Long time, no blog

I can't believe how long it has been since my last blog. Time is going by amazingly fast. I've got to get better at remembering to write here!

Since I last blogged, I have finally chosen my research topic to work on for the Monroe County timeline. Christine wanted us to focus on something or someone from the Civil War due to a grant that we have until April. I kept waffling between a prominent family or a business. When I finally sat down and looked at the list of research areas that has been compiled for the librarians to choose from, I narrowed it down to the Bloomington Republican newspaper, or one of the (in my opinion) more interesting families. The Lilly Library here at IU, has several original copies of the Bloomington Republican and has scanned and emailed the pages to Christine. After looking over one of the pages, I decided that the newspaper would be my topic to research. I think it offers a more varied research venue than a family would have. This way I can research the building it was housed it, the editor of the paper during the war, and also use the paper itself for additional research. The concept of an actual Republican or Democrat newspaper was very foreign to me before starting this internship, so that was also a factor in my final choice.

Right now, I am slowly transcribing the paper. The Lilly had four dates from the Civil War, and I am working on November 1, 1861. Transcribing is a new experience for me - there are so many things you need to consider while you are doing it, especially in the old newspapers. There are misspellings aplenty, major grammar errors, upside down letters, words that I don't even know what they mean or if they are just so badly misspelled that I can't figure out what they are. As the transcriber, you need to make your own judgement calls in those situations and keep it consistent. I think I finally got the hang of it, and I am really enjoying reading this 150 year old newspaper. The odd organization (really the lack thereof), the letters from soldiers detailing their companies movements and various battles, advertisements - the newspapers from so long ago are totally different from what we have today.

One letter from a soldier (at least that is who I think these updates are from, maybe the paper had people traveling with the companies as correspondents - definitely something I'll need to research), detailed the movements of the 22d Indiana. He also noted that the "boys" would steal whatever they needed from whatever town they were currently residing near. They would take cows, pigs, chickens, etc - and in fact the writer himself had just stolen someone's chicken the night before. He said "all's fair in war." Another correspondent detailed a major battle, in which the Union quite destroyed the "rebels" - only 5 Union soldiers died, whereas 600 rebels died. He wrote about the battle in Missouri for three full columns, and went on to note towards the end in a very small paragraph, that the soldiers (Union) were so angry at the townspeople for not joining their side that they burned down houses, and destroyed peoples belongings. This was said so nonchalantly and matter-of-fact that it really struck me. The senseless violence and destruction to the townspeople, and only because they would not betray their state. On the flip side, the people were also not fighting for the Confederacy, and did nothing to deserve their homes to be destroyed.

I am very glad that I chose to research the newspaper, rather than a family. I am even more glad that the Lilly Library actually had copies of the paper from the Civil War times - they are the only ones left from that time. It is such an interesting topic to study, especially in that time period.