Thank you, Summer Interns!

It was a lively summer at the NHS! Seven summer interns worked together towards a shared goal: improving access to archival collections for everyone. Natick Historical Society Archivist, Jennifer Richards, reports that, “One of the most gratifying things was seeing how often one project led to another. Someone would open a folder, start processing a group of records, or begin researching an object, and suddenly we would find something completely unexpected to investigate — we call that a proverbial rabbit hole!”

Interns Kate Poe, Eve Callahan, and Emma Bartlett spent much of the summer processing unhoused and unsorted archival material. They worked through the Small Subject Archive and other groups of records, sorting and arranging material, checking PastPerfect for existing records, creating new catalog records, assigning numbers, uploading images, and rehousing material in appropriate archival folders and enclosures. They worked with correspondence, pamphlets, photographs, booklets, and ephemera. Some of this material had been sitting in boxes for quite some time, but over the course of the summer it was organized and clearly described; and today it is much easier to locate and use.

(Left to Right): Eve, Kate, and Emma, NHS summer interns, processing archival materials.

Anna Miksis works with longtime volunteer Sara Hana on the Natick Historical Society Land Deeds Collection.

Marg M. Balcom Memorial Archival Fellow Anna Miksis spent her fellowship immersed in the NHS land deed collection. She processed more than 125 deeds and created a corresponding detailed finding aid for the collection. Her work included: arranging and describing the deeds, identifying names, properties, roads, landmarks, and recurring families, and tracing relationships between individual documents. One especially interesting discovery involved a handwritten note about Pegan Hill that turned out to be a later annotation made by Samuel Bayard Stafford in 1881 on a very early deed. The project has transformed a large group of difficult-to-navigate documents into a much more accessible research collection. Anna returns to Simmons College this fall to complete her MLIS degree with a focus on archival work.

Interns Katie DiPalma and Reilly McKenna focused on research in addition to their collections work, responding to research requests and uncovering the history of artifacts. Reilly worked through objects stored on top of the museum cabinets, identifying them, checking for existing catalog records, creating or updating records where needed, and researching provenance and historical context. Katie cataloged photographs and answered a number of research requests. Together, they completed a deep dive into 35 Glenwood Street, using maps, censuses, newspapers, military records, directories, and other sources to trace the property and the people connected with it. In their hands, a question that began as a straight-forward house history, became a much more extensive report of the property and its occupants over more than a century.

Summer Interns together at the Natick History Museum. Pictured are (back row, left to right) Kate Poe, Emma Callahan, and Anna Miksis, and (front row, left to right) Katie DiPalma and Reilly McKenna).

High School Student Summer Intern, Barbara, digitized and cataloged issues of the Natick Historical Society newsletter, The Arrow, creating digital surrogates that will make this material easier to preserve, search, and use. She also contributed to the research surrounding a remarkable 1649 document we recently uncovered in the collections. That discovery led to additional work identifying the document, understanding its relationship to a bill of exchange and protest, and researching the people and places connected with it in Boston and London. Finding a document from 1649 tucked away in another collection was certainly one of the more unexpected discoveries of the summer and a memorable experience for Barbara.

We are deeply appreciative of the contributions of our summer interns and equally so of the funds that help us support them: The Royal Little Family Foundation and the Marg M. Balcom Memorial Archival Fund. We wish all of our interns a wonderful fall semester and season!