The Delaware Public Archives (DPA) has released the following announcement about the digitization of the Abram H. Draper Collection, a holding that contains Civil War letters, poetry, and correspondence.
DPA writes: “The Abram H. Draper Collection consists of 34 unique pieces of correspondence, including letters and poetry from Sergeant Abram H. Draper to his wife Anna M. Wiley Draper during the American Civil War. The content of this collection offers a detailed description of Draper’s time while on guard and picket duty, everyday details of the life of a Union soldier in the United States Army from 1861 – 1863. The collection also includes correspondence to and from members of Draper’s extended family, as well as letters and documents to Anna notifying her of his death on January 22, 1863, from typhoid fever at Camp Gilpins, Virginia.”
Draper was born in New York City, but made his way to Delaware where he enlisted in the 1st Delaware Regiment, a 90-day unit of volunteers. Later he enlisted in Company A, 4th Delaware Infantry Regiment as a sergeant. The majority of his time was on guard duty in Virginia, according to the DPA.
In the mid-1980s, I started working on a project for Singerly Fire Company. We were preparing to celebrate our 100th anniversary in Elkton, MD, and planned several traditional projects. Tasks included researching, creating exhibits, commissioning an oil painting, and arranging events. However, we faced a challenge in restoring the two hand pumpers from the early 1800s, which had been used in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Elkton.
The restored hydraulion.
The elder piece of apparatus arrived in Elkton in 1827. Technically called a hydraulion because it carried its own hose reel mounted on top, it had been the pride of the Elkton firefighters for generations. James Sellers, a Philadelphia mechanic, built it in 1817 for a volunteer fire company in Philadelphia. It served there for nine years before it came to Maryland. The second unit, a suction engine, landed in 1859. A Baltimore company sold it as the city converted to steam engines.
These two hand pumpers were the town’s defense against flames until 1892, when Singerly purchased a modern Amoskeag Steam Engine. After that, the town gradually forgot about these units from another age, except for an occasional parade or special occasion, until the centennial neared. However, these aging relics needed work, so we started searching for contacts to help restore them.
We found Jack Robrecht and Al Wills, two fire service historians associated with the Philadelphia Fire Museum. After examining the pieces in Elkton, the Philadelphians suggested contacting an Amish carriage maker.
The old Philadelphia Hydraulion before restoration
In 1985, members of the company traveled to Lancaster County and talked with the Bart Fire Company. One of their members at the station that day recommended we visit the Nickel Mine Coach shop just a mile or two up the road from the firehouse. At the shop, we met a master Amish craftsman, Christian Petersheim Jr., and we discussed the restoration. As we were interested in engaging Mr. Petersheim but needed an estimate, a committee member drove him to Elkton to work up a quote a week later.
We settled on a price, and another member hauled the pumpers to Bart, PA. There, the master artisan and his helpers carefully examined the carriages to assess the restoration work required. Then, they disassembled them piece by piece, preserving the original components. Using hand tools from the 19th century, they cleaned, repaired, and reassembled the frames. The team used high-quality materials to paint and finish the carriages, resulting in beautifully restored artifacts.
The Nickel Mine Shop preserved the original design and ensured the pumpers were ready for another century. The shop did not have a telephone, so when we needed to talk with Mr. Petersheim, he went to the village store in Bart, where there was a payphone. The carriage maker finished the work a few years before the 100th anniversary.
In 2013, I revisited the Nickel Mine Road in Paradise, PA. Mr. Petersheim had retired, but his sons now manage the business. Still, I found him next door in a smaller shop as he has taken up reupholstering antique automobiles, including some for the Ford Museum. There as he where we reminisced about the job nearly 30 years earlier and viewed a photo album documenting the progress. Afterward, he won more fire department contracts, restoring seven additional hand-drawn fire apparatus. This apparatus came from VT., FL, PA., NY, and MD and included one hook and ladder. In his retirement, he started reupholstering antique cars from the early 1900s, which is what he was doing during my visit.
Nickle Mine Coach Shop
The work of this fine Amish craftsman appears in the Singerly Fire Company museum in Elkton, looking as good today as it did nearly forty years earlier when the two hand pumpers returned home to Elkton. Though we never tested it, Mr. Petersheim said the pump on the old hydraulion would work if we replaced a few seals. We were lucky to have the Philadelphia Fire Museum’s help and the carriage maker.
I have had an interesting experience working on a digital humanities initiative, a crowdsourcing project with the University of Delaware Museum Studies Program and History Media Center. It involves a Civil War chaplain’s diary that has been gathering dust for 150-years and was periodically brought out for some research.
The University digitized the diary and students, faculty and staff are pouring over fading pages from another age, scrutinizing those aging entries line by line. With students working from many remote locations since the scans are on the Net they review the hand written words and transcribe the entries. The emerging scholars then submit their contributions which are reviewed and put up on line. Eventually, the entire diary will be available for anyone to access and read and that will broaden engagement, investigation, and research with this valuable source.
It’s a collaboration with the University of Delaware that I hope to strengthen because it makes largely unused cultural heritage resources available to a wider audience. The University’s focus is in the area of the digital humanities, which allows us to take largely un-accessed collections and get the material out to a broader audience for study. It is also a preservation method in that it reduces the handling and makes interpretation much easier.
It has been fascinating to watch this new media project unfold.
In commemoration of the First State’s role in the War of 1812 the Delaware Public Archives has launched an online digital repository of primary documents that researchers and those seeking to gain more understanding about the period will find valuable. This web portal contains many insightful e-resources such as books, military reports, documents, prints, and correspondence. The always open library includes military journals, papers of the legislature and executive, muster rolls, river pilot logs, judicial documents, guard reports, and war claims. The e-books are the biography of Captain Thomas Macdonough and two volumes of the military records of the Delaware Archives.
The Archives has been taking a lead in going digital, making records that have historical and research value available online. This is the latest example of the excellent, ongoing advancements being made by the archivist in Dover. It’s a valuable, attractive resource with great primary source content that chronicles what happened during that dangerous period when the British were in the Delaware Bay. This online collection, while preserving original manuscripts, makes these rare resources easily available to the public. Thank You Delaware Public Archives.
