What I've Been Up To As of Late

I have been writing, I promise! But it has all been in my professional field of history. This last year or so I have written and had published two articles in the local historical society's newsletter, both featuring original research based on their collections.

The first article, "You Scoundrel", deals with the local antebellum celebrity Jared Potter Kirtland, a respected medical doctor better known internationally for his work as a naturalist and locally as a botanist and founding member of the Natural History Museum. The article, based on transcribed documents found in the archives of the historical society which have never previously been publicly released, detail a private and heated correspondence between Dr. Kirtland and an erstwhile guest who was physically handicapped. Dr. Kirtland's account of his initial reception of this guest, and the respect he showed him, reveals the doctor's compassion and his ability to recognize the natural scientific curiosity of all people be they black, female, or handicapped, an admirable quality in a man of the 1850s. The correspondence reveals the deranged thinking of the erstwhile visitor, by revealing that the precipitating event of the quarrel between the two men was the visitor being struck by his host, a sister who's in laws were friends of Kirtland and to whom he evidently was already at odds with, showing that Kirtland had in fact no connection to whatever actual wrongs where done. It also offers a fascinating look at the legal and social steps a celebrity who's life had been threatened could take in the 1850s to protect themselves, and the relatively discrete way in which Kirtland handled the affair in contrast both to Southern gentlemen of his own period as well as more modern personages. As far as I am aware, I am the only one to have studied this correspondence and published an article on it publicly. It was a challenging piece to write as I had to do almost all the research myself, and I was constantly worried the it would be received as slandering Kirtland by the public (fortunately this was not case, it was very well received by readers).

The second article, "Pioneering Firearms in the Western Reserve", on the other hand, was challenging to write in completely different ways. Our newsletter is published quarterly, so even though the majority of the writing was done shortly after "You Scoundrel", it was stuck in something of a development hell and not published until recently... in Spring 2018! There was also some worry, given the recent politics, the article might not make it to press. Fortunately, it was published, and to my delight made front page! The article covered the firearms in the Historical Society's collection, a task I framed in an look at the evolution of firearms technology during the period of rapid innovation in the mid-19th century. The title is something of a pun... the firearms are "pioneering" in the sense of both belonging to pioneers of the Western Reserve, and also technologically innovative. In the article, I covered both civilian and military arms in the collection. Civilian arms featured in the article include a muzzle loading double barreled "overcoat" pistol used for self defense, and a .40 cal heavy barreled muzzle loading hunting rifle made by local gunsmith William Jennings. On the military end of the spectrum, I wrote about the evolution of firearms technology before and during the American Civil War by contrasting an Model 1842 Springfield .69 cal muzzle loading musket with a Sharps Model 1863 breechloading cavalry carbine (which I have realized just now is noted as an 1859 rifle in the captions of the illustrations accompanying my article, much to my chagrin). The primary challenge in writing this article, as any confused reader might by now has surmised, was translating all the technical jargon surrounding the advances of technology in firearms into something the average person could understand. I think I managed to pull it off. Although I fairly wanted to slug the gal who edited my article, to whom the concept of interchangeable parts was evidently foreign! I will also admit there are some points where accuracy suffered, most embarrassingly and ironically there is one point at which I confuse a ladder sight on the Sharps with a leaf sight, but nevertheless I think the overall result did a good job of walking someone who is foreign to the topic through both the history and technology of the artifacts in question. Besides, I got to handle a real Sharps carbine in immaculate condition, and have positively fallen in love with the weapon as a result!

Anyhow, that was a long story, and hopefully at some point these articles will be up on the Historical Society website, so that I can post a link in this blog to them, but for the moment you will have to take my word when I say I am proud both as a historian and writer with what I have done.