Category: Research Methods

Historical Research into a Railroad Disaster: Greenwood, Delaware

A house destroyed in the greenwood diasaster, a train wreck.
A house was damaged in the explosion. Source: Greenwood A Delaware Town from the Collection of the Greenwood Library

Recently I have been researching a deadly Delaware tragedy that spurred a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad to push for national safety transportation regulations.  Following several accidents involving powerful explosives, including a catastrophic one in Greenwood, DE, the Bureau of Explosives was created under the American Railway Association.

The Sussex County disaster occurred over a hundred years ago, on December 2, 1903.  During a blinding snowstorm, two trains collided in the center of the town of 367 people.  One pulling a lethal cargo of dynamite and naphtha exploded, the blast and fire severely damaging the Sussex County community of 367 people.

Because of the growing number of catastrophes, James McCrea, who would become the eighth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1907, urged carriers to adopt regulations to promote the safe transportation of explosives.  The Bureau of Explosives (BOE) was created under the American Railway Association in 1907.  With a chemical laboratory and 16 inspectors, the BOE immediately took the lead in inspecting shipments, encouraging improvements in shipping techniques, and developing rules that formed the basis of modern regulations of hazardous shipments.

Throughout the remainder of McCrea’s life, he had vivid recollections of the deadly detonations at Greenwood and elsewhere, which “had caused the death of many people, injury to many others, and had cost the Pennsylvania railroad many thousands of dollars.”  Twenty-seven years later at the annual congress of the National Safety Council in Chicago in 1930, the tragedy was still being discussed in the official proceedings.

Having incidentally heard of the Greenwood Delaware Railroad Disaster in a few widely scattered secondary sources over the years, I wanted to better establish the broad framework and narrative of what appeared to be a major catastrophe in rural Delaware at the top of the 20th century.  But there was little material conveniently available, and a Google search turned up only one hit. a genealogy website that had abstracted some information from newspapers.

So with my interest sparked and my research question framed, it was time to launch an investigation.  Naturally, being a curious type, this is the kind of work I enjoy doing as I start a new study and begin my search for evidentiary fragments from the largely forgotten past.

My first step is always a review of the historical literature.  This enables me to see what has already been done, and that often yields powerful results.  But in the case of Greenwood, there wasn’t much secondary or primary material easily available.

My second step is to visit the community for a field observation as I look at the intersection of the present with the past.  Surviving traces of earlier times exist, and exploring the built and natural environment facilitates understanding.

As I delve deeper into the past from that point, I move into archival research and interviews.  Depending on the purpose of the study, this may include a wide range of materials — written, printed, or digital.  The search for physical records includes letters, newspapers, diaries, photographs, maps, and much more   One seldom knows where the information will be discovered as you start on the trail to find clues to the past.

While much of the material will be found in libraries, archives, special collections repositories, and local government offices, it usually is far from obvious where your data will come from.  There are private papers in homes ranging from notes and letters to entries scribbled in diaries.  Sometimes there are typed manuscripts containing memories of the community’s elders, but tracking these down means poking around to make contacts in the place you are visiting, as that material is often in basements, vaults, closets, and attics.

It also means leveraging unconventional techniques as I make my interest widely known in the community.  That process usually begins with the reference librarian or the local community historian. Still, it also means visiting the barber shop, town hall, police station, tavern, and church.  And it often calls for a visit to the nursing or retirement home.

Along the way, you collect your evidence, and the time will eventually arrive to try to fit the puzzle together by placing material into a pattern, which allows for the creation of a coherent narrative.

For the Greenwood disaster, this is still a work in progress, but as I continue, I will share thoughts on additional resources I come up with along the way.

Click here to read an initial post on the disaster

Materials in the collection of the Greenwood Public Library.
Materials in the collection of the Greenwood disaster in the Public Library.
Greenwood was a railroad junction. A photo without caption in Greenwood A Delaware Town from the Greenwood Public Library.
Greenwood was a railroad junction. A photo without caption in Greenwood A Delaware Town from the Greenwood Public Library.

Observing the Memorial Arts and History in Old Cemeteries

Often when I visit an unfamiliar community for work or vacation, I will pause during my stay to visit the local cemetery.  These old burial grounds are representative of the collective history of a place, and they provide fascinating insight into era and geographically specific cultural norms, artistic values, ethnic influences, and community history.

A walk through these quiet places can be valuable for research or  enjoyable strolling as one observes these surviving relics from an earlier generations.  Depending on the pace of change in a town, the memorials are often some of the last tangible links to the past.

In New England, a region with plenty of fascinating graveyards, the central Vermont region has some particularly notable places.  In Montpelier the spacious park-like setting of Green Mount Cemetery with its many shade trees and ornamental shrubs, has many memorials to catch one’s gaze.    Nearby in Barre, the “granite capital of the world,” is the Hope Cemetery.  It has to be one of the most remarkable for there are many finely sculptured memorials, a testimony to the areas skilled stone cutters and artisans.

Here are a few photos I snapped while we vacationed in the area a few years ago.

DSCN6553a
The park setting of Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier.
In Barre's Hope Cemetery -- Eli Corti. Elia Corti. He was a gifted Italian carver. This life size memorial was carefully carved by his brother William Corti and his brother-in-law John Comi. At the age of thirty-four years he was shot in the Socialist building, following an argument between the socialists and anarchists.
In Barre’s Hope Cemetery the lie size memorial for Eli Corti. He was a gifted Italian carver. At the age of thirty-four years he was shot in the Socialist building, following an argument between the socialists and anarchists.
In Hope Cemetery, Barre, VT. The memorial says Donati. The symbolism is interesting here. The man is smoking a cigarette and in the fashion of something like a pipe dream a woman's hear is positioned in the smoke.
In Hope Cemetery, Barre, VT. The memorial says Donati. The symbolism is interesting here. The man is smoking a cigarette and in the fashion of something like a pipe dream a woman’s head appears in the smoke.
DSCN6557sa
In Montpelier’s Green Mount Cemetery. — a monument for Raymond H. Quero, 1929 – 1995. It reads: “Ray the cop: in service to others: Montpelier City Patrolman, diary crème operator, 1st Vermont State House, Security Officer, 1972 – 1995:

 

 

Presentation on Research and Writing About History

On the day the Digital Public Library of America opened its virtual doors to the public, I was in Havre de Grace to do a talk with author Heidi Glatfelter on “Researching and Writing about the War of 1812.”   We took a team approach to the program as I focused on new methods of doing digital research, while Heidi discussed how she accumulated information to produce her just released title, “Havre de Grace in the War of 1812:  Fire on the Chesapeake.”   We both drew on our experience in working as consultants on the 1812 Bicentennial celebration that is taking place this spring in the beautiful community at the top of the Chesapeake.  Heidi was the grant administrator and I served as a consulting public historian. 

Online research has made a broader universe of information easily available to anyone studying the past.  So for this community-oriented audience I talked about some of the basic virtual repositories such as the Internet Archive, the American Memory and Chronicling America collections at the Library of Congress, and Project Gutenberg.  As old maps are of interest, we took some time to examine some of the portals for cartography such as Old Maps Online.  Of course, in the age when we all Google our information, we took a little deeper look at some of the tools in that massive index, such as Google scholar and newspaper archive.   These were free resources, but we also talked about the commercial content providers.

Once Heidi finished talking about how she accumulated her body of data and developed the narrative for the enjoyable and informative work, we turned to the audience for questions.  They were interested in discussing how to use the online tools and other topics such as derivative digital copyrights.

Here is a link to online research resources you may find helpful.

The Digital Public Library of America
The Digital Public Library of America

 

“If this Place Could Talk: Researching the History of an Old House” Examined in Talk at College of Southern Maryland

“If this Place Could Talk: Researching the History of an Old House” is a talk I am giving at the College of Southern Maryland on Oct 19, 2012.  The free program takes place at the Leonardtown Campus, 22950 Hollywood Road, Building A, Auditorium, Leonardtown  at 7:00 p.m.

Just as families have a past, old houses and properties have histories. When was the structure built? Who lived in it? How has it changed over time? And what are its stories? The lecture will introduce participants to strategies of discovery: organizing a research process, finding available records and documents, and     interpreting the findings.

The program is part of the Maryland Humanities Council’s speakers bureau series.  It brings historians, writers, poets, and living history scholar-actors to the community to present programs to audiences across Maryland.