History 266

Transcription Project

for the

Oberlin Women and Antebellum Social Movements Website

April 1, 2002

The purpose of the Transcription Project is to identify and explore documents that further understanding of the relationship between Oberlin women and antebellum social movements.

An Introduction: Why Oberlin Women and Antebellum Social Movements?

Oberlin, Ohio, was a particularly important venue in nineteenth-century America. Founded on perfectionist Evangelical principles, the colony was organized to create an institution of higher education to train teachers and preachers in “the west.” Including women in its classes from its inception, Oberlin became a pioneer in coeducation, and, after a difficult decision to accept students irrespective of color, it became a pioneer in the education of African Americans and a hotbed of antislavery activism. Yet the story of Oberlin’s women before the Civil War is not a chronicle of uncomplicated progress towards “woman’s rights” and interracial sisterhood. Indeed, documents from the local moral reform and maternal associations suggest the importance of comprehending the evangelical construction of womanhood, and their correlative concepts of pathways to women’s empowerment.

Such gendered notions of “woman’s sphere” did not, however, go unchallenged. While evangelically-oriented “gender conservatives” dominated the town and the college, they could not silence dissent. Nor did Oberlinians, male and female, remain static in their views on either sex or race as the events of the 1840s and 1850s shook the country. Oberlin educators, both consciously and unwittingly, trained women preachers and speakers who pushed transformatively against the boundaries of womanhood; they provided advanced training for African American girls and women whose very existence transgressed traditional nineteenth-century categories. Most famously, the town’s “voting abolitionists” became devotees of a “higher law” in their militant rescue of fugitive slave John Price from the slave catchers who entrapped him in 1858. Oberlin women, black and white, religious and dissenting, collaborated in multifaceted resistance.

The Oberlin Women and Antebellum Social Movements website allows us to develop a deeper understanding of the ways in which Oberlin women understood and used their notions of gender for the shaping of their own identities and for their intervention in the community. It provides an opportunity to study the ways in which evangelical womanhood changed over time as it faced its own internal tensions and challenges from the outside. And it offers a case study of the interactions of race, gender, and belief in a time of social change.

Please note: I’ve written the above paragraphs to give you a sense of the kind of introduction to the website that will be constructed. Some version of the above paragraphs will be drafted, based on ideas you help to generate. On the site, these paragraphs will be followed by a brief history of Oberlin, including:

Shipherd’s attention to the “neglected and misjudged sex”

Reference to “The Covenant”

Description of the organization of town and college

Reference to decision to admit African Americans

Description of the organization of the Ladies Board

Rising antislavery commitments

§ AASS split

§ 1840 mission to England

§ Fugitive slave law

§ Black convention movement

§ Women’s organizations and feminist challenges

Also included will be appropriate historiographical references.

The actual form of the full introduction, however, will be shaped by the documents that students transcribe. Each student will be expected to identify, write an introductory headnote, transcribe, and annotate two documents. Below are some notes that should help you as you pursue these parts of the project..

I. IDENTIFYING YOUR DOCUMENT:

Each document transcription project must begin with a clear identification of the source of the document. For a source in the Oberlin College Archive, this means:

Name of the Archive (Oberlin College Archive’

Full name of collection, with Record Group Number

Name and/or other identifying information on folder

Identifying information on document itself

Identifying information about the type of manuscript (use all of the relevant abbreviations; you may also have to add notes for a particular kind of document not listed here):

A=”autograph”=handwritten

L=letter

Tr=transcription

S=signed by author

News=newspaper article

Photo=photocopy of original

Micro=microfilm of original (if using a microfilm, make sure to document all the information about the name of the collection, the reel and exposure number(s) of the document.

Whenever possible, transcribe from an original document. If another transcription exists, you may want to use it in your proofing stage. If you are working with a document for which only a transcription survives (for example, something in the Fletcher papers), fully note that the document is in transcription, and add information about transcriber, location of original if known, and anything else you can supply.

Remember: when in doubt, take down the information. We can always edit it out later, but it will be a nuisance to you if you have to go back to dig up this information again.

For this project, you are asked to make a photocopy of the document from which you are working. Make sure to write all identifying information on this photocopy as well. Whenever possible, you should transcribe from the original. Please keep the photocopy clean for use by the professor. If you want to mark on it, please make a copy of your photocopy for your own scribbling!

II. WRITING YOUR HEADNOTE:

A headnote identifies and introduces your document. Although you should plan to write your headnote after you have completed your transcription and annotation, it will appear before the document in the website. An effectiveheadnote will generally be 150-250 words in length, and will include the following information:

· Identification of the author(s) of the document,

· Identification of the audience for the document

· Notes that will help the reader understand the circumstances under which the document was created (is it from the minutes of an organization? Is it in response to a letter with a particular statement? Etc.)

· Information helping the reader to place the document effectively in time (is this document influenced by a particular local event? A national event?)

· If not covered in the above, information about the particular “orientation” of the document (conservative? Radical? Feminist?)

· If possible, the ways in which the document relates to the larger questions addressed by the Oberlin Women and Antebellum Social Movements website

III. THE WORK OF TRANSCRIPTION:

Transcriptions should change as little of the documents as possible, and intervene in the text only when absolutely essential. We seek to communicate to readers the character and style of the correspondence, which will be better conveyed with literal transcriptions, but there are times when editorial intervention is necessary. Here are some basic transcription rules that may help you:

1. Any editorial intervention in the text should appear in square brackets, that is: []
2. Preserve the spelling of the original in your transcription. Don’t use the judgmental [sic] for misspellings.
3. If you can help clarify the meaning of a word by inserting a single letter, do so, but add the letter as an italic in square brackets, as in w[h]ere.
4. Preserve the grammar and syntax of the original. You may also include in italics in square brackets expansions on typical abbreviations, as in agst becomes ag[ain]st. Often a writer will have his/her own system of abbreviations. Expand these (using brackets and italics) when you think it will help the reader understand the meaning.
5. If absolutely essential to the meaning of a sentence, insert missing words in italics within square brackets
6. Preserve the capitalization of the original, and use the punctuation as it appears, except in the case of final periods, which you may “silently” insert; periods often faded over time, and can no longer be distinguished, even in originals.
7. If a passage is rendered unreadable because of the condition of the original, note the condition in italics within square brackets, such as [torn] or [smudged] at the appropriate place(s) in your transcription.
8. If you think you can read something close to illegible, but you are still not sure, put your guess inside brackets (whether it is a letter or a word), but don’t use italics, as in w[h]ere or [sleep]. If you are less sure, indicate your doubt by concluding your bracketed insertion with a question mark, as in [sleep?].
9. If you really can’t figure out the word(s), and you have gone back to the original to check, note in your transcription in italics in brackets [illegible in original]
10. If a document, particularly a letter, is written so that certain passages appear in nonstandard locations, note this, again in italics in square brackets, as in [continued in the margin]
11. If your document has a cross-out, you should try to determine the word that has been crossed out, and use the overstrike feature in Word to create as near a transcription to the original as possible. If you can’t figure out what the word is, add a notation in italics in square brackets such as [crossed out in original]
12. If you are working with a document that is actually a letter on letterhead stationary, you should make sure that the “dateline” of your transcription includes the basic information on the place the letter is written and the date, although any of this information that is not handwritten should appear in brackets. The dateline should have an annotation, with the full information about the letterhead provided.
13. If you are working with a newspaper article, be sure to include ALL the information about the placement of the article you can in the introductory line, as in: Liberator, May 12, 1844, page 3, column 4: “Cruelty Repeated: Another Story of Resistance and Survival.” Pursue a similar strategy if you are using a magazine article.
14. If you are working with a document for which there is an existing transcription, make sure to transcribe from the original. You should, however, check your transcription against both the original and against the transcription. In your annotations, you should note any differences between your transcription and the preexisting transcription.

IV. ANNOTATIONS

Annotations should supply information and identification for elements of the document that are not generally familiar to today’s readers, so that those readers can make sense of the document. Your annotations should be brief (1-2 sentences), and should be done as footnotes to the text.

When doing annotations for our class, PLEASE INCLUDE FULL CITATIONS FOR THE SOURCES OF YOUR ANNOTATION INFORMATION. Although these will probably NOT be included in the website, the citations will be important for our collective bibliography, and for later fact checking.

While you should probably aim to annotate as much as possible, do note that not everything in a document needs to be identified. Some elements may be familiar to readers; other elements may not need to be explained in order for readers to make sense out of document. Also remember that repeated references to the same person, place, or doctrine do not need repeated annotations. Annotate the first time, and presume your reader will remember.

Here are some standard conventions for annotations:

1. People are identified by name, with their birth and death years following, and according to their major accomplishments, or relevance to the text, as in

Angelina Grimké Weld (1805-1879), abolitionist and advocate for the rights of woman, who, with her sister Sarah Grimké aroused clerical opposition for lecturing against slavery to “promiscuous” audiences in 1837. Married in 1838 to Theodore Dwight Weld, Grimke worked with her husband as an antislavery editor and educator.

Or less significantly:

Sarah Smith (1805-1855) was the youngest sister of the letter writer.

2. Books referred to are identified by their full title and publication date.

3. When you come across a name or reference you can’t place, create a footnote for it, and use the indicator “un known.” During class sessions, we will try to devise strategies to identify unknown references. Some may remain unknown, but others can likely be identified.

4. Annotate archaic or obscure turns of phrase. For example, “to troll the tongue” might be annotated, “to move the tongue or speak.” Similarly, the phrase “appellation of a blue” might be annotated as “reference to the Bluestockings, or women thought to affect overly literary or scholarly tastes.”

Please note that annotations should increase the readability of your document. It is impossible to anticipate all the situations you will face; we can work these out in class and conferences.