Week two: 01/24-01/26

This week I started the project of transcribing documents from the digital collections. After being walked through the procedure and how to format my transcriptions, I delved into the many letters, memos, and other documents waiting to be deciphered. I actually really enjoy this project. I like the challenge of trying to sift through the scrawling text, which can be difficult at times when the writing is small or sloppy. There’s one letter from someone at the Department of the Navy to Wilson that I’m trying to transcribe that is proving very difficult. The cursive text is tightly bound, and many of the letters are not exactly perfect cursive. There are a few revisions that were added in as well that add more symbols to be deciphered.

Despite the difficulty in reading some of the letters, I do love getting glimpses into the past from these snapshots. It’s interesting reading about the war and the goings on in Europe from this perspective. I feel like many people don’t get to see these kinds of documents, so I enjoy getting to transcribe them.

One letter that I find particularly interesting, and even amusing, is a letter to Wilson from his niece, Jessie. She describes going to a war bonds rally and the excitement and patriotism that was in the air. She talks about how positive the response to her reading of one of his letters was, and she also begins to talk about a young man who is apparently a big fan of Wilson.

Personally I feel like he is very over-the-top. Jessie claims he says that the only person better than Wilson was Jesus himself, and that he refers to her dear uncle as the “Great Wilson” or ” the Noble Wilson”. She seems very infatuated with this “godly” young man. I imagine Wilson smiled as he read her letter and the silly, love-struck tone in her words.

I’m still working on transcribing this letter. There are parts that are very hard to read, and I still can’t make out the name of the man she’s talking about. Luckily, since the files are all on a cloud server I’ve been able to work from home. Mark is having me do this every Friday now.

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