Now that I am nearing the twilight of this project I have found many things I appreciate about completing this project. The undertaking of an archival project in just 2-3 months time is a challenge and thankfully I like challenges. Searching for primary sources/primary documents was the most difficult part for me and the second most difficult part was developing proper and concise headnotes (something I am still working on this very moment!). I never once thought to visit a historical society and look through the offerings to find out more about the background of anything or anyone. My historical research experience up until this point had not gone farther than historical books or maybe the occasional reprint of a historical speech. This was a valuable experience because I got to seek knowledge in a new way.
If given another opportunity to refigure the plans of this class, I would only change two things. First I would not do pre-colonial documents! These are very difficult to find even though Charleston was a major colonial city. Charleston was still not as big of a city as Philadelphia, Boston, New York City which we all major colonial hubs and many of the major pre-colonial, pre-America documents are still housed in the museums and the archival and historical societies there. For Charleston I would have preferred to look at post-Revolutionary documents and life. The early stages of a new nation and the big city of the south that was a culturally, economically, spiritually and nationally/internationally significant area.
As far as my own work goes I would only have changed my topic so that I could have found more information. I thought about this last minute but the establishment of College of Charleston is in fact pre-American (it was founded 1770 and the independence of America happened 1776). The establishment of the city of Charleston, formally known as Charles Town is also very pre-American and the quintessential colonial city (founded 1663). I didn’t bother to uncover any new information on either of these and I wish that I would have. I think I would have saved myself a lot of time by going a route where I researched these things. There is the high possibly that many primary documents exist on both that also have not been overexposed (read: published several times).
Looking back its easy to say what I could have done differently but this was a first time experience for all of us. I think going into it headfirst and just trying to make things work taught us more than having something to imitate or go off of directly. This was a trial and error experience that in a few more days will turn out to be a success.
Comments are closed.