HIST615 Problem #1: Wading into the census of Fredericksburg, VA

Apologizes for posting this so late in the week- the next shall be revealed in a more timely matter. Annotated Sanborn maps for the city have been included in the post above this one.

I decided to look at the 1880 Fredericksburg, VA census from ancestory.com. I used the Mar. 1886 Sanborn maps for the city as well as cross referencing with the 1889 city directory and 1885 business directory, both found here: http://resources.umwhisp.org/fredburg.htm. All sources used were in digital format. The pages selected for this project were pages 45, 46, 47 and 48 of the census. Fairly quickly I noticed Fredericksburg’s “quark” which was hinted at in class: The city at this time lacked building numbers. Needless to say this unique characteristic made the city directory invaluable. But the directory is not infallible; I found many entries on my census pages lacked a recorded address. The only clue I have to go on for these mystery dwellings is that every other listed entry for my source sample was always Main ab/bel/cor another street. So it is likely these unregistered entries are located somewhere near Main Street.

The sample of 200 people on my pages was majority white in race. There were also some Mulatto and Black entries, but the majorities of these were domestic servants and linked to the entry of a white family in the area (It was interesting that servants as well as borders were linked to a family unit, as were grandchildren and stepsiblings or parents). The exception to this were the Black men listed as laborers which were not usually linked to another family, and the one Black family recorded which had a male child who was not working (listed as “At home,” the only example of this I found. The parents were a laborer husband and “keeping house” recorded wife). I found race listings as curious, esp in that Chinese and Mulatto were categories (I was under the impression that Asian immigration was very limited, save for the “paper sons” loophole, but I may be thinking of a later time period such as the early 1900’s).

Going off of amount of servants as well as the types of jobs listed for each family unit/individual I would hazard a guess that the neighborhood my sample overlapped on was one in which middle to upper middle class members lived; Many white individuals worked in skilled jobs, socially visual jobs (tax collector, city sergeant, etc) Some ran their own businesses (grocer, hotel owner, etc). Black and Mulatto individuals uniformly were stratified into the labor and domestic servant roles. Most women were “At home” or counted wife duties as “keeping house” but some women worked: as housekeepers if white (often widowed with no family) or domestic servants if black- some more adventurous worked as teachers (both in sample unmarried and sisters), seamstresses or in one case was enrolled in school as a student. *May add a more extensive breakdown of this later* Family size ranged but the typical family in these 4 pages appears to have had 3-6 children. Extended families with nieces, parents, and stepsiblings were not uncommon. It would have been nice if deceased relatives/children were listed, but they were not in this census so only living relatives are recorded (families size therefore may be skewed lower than reality, if all relatives were counted deceased children included).

I will post the mean median and mode for the age spread later, but it basically came out to a bell curve with the main section hovering around the 9 to 42 range, with 24 being the most common age. The youngest listing was 2 months while the oldest was 80.

As for birthplaces…VA was the most common listing. From parent birth locations it can be inferred that most families were long time USA citizens, however there were some from Ireland and a white couple which had the wife from the West Indies and the husband from the District of Columbia. *may add numbers for how many at each location) The other birth locations mentioned included:
NY
Penn.
Ireland
Maryland
Kentucky
Ohio
Hanover
Illinois
Wash D. C.
South Carolina
Tennessee
Massachusetts

All in all this has been an interesting exercise. I just wish I had left myself more time to explore its nooks and crannies, so to speak. Feel free to post with your thoughts and feelings on what I have posted so far. And again, apologies for the lack of map/images- they will be amended in shortly.

Rebirth of the blog

This is just a short post to let people know this blog will be renewed with life soon. It is my hope to convert this into a space for my “HIST 615 Historian as Detective” posts. I may also play designer later and make the site a bit more presentable.

Project #2 Musings

Keeping with the theme that project 1 started I decided to make project 2 civil war related as well. This time however I will be focusing on a topic that is a bit more impersonal then diaries and letters, although such items may still play a roll as sources to gain knowledge from.

Basically my idea is to look the causes of death during the American Civil War and how this corpus of records changes from the start of the war till the end in composition and makeup. It is my hope that by exploring the causes and using visual aids to chart how they change over time that I can expose some context’s and trends that went on during the war and ultimately influenced what people died from (or did not die from) and why these trend may have shifted. The civil war is known for being one of the costliest (in terms of human loss of life) of the American fought wars to date- so I felt that death and its causes during this time period were an important element to study.

I have been reading both primary and secondary sources for this project. Additionally I have been looking into civil war medical practices and ambulance and hospital organization and one of the major trends I have been notices has been related to them…There was in some ways a mini-revolution in medical practices and organization during the war but in context that would be expected (in a war when more people are injured or dieing it is logical that these practices would have to adapt and improve). Types of weapons used (Minié balls, use or lack there of of bayonets, riffled guns and cannons, etc) and the condition of the army looked at, geography, weather, and how camps were set up are also proving to be related to types of death and changes in their proportions.

This subject deals with data that often times is just portrayed as a table or set of numbers. But there is a surprising amount of complexity within this topic and I believe it would benefit from being portrayed in more visual and graphical forms.

The many faces of copyright.

I hope everyone had a happy holiday. I am working on my second project but will post about that a little later in the week (from the other posts people have made concerning their projects it seems that many creative topics and ideas are being explored). What I wanted to explore this week was the subject of copyright and some of the forms it can take which we read this week in our assigned readings.

I knew the basics of copyright elements but I was surprised to learn about the change on the requiring of the mark and the lengthening of the consecutive terms from, what was it originally- two terms of 7 years at the start?, to 75+ years as it is now days. I understand the reasoning about wanting to cover relatives and whatnot but I will be honest- the copyright term of the present USA seems so long currently as to be counterproductive to the learning community. There were also the instances of false labeling and denying source use without cause that some copyright owners managed to pull off (which I found very shocking)…But then, that is one of the main reasons why alternative copyright forms like Creative Commons and GNU General Public License (GPL) developed isn’t it? The humanities can certainly learn from these alternative forms of copyright even if they originally were produce for the field of science or (in the case of GNU) computer science.

I really liked the GPL and how there was a master copy that is copyrighted to the original creator but yet changes are allowed to be made to it and new forms produced and copyrighted to their respective inventors. You still give rights and respect where it is due with this but it also allows for information to flow and new forms and products to more easily come into being. The only thing that I find could be both a blessing and a curse is that it is the copyright holder of the original who must enforce their own GPL- I can see ways that could potentially cause headaches. If I did a project like say HistoryWired I might consider a copyright like this.

The other form of license we looked at this week was Creative Commons. I liked this form of license and with the direction my project is going this would be the type I would be most likely to select. I think it is a good counter-dialog to the current mainstream system employed. I was surprised as well by just how many big name companies and services used it: Google, Flickr, Wikipedia- which also used GPL before and whitehouse.gov just to name a few. The four main licensing conditions for Creative Commons seem well suited to the academic and non-profit fields and I especially like the share alike and non-commercial elements. This system is more open to sharing but credit is given where it is do and the power of the original producers is not all consuming- its a better balance for both consumers and producers of the copy righted items and allows the knowledge base to grow in the long run.

Overall the topic this week has been interesting and I will have to continue to learn about the different types of alternative copyrights to find the one best suited for my project (if my project were, hypothetically, to be made real).

HistoryWired and dimensional history.

The sites we explored this week were certainly unique in their presentation. One common theme linking them all was the visual, unconventional and dimensional ways they portrayed their information.

I found HistoryWired slightly confusing at first, but once I got the hang of navigating it I found the dimensional approach they give fruitful for making insights with the data that might otherwise stay hidden. For instance, you could highlight a block and within a certain topic area (sports, military, etc) then see via lines what subtopic areas up top it related to (some of which that were linked, or not as the case may be, provided some surprises). The tags provided on the left when a box was moved over and the background information and zoom functions were useful addition as well and could lead to other uses of this data (such as text minding and searching using the tags).

Additionally you could change the drop-down menu at the top left from general to one of the upper subtopics and see more specified topics within that subtopic and how the map lined to them (I did science and was surprised at the domination of physic’s lines and how over half the science/medicine field did not link to any of these more specific areas given at all). It was nice that the lines were not the only way of expressing these connections- I found that clicking the top subtopic buttons highlighted in orange all boxes that related to them and if more then one subtopic was clicked and a box was included in both it was given a deeper orange for overlap.

I think that if information is going to be given in a visual and dimensional way then HistoryWired’s approach of implementing several ways to see the same connections within the data is a good way to go about things: both in providing insights but also as a safety measure of sorts to keep the data coherent within itself. One thing this and the other sites we have looked at often lack in however is providing a good walk through or usability key since not every feature or presentation is as intuitive to the user and it may be in the creator’s mind. It would also be interesting if some of these sites, such as the GNH application on Facebook and the Feltron report had a section explaining the algorithms and how the data it portrays was selected and organized into the final form & why that data is deemed important enough to save.

Digitalizing history- centered not on a person but a place…

I had a fun day exploring some of the websites we were assigned this week. One theme I noticed right off the bat was how each site in some way related to expressing the history of a place using digital means.

I liked how Cleveland on the silverline had an interactive map that showed the places you were looking at and always provided a way to zoom back out to the main menu. Although it was confusing when I first opened the page, since the map starts without any text labels till you roll the mouse over them. Each place is subdivided into more specialized areas finally ending with a building/location (within a set of buildings/parks/etc). I especially liked the mutli-media aspect to each location covered (photos, audio, sometimes video) and how each home page for a location included that place’s history. I realize it is still in beta but it would have been nice to see more of the alternative tabs developed on beyond just travel/weather/art/events with a splash page. Overall I could see this being used by both students studying the location and visitors alike (in some ways it seems more oriented to visitors though).

Hypercities was my favorite of the three sites we were given. I would love to use this software when I do Appomattox Manor/City Point tours and talk about the city’s history during and after the Civil War. XD I can see a lot of use for this both in history and archeology although the site seems to/claims to be most oriented to students (And is even being used by some classes already, according to the class section of the website). My one main complaint is that this is not so easy to first run with firefox if you happen to use NoScript (took some fiddling to get around the complication, and when tried on IE it required a plugin which not every user may want to have to install). I did, however, like the use of YouTube video to explain how to use it however.

Philaplace seemed more like a collaborative project. Like Cleveland on the silverline it also had multi-media elements and a focus on certain buildings/neighborhoods. However the site navigation does not seem to be as visual or interactive as Cleveland’s was. But this side did include a low tech variant of what hypercities provided i.e. a historically layered map of certain locations (which included a search function in it). Another thing that set this site apart was its inclusion of a blog.

Overall these were some fascinating sites and I can see how these would be useful to a historian. If I have more time later I think I will continue to play around with them.

The Tale of Genji- How Open Library and Google Books contrast.

This week I decided to play around with Google Books and Open Library. After some internal debate on what book to search for I settled on 源氏物語 aka the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (紫式部).

I picked this book because it was a classic and thus sure to have been made into an ebook at one point or another, I knew from having read it that an English version existed and it allowed me to see how each site handles non-English books.

The first site I tried searching this book on was Google Books. Searching in both English and Japanese kanji produced results (ie the site has both language versions of the book online). I was given a list volumes 1 and 2 as well as different versions of them. For this test I used volume 1, the first result on the list for the Japanese results and the Tyler version for the English results (also the first result). Clicking on it took me to a page with more information which can be accessed below (will show my search terms and everything). For the inner book text search I used 紫 (Murasaki).

Japanese version results (on English Google books): http://books.google.com/books?ei=yQjHTL-REYOKlwfb-O2LAg&ct=result&id=YtgPAAAAYAAJ&dq=inauthor%3A%22%E7%B4%AB%E5%BC%8F%E9%83%A8%22&q=%E7%B4%AB#search_anchor

English version results: http://books.google.com/books?id=AIUvc9FnZ5AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+tale+of+genji&hl=en&ei=4BLHTP_hFJO8sQO4su3KDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-preview-link&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Since this had a different page setup, being a full preview/scanned book, the inner search page has a different link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=AIUvc9FnZ5AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+tale+of+genji&hl=en&ei=4BLHTP_hFJO8sQO4su3KDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-preview-link&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q=Murasaki&f=false

Japanese Google books result: http://books.google.co.jp/books?ei=pRHHTOGpEY72tgPbzPH8DA&ct=book-thumbnail&id=0pLUxoRtuiUC&dq=%E6%BA%90%E6%B0%8F%E7%89%A9%E8%AA%9E&q=%E7%B4%AB#search_anchor

It surprised me that only the English translation was fully available online but this page explained why: http://books.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=43729&topic=9259&hl=en

So Google books is a good source for both English and non-English book information but previews and full ebooks are limited because of copy write complications. It may also be possible to not find a match for a book you are looking for if the google staff has not added it yet (what gets added is not done open source like a wiki). It allows inner text searching and has a viewer when pages are available as well as a zoom function and links to other versions/places to buy the book/etc. The common words and phrases and bibliographic sections are also nice for students, as is the references from web pages section.

Open Library was a bit different from Google books in a number of ways. Although the viewer was similar it lacked some of the interconnecting elements like review, similar books, etc. For another thing it is very pre-biased towards English language books and searching. Searching in kanji produced nothing yet using the Roomaji name Genji Monogatari did get Japanese version hits (so it has both language versions but by not allowing searching with kanji/hiragana/katakana it could make it seem like it lacks the Japanese version to unfamiliar users). The searching issue was the same when in the book reader. Below is a link to a Japanese version found on open library. You can search for text within books both in the viewer and outside it (which is nice) but try searching for 紫 in this version and you get nothing (Murasaki gets a hit on page 666. I also tried 源氏物語, name of the book, since its printed on the top right side of every other page but still nothing.)

Open Library is also more open source like then Google Books with its use of a wiki, allowance for user submissions and edits, and progress on making a list system that users can customize/system for alerts.

Open library is a good source for getting information on English language books esp for lesser known ones which Google might overlook. It provides more customization for users. But the reader it provides (which is pretty simple, although it does have search and zoom) and the language bias make Google books a more attractive choice for doing research in (to me at least).

Finally settled on my project’s focus~

It has been a busy two weeks and I apologize for missing last week’s post. I have been working on my project for this class, dealing with some family and health issues- among other things.

Of the ideas I listed last post, partly thanks to the feedback I received, I ended up going with the third one. I am designing in my mind’s eye a digital archive that collects and makes search-able letters and diaries written in and around Petersburg, VA or about the events that occurred there during the civil war (ie during the years of 1861-1865 and during the Siege of Petersburg that lasted 292 days). Most of the primary sources would likely be written by soldiers but civilian sources would be included as well.

To make the sources search-able like I envision XML/XHTML and tagging would almost certainly have to be used. I also plan to provide both transcribed text and images of the original documents. Likely the images would be displayed as thumbnails and come as both a high quality version that takes longer to load and a smaller version displayed in .jpg format or something of the like. If possible it would be nice to code the images into some form of viewer so that they could be zoomed in and out on, if the visitor so desires.

I also had the idea that each letter or diary would come linked to a page which gives a brief description and biography of the writer and maybe with links to other pages that give an overview of the events the letters talk about: for example if a letter discusses seeing the battle of the crater then there could be a link to another page discussion what the battle of the crater is listed on the main  letter starting page and/or the biographical page or something.

Which of course leads to questions on audience…I really want to try and set up this hypothetical digital archive site in such a way that both researchers and the general audience can get something out of it. It would be nice as well if it could implement some system where visitors could submit unpublished letters and diaries and maybe leave feedback on the site (somewhat like what the 9/11 archive site did).

I have a feeling the hardest part about this project would be organizing the data structure and formats and setting them up in such a way as they can have longevity or at least upgradeability especially considering the fact that a lot of the letters and diaries that would be scanned and transcribed may not outlast the site (the physical copies of the sources could be returned to the contributors destroyed, what have you). The structuring and formatting of the site interface and search functions themselves would also have to be made with care especially if the site has to appease several different audiences both technology wise and user wise.

Still lots of work to do but the project is coming along. Later I might fiddle with hyperlinking some powerpoint slides together and make an outline of how the site format might look and post them (could also draw it or make a simplified html mock site to get a feel for how this archive should look).

Continuing to whittle project ideas out…

I have been thinking more on my project and what path to take to ground myself in a specific subject area and idea…After a lot of back and forth I finally decided to do something related to Civil War history (Although I could still work the African American element within this topic so that area is not totally out yet…). I have a job with a the national park in my hometown of Petersburg which focuses on the siege of Petersburg and related areas (City Point, Five Forks, Poplar Grove national cemetery, etc) during the later part of the civil war and so doing something related to the civil war could become beneficial in the long run beyond this class.

The civil war is still very broad so I need to narrow my focus down more, and I have some ideas on that which need to be developed more…I also need to figure out exactly what technologies and form I want my project to take. I have been digging around trying to learn more GIS and other technologies to try and help me decide.

I am always open for advice and constructive criticism so I thought I might toss and few ideas out and see which ones seemed most promising to follow up on. It is my hope that tossing a few idea out into the written word will help me think more about the smaller details involved and get a clearer visualization of each project in my mind’s eye (ie I am using this post and any feedback it gets to make my ideas more concrete so I can decide on one, or modify one into a new form as the case may be)

1.) A visual archive of civil war soldier uniforms and/or a virtual display of the progression of uniforms which allows the user to zoom in/out and interact (would have uniforms for troops on both sides…or could be conformed to a narrower uniform focus).

I can see this idea being developed in a number of different ways. At the cheaper end of the spectrum the visual archive could be achieved with high quality pictures, at the more expensive end (which might be better if I want to make it more interactive) some form of digital modeling software could be used to make a 3D representation out of the images (Not sure what would be used…Autocad maybe? Or possibly Direct3D or the open source OpenGL…)

There is also the question of what audience this would be aimed at…I could see civil war scholars finding this useful but I could see other groups such as movie makers, writers, reenactors, etc making use of such a database or display. Students and the general public would also be an audience to consider when making this, esp. if it were to be used by the NPS.

I would not be surprised if websites have been made with visual uniform displays for certain regiments but I am not sure a comprehensive one has been made for both sides that is interactive and/or has a searchable database I envision this idea if made might contain (Since if it is made into an archive and not the interactive display idea I could structure it somehow with meta data so that despite being images a search engine would still work).

2.) A virtual campsite/battery/battle interactive walkthrough or map…Or an archive of digital panoramas of different battlefields. (Very broad idea, if I went with this I would narrow the focus down)

This idea is similar to the idea with uniforms but the scale and technologies might be different and I can think of a variety of audiences and ways to incorporate this. There would also be some challenges in making this as well depending on the battlefield selected and the amount of information existing on how the sites would have looked like in the past.

I am pretty sure there are sites and parks that have created something like this, so it might not be the most inventive idea to go with…Still, thinking back to the park I work at I could see a project like this being very useful (we usually use movies, models, and landscaping to give a feel for how the battlefields we present looked or relay on ranger given interpretative talks…But the general audience might respond better if there were waysides at the stops with a virtual interactive map of how each looked during the war, or something along those lines.)

3.) A site documenting soldier and civilian letters, newspapers, oral history, etc concerning certain area or time period (in this case Petersburg during the civil war siege or maybe somehow relate it to USCTs and slave/free black experiences during the siege)

Another idea which I could see being helpful to the park I work at and scholars but which is not the most original. I am actually aware of an amateur site that has been toying with the idea of collecting soldier letters related to the siege (It only has two letters of current if I recall correctly). And there are other sites which offer such a digitalized collection of letters and newspapers for other focus areas (VMI has online documents of graduate soldier letters written during the civil war, for example)

I have more ideas but I think I will stop here for now…I am focusing on the visual and archival aspects but I could come up with something related to podcasts and other senses besides sight (like sound) if I really want to explore other avenues…Anyways, what do you think about the general ideas I listed above? I realize they are still very broad but with time I can develop each of the idea above into more specific definitions and forms.

Reflections on the readings and selective scarcity…

This week’s readings covered some technical aspects I really had not thought much about before. After reading them I can see a more comprehensive image of what is required to make websites like these and add to their longevity.

One thing that really struck me as novel, but when thought about more was very commonsensical, is the aspect of longevity of digital media as discussed by this week’s authors. Digital media does such a good job of short term perfect storage (or near perfect, since compression methods are sometimes lossy) and information dissemination that in a way it blinds users to the issues of longevity. We are so use to software and hardware updating, as users, that we may not always think as deeply on what is required to update archives and websites to keep up with those changing standards. Or even the amount of work it is just to keep backup copies in working order.

Until the Rosenzweig reading I had never really given much thought to the fact that digital information could be lost to future generations on such a large scale. When the reading talked about possibly using emulators to recreate past digital environments (which reminds me of what gamers are doing now days to keep old games/systems alive via computer emulators) and “digital archaeologists” it really brought the message home.

But both of those solutions would still involve time money and expertise…Large scale and funded sites and databases would be able to update and possibly produce emulators for later use but what about the sites and information stored by amateur users and on blogs? Is it possible that in the future digital historians might have an abundance of the professional projects and sources but a lack of the everyday perspective? Granted projects like the 9/11 site discussed in the readings (if continually updated) may save some non-academic material from our time in digital history but there is still a lot of perspectives and voices that would be lost.