Jasmine the Intern

During the fall 2014 semester I was an intern at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. I worked in the programming department, which meant that there were a lot of spreadsheets and Word documents.

Honestly, though, I really enjoyed it. I’ve had internships before; I’ve already been a docent and helped with research at historic sites. This particular internship was a chance to see the business side of a museum. Museums thrive on tours and visitors, but how exactly do you get people not only interested in visiting, but physically there? The answer shouldn’t be surprising to any college student: It was a whole lot of research, scheduling, and planning. And typing.

                                    Sometimes, a whole lot of folders, too.

 I didn’t have an ongoing project per se, but the theme of my work seemed to be tours and events. The Clara Barton Missing Soldier’s Office had recently opened and needed more crowds, so I looked into tour companies that were historically based or that came to the Washington, D.C. area. Later I had to get some data for the tours that took place between April 1 and October 24 of 2014. Another week it was my job to call and email national parks in the area to see if they would be interested in hosting Civil War Talks. For a couple weeks I just looked at tour bus company profiles and decided if they were the right fit for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. I also updated the museum site’s calendar with some upcoming events. All the events were for 2015. One event was for September, and much of the calendar was already full.

                                             This is where you find all your tour and charter bus needs.

That’s probably not that mind-blowing to any event planners out there, but it was pretty eye opening for me. I’m a history major, and like most history majors I think mainly in books and primary sources. Hands-on research is what I’m used to. Museums are a place to present history and the results of research, but you need to catch the public’s interest to keep a place running. So that’s what I learned over that semester: the amount of scheduling, networking, and planning involved in booking tours and hosting events is a massive amount of work. It also keeps museums going.

Missing Soldiers Rolls of Clara Barton

Hey everyone! It feels like it has been awhile since I last wrote a blog post! Last time I posted I was prepping for my presentation on Civil War nurses.  I was really excited and really nervous to present but it felt like a great opportunity to educate people on something I am very passionate about.  I’m happy to say my coworkers and people who listened said I did well and they enjoyed the content.  Otherwise on typical days at the museum though I have been working, among other things, on the Missing Soldiers Roll that Clara Barton published.  Spread over five different lists, it has close to seven thousand names on it with soldiers of all ranks and state origins who never made it home.  The NMCWM had me transcribing it so that it could be placed online and used by other historians for research.  It has taken many weeks but I can happily say I finished the very last name early this morning.

Roll #3, May 1, 1866.  Photo credit to National Park Service Museum Management Program.

                I have to say though that working on the list was a little sobering though because I spent a lot of time thinking about the men on it.  Of those roughly seven thousand names, how many were found and made it home alive? How many died in some place unknown and were never discovered? They were all people who had mothers, fathers, siblings and friends.  How did those people move on with the uncertainty and when did they stop hoping their soldier would come home? Each of these men vowed to protect their country and gave the ultimate sacrifice but I fear that many historians and modern readers don’t see them as people but as numbers.  I guess since I spent so much time looking at that I began to really think.  I saw trends such as the name George Washington being very popular along with James, Cornelius, Albert and John.  I saw names that stood out like American, Pius Blessing, and Alpha.  I saw that they came from states in large numbers such as New York, Pennsylvania and even one from California.  I saw brothers in the same companies, officers, privates and wondered about how they passed the time before they went missing.

Unknown Civil War soldiers graves at Gettysburg.  Photo credit to Beth Cioffoletti*

                The Missing Soldiers Roll was an appeal to the public, to soldiers, to anyone who had information about the men on the list.  Unfortunately, I don’t have information about whether or not any of these men were ever found and I really wish I did.  Sometimes I would see the same name and I  knew the family was still searching but I wonder what happened to the rest.  I know Clara was able to eventually locate twenty two thousand men in three short years but of the seven thousand I have come to know, how many were found? I don’t know but perhaps I can work with the museum staff to try and find out. 

                I hope that soon the list will be up and viewable by everyone so that they can see these names, look at how many companies there were, the names and think about it all as something more than a big list.  It is a big list with almost seven thousand people on it that gave their lives for the Union.  Anyway, until next time everyone! Happy Wednesday!

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http://anotheramericanadventure.blogspot.com/2011/04/soldiers-national-cemetary-gettysburg.html     Beth's blog.