And now, some details on my internship!

I am a "History Intern" at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, or USCHS, as it is fondly referred to by its devoted employees. I work Tuesday through Friday, from roughly 8:15 to 4:15 (the hours are pretty flexible; I'm just required to be there for 8 hours between 8 and 5, and I have an hour off for lunch as part of those 8 hours!), with two other interns, Emily and Tessa. Emily and Tessa aren't from TWC, but they're in similar programs in the D.C. area. We each only work 4 days a week, but we have different days off.

Our main job is conducting research for USCHS' We, the People calendars. Each calendar corresponds to a year either 150 or 200 years ago, and every day of the calendar has a fact from that day in history. So, for instance, USCHS' 2013 calendar has a historical fact for every day of the year in 1863. 2013 is actually a pretty good year for this kind of research, because 150 years ago was the Civil War, and 200 years ago was the War of 1812. However, Tessa, Emily and I have been looking up facts from 1815 and 1816 for the 2015 and 2016 calendars. We're supposed to find facts that correspond with Congress or the President, but it's not always so easy.

When I first started my internship, we were finishing up 1815. Last semester's interns had found about 80% of the dates and left us with the bottom of the barrel: dates Congress wasn't in session; weekends; things like that. But we were able to finish 1815 up a lot faster than I'd anticipated, so for the past two weeks, we've started the 1816 calendar.

Our main sources are historical newspapers and the Library of Congress website, although we're also allowed to walk the two blocks to the actual library just about any day we want if we want to look through the books or newspaper databases on site. From the office though, there are basically three types of sources we can use: newspaper articles, documents from Congress (the Senate and House journals, Bills and Resolutions, etc., most of which are on the Library of Congress website) and letters. The LoC website has the entire Thomas Jefferson Papers and James Madison Papers online--which means that we can look at scanned copies of every single letter that they ever wrote or that anyone ever wrote to them or officials close to them--and that's a lot of letters.

The most fun part about reading these letters is the formaly. Every single one starts "Dear Sir," even those between correspondents as close as John Adams and Jefferson, who became great friends in their old age and wrote each other every few months for decades. Most of the letters end with "an assurance of my deepest esteem and respect," but some go even further, saying, "I have the honor to be, your most obedient servant." Apparently, this was such a common closing in the early 19th century that it was shortened to make the letter a little more concise. As a result, many of the letters I've come across end something like this:

"I have the honor to be,

James Monroe"

This abbreviation makes sense once you're familiar with the non-abridged form, but it's a little bit less obedient-servant, more egotistically-self-serving, don't you think?

The less humorous part of reading these letters is the first step: deciphering the handwriting. Thomas Jefferson actually had very good handwriting (or, should I say, easy to read by 21st century standards), so his letters are usually pretty easy to read. He was also quite verbose in his post-presidency years (he was "chained to his desk" from sunrise until noon, every day, writing letters), so he presents us with a lot of potential facts.

Here's an example of one of Jefferson's letters from August 27, 1816. Jefferson writes to Henry Latrobe, the U.S. Capitol architect, with an idea for a fixture to sit on top of the Capitol Dome: a giant globe/clock which Jefferson designed himself (the letter even includes an illustration!). Latrobe wrote back several months later, rejecting Jefferson's idea because it was so simple that it could become a common figure in farmer households--clearly, a terrifying idea. The Statue of Freedom that stands on top of the dome today wasn't designed until the Civil War -- ironically, she was built mostly by slaves.

In some letters by other writers, the handwriting looks like a fancy Microsoft Word typeface. This is a letter from October 24, 1816 from a group of D.C. citizens asking President James Madison not to build a stable in their neighborhood. Can you believe people actually wrote like this??

In a lot of these letters, the words are hard to decipher not because of the handwriting, but because of the way the letters are formed. Many early nineteenth cenutry-ers wrote the letter "s" as a cross between an uppercase "L" and a lowercase "f" in cursive. But, they only used it at the start of a word or at the start of a double "s." My first week here, the word "session" was driving me insane (pepsion? lelsion? felsion? lepsion?).

And some letters, unfortunately, are just deemed a little too difficult for my amateur skills (although I have gotten a lot better decipering just in the past 5 weeks!).

In instances such as these, it's best to give up and start tackling the 19th Century U.S. Newspaper databases.