchange, this one from the series Polish Claims Files (ARC 5917183), a claimant and a Foreign Claims Settlement Commission official discuss the location of a community identified as Kolowka bei Borscow. While the claimant insists that the territory is Polish, and includes a statement to that effect from the Consulate General of Poland in Chicago, the commission determines that the community is now in the USSR. It must therefore deny the claim.
From claim number PO-1795
The postwar border changes were so vast that for years after the war some people really didn’t know where to find their native villages on a political map, and even at the highest levels of government it could be hard to find out what was where.
Note: While some of these records were created by the Department of State, they were transferred to the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.
