When I was eight and nine years old, my family and I lived in Bulgaria and on weekends we would travel to Greece. Every time I saw the ruins of ancient Greek life I fell in love a little bit more with what I would come to know as archaeology. I knew I wanted to learn all the histories of civilizations, but did not know how to go about it. Fast forward a few (or twenty-one, twenty-two) years and I was interning with the Historic Sites Division of the Texas Historical Commission. I was lucky enough to intern for two wonderful curators and experience the many different aspects involved in their day-to-day work life. From newly arrived collections or sending collections out for conservation to visiting historic sites, I was able to experience a bit of everything and that, in the words of one of the curators, is what an internship is all about: getting a feel for what happens and the surprises our field can throw our way.
When the time came to apply for an internship, I decided that I could learn more about my field and about Texas history by interning with the Texas Historical Commission. I was accepted the same day I was interviewed and put in a few hours helping get the archaeology vault set up. Now, the Historic Sites Division is located in the newly acquired curatorial repository. They moved into the building the spring of 2011 and during my internship, the fall of 2011, I was able to help finish organizing the vaults and setting up the second archaeology area.
When the internship first began, I was constantly in either the archaeology vault helping the archaeology curator organize it fully, or in the office reading material pertaining to proper handling of artifacts and how to perform museum quality work as the artifacts were going out for conservation and some would eventually be placed on display at their related sites or even the Bob Bullock Museum. After I felt comfortable with the lab work requirements, I dove right into my first project, the Levi-Jordan Plantation artifacts. The Levi-Jordan Plantation was one of the largest cotton and sugar plantations in Texas, located in Brazoria County, south of Houston. It was at its peak in the mid-nineteenth century, however due to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, sugar production declined and Levi Jordan eventually employed some of his twelve slaves as sharecroppers. Up until 2001, Jordan’s descendants owned the plantation when it was then taken over by the Texas Historical Commission. Dr. Ken Brown, an archaeologist and professor, has done much of the work at the site along with Dr. Carol McDavid who has a website dedicated to the plantation, which can be found at http://www.webarchaeology.com. At the lab, my duties were to cross inventory all the artifacts from Levi-Jordan, so that both the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M and our lab had correct inventories. Each lab required different information, so it was not just a matter of copy and pasting. At the start of each day of cataloguing, I had to get the laptop set up, make sure the tables were clean, and then I would glove up and select a tray or bag and begin the inventorying. All in all there were well over 400 artifacts to inventory.
After working on the Levi-Jordan artifacts for almost a month of my semester long internship, I was longing to see the site. We were all able to do a day trip out to the site on Friday November 11, 2011. We were meeting Jim Joplin of the CRL there since he wanted to look at the sugar kettles at the site to check on their condition and if they would handle the drive back to A&M and survive conservation. As the site is currently closed to the public, it was nice to be able to look around without a crowd. We were given a tour of the site and shown where some of the slave quarters had been located as well as where the cisterns still were, albeit overgrown now. At each place, I wondered if it was where the men or women slept and what artifacts that I had handled had been used as a part of their everyday life. Was this area where a female slave had fixed her clothing with some of the needles and thimbles we had? Did the male slaves take a break at night by their quarters and have a quick drink? Towards the end of the tour, we were shown the bricks that made up the chimney that had been taken down when they raised the house. Incredibly, they found bricks that had fingerprints imbedded in them. It definitely puts a little perspective on life when you come across something indelible like that.
After I completed work on the Levi-Jordan Plantation artifacts, I went to task on 4 other projects: artifacts for Fort Griffin that will be housed in their site museum, one of the Tyler Seven Rifles, researching the history of a soldier from the United States Colored Troops, and textiles from Varner-Hogg. I did not feel comfortable taking apart the actual gun for my first disassembly, so one of our colleagues brought of a reproduction rifle that he uses for civil war reenactments. I learnt the different parts of the gun, their names and the proper way to disassemble and reassemble them. Once I was confident in my newly honed skills, I went to task on the actual rifle. The Tyler Armory during the Civil War was known for using whatever parts necessary to create and/or fix any weapons. This particular rifle was no exception. Once disassembled, I filled out an Artifact Condition Report in which I notated any and all markings on the weapon. If it was scratched in the slightest bit, it has been permanently documented and I took photos of every marking as well. Before I could reassemble the rifle, I went online and did more research to find what markings should be on that particular rifle and that was when I found out that it was made up of a multitude of pieces and each piece may or may not be marked, depending on when the original weapon it belonged to was made. After searching gun collector websites, gun auctions sites, eBay, numerous visits to libraries around town and a number of gun shops, I still did not have the complete identification of this rifle. As it is called a Tyler Seven Rifle, there are only seven intact rifles. It has definitely been an interesting journey and I am amazed at the amount of information you can find online, which was not available even five to ten years ago. After I had come to a decent standstill on the rifle, I switched to doing research on a soldier from the United States Colored Troops. As we are currently looking for any of his descendants or any family history at all, I cannot explain much more. Again though, I am surprised by how much information can be found online, yet still feel like there is not enough available! When the Varner-Hogg textiles arrived, we got more than we bargained for. We three interns stopped our other projects and everyone at our lab jumped on the textiles. Ima Hogg definitely had an eye for some unique pieces and she was also a collector.
The number of projects I had may not be many, but with the amount of work and effort that went into them, I feel proud of what I accomplished. I was lucky enough to land an internship with an incredible agency and my fellow interns and our curators are the greatest. I also found out that I got on as a volunteer, so I have 3 projects in the works already. The Tyler Seven Rifle, once I get enough information to back up the claim that it is a Tyler Seven, will be a THC web blog. Also, I will still be doing research on the United States Colored Troops soldier. And as for the Fort Griffin artifacts, I am in charge of creating an inventory, control all documentation (paper and photography), and research as much as I can about each artifact. These pieces are for a site exhibit about the life of women and children at Fort Griffin. I am quite excited about this and hope I will do a good job representing their history.