The Filson Historical Society Blog

Volunteer Joan Rapp cataloging a collection.

The Filson is most fortunate to have a loyal core of volunteers. As related in a previous post on Larry Carr vounteering at The Filson, our volunteers bring a variety of experience and knowledge to the work they do here. Their talents and dedication help us to succeed in our mission of making collections available to researchers and telling the stories of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley.

One of our most dedicated volunteers is Joan Rapp. Joan is our longest serving volunteer. A native of Albany, New York, Joan graduated from Vassar College with a BA in history. Her former husband’s career took the family to various cities, including Evanston, Ill., and St. Louis. They have called Louisville home since first moving here in 1955. The mother of four sons, Joan kept very busy with family, but still found time to keep up with her interests outside the home, including history.

Joan checking entries in the card catalog.

In February of 1993 Joan began volunteering two days a week in The Filson’s Special Collections Department. Seventeen years later, she is still volunteering two days a week! As with any job, orientation is an important component. There are always collections awaiting cataloging that need preprocessing – arranging a collection in proper order, foldering it, etc. This is a task that most volunteers in Special Collections begin with. Joan quickly mastered the sometimes rather involved steps of this phase of collection processing. One of the aspects of the work she most enjoyed was the immediacy of the letters. Handling letters and documents written fifty, one hundred, or perhaps two hundred years ago brings history and the people making it alive. “You’re holding history in your hands,” Joan says. “It is living. It is unfolding before your eyes, whether it is the descripiton of a battle, or carving a home out of the wilderness, and it’s a thrill.”  Such enthusiasm coupled with Joan’s historical knowledge and quickly graduated her to actual cataloging.

An important aspect of cataloging is understanding what it is you’re reading so that the appropriate subject and name headings can be generated for the online and printed finding aids. This is what allows the researcher to know that information regarding their topic is in a collection. If the information is missed, then important information regarding people and events might go unnoticed for years, if not forever. For years now, Joan has been cataloging new collections and “recataloging” old collections not originally done to our current standards. Joan’s favorite collection cataloged, she answers with no hesitation, is the Mona Bismarck Papers. A who’s who of the mid-20th century Cafe Society, Joan enjoyed reading about the activities of these “beautiful” people and more importantly, recognized the names, generating the appropriate catalog cards for them. Working on the collection also led to one of those serendipitous experiences that make working with the researchers who visit so memorable. Noted British biographer Hugo Vickers visited one day to conduct research in the Bismarck papers. Joan was volunteering that day and not only did she serve as his personal guide to the collection but she also shared her lunch with him. A memory that Mr. Vickers himself fondly recalls to this day.

Joan "living history" through cataloging.

In “recataloging” collections, Joan reads the material, checks exisiting card entries for headings she believes are pertinent, and if they are lacking she creates cards for them. In some cases, the number of entries – signposts for researchers to find material of possible interest – have more than tripled.

There is no end of collections in site for Joan to catalog. “I’m learning something all the time,” she says. As a history major and avid reader, she appreciated the importance of primary sources; but in actually handling and reading the letters, diaries, and documents themselves, “history comes alive.”

Larry Carr doing research at the card catalog.

The Filson’s volunteers find their way to us through a variety of ways. It might be a lecture they attended, a book they read, or an interest in Kentucky history. But whatever the reason, they bring a set of experiences and talent with them to us that can be used to help The Filson fulfill its mission.

Professor Laurence A. Carr is someone who has taken his interest in history and research and helped The Filson for almost ten years. Larry is a native of Michigan who joined the University of Louisville Medical School faculty in 1969 with the ink on his Ph.D. in Pharmacology still damp. Over the next 32 years, Larry taught, conducted research, and served as an associate dean. Larry’s research focus was biochemical neuropharmacology. Summer vacations as a child and then with his own family – wife Jeanne and children Alan and Rachel – often involved visiting historic sites, especially Civil War battlefields. Supplementing this field experience with occasional continuing education classes (Larry took my Lewis and Clark course in the mid-1990s), lectures, and reading, Larry contemplated what he might want to do after he retired. While knowing that his hobbies of family genealogy, stamp collecting, and building balsa wood models of World War II era planes would be enjoyable, Larry wanted to combine his interest in history with research through volunteer work. This led him to The Filson. A trial run at cataloging historical manuscripts in the summer of 2001confirmed for him that this would be something he would enjoy. Since the fall of 2001 Larry has been faithfully coming in two days a week (with the occasional vacation, holiday break, and beating a couple of bouts of cancer).  At the end of 2009, the number of collections (some small, even single item accessions; others large, multi-box collections) Larry had cataloged stood at 183. Civil War collections are a particular favorite. Larry’s thorough, detailed approach to his work – just like his days in the laboratory and classroom – have allowed many collections to be made accessible to researchers that otherwise wouldn’t have been.

Larry cataloging original manuscripts.

Anyone working with collections will have their favorites. In reflecting back on the almost 200 collections he has done, Civil War material was foremost in Larry’s memory. Two large collections of Civil War patriotic envelopes, almost completely pro-Union, topped Larry’s list. Such material was an effective propaganda tool; “simultaneously humorous and shocking,” as Larry recalls. Sleuthing out the identity of the writer of a letter from 1866 containing strong, anti-African American comments proved quite exciting when the writer turned out to be Jesse Grant, father of General Ulysses S. Grant. Lt. William Pirtle’s memoir of his service in the 7^th Kentucky Infantry, CSA, was engrossing and Larry credits it with probably establishing his continuing interest in Civil War collections. But Larry doesn’t dine on a complete Civil War diet. Romance and courtship were as much a part of society in days past as they are today. The advantage to historians is that letters played a much bigger role then in the courtship process and consequently better documents it. Thus we have letters written to Rowland Railey, the “Romeo of Southern Kentucky.” He dabbled in romance as well as legal work, oil exploration, and marketing medicinal herbs – all for the benefit of himself. He placed ads in newspapers across the country asking women to correspond with him. Those ladies responding clearly believed Railey had romance and marriage in mind. This went on for years, but he never actually took the marital plunge. And these are just a few of the more memorable collections that come to Larry’s mind. Immersing yourself in the letters and diaries of people from years past is like stepping back in time. “You really get wrapped up in their lives,” Larry says, “and when tragedy or hardship strikes, it can really affect you.”

Taking the collection from originals to computer.

When helping us achieve our mission becomes a mission for the volunteer, we all benefit. “Volunteering here at The Filson has lived up to everything I wanted to do in retirement if not more so,” Larry states in reflecting on the experience. That’s what we like to hear! His hard work and talents are very much appreciated; and he and other loyal volunteers really become a part of the Filson family and team. Our thanks to Larry Carr and we congratulate him on reaching 183. Now it’s onward to 200!

Next in our volunteer spotlight: long time volunteer Joan Rapp.