'The flash and dash'

Hi!

I'm currently posting from our hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. Things are going good here in the US, we're just getting into the travelling life and now only have a week left which is sad. I knew that I wouldn't want to come back! We still have 8 days; today and tomorrow in Birmingham, 5 in New Orleans, and nearly three days back with our family friends in Washington D.C to finish off the trip.
I last posted after we'd been in Richmond on our first day, and a lot has happened since then, I'm not the best at posting regularly... Richmond's Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar Iron Works was wonderful, and made me very excited for studying my civil war module in September. We also paddled in the James river where British America was first founded: we walked along a pipeline underneath a traintrack over the river to find a sandy cove and some rocks where many people were sunbathing. It was supposedly an official trail, but it makes you wonder when you looked down at the river and realised that if someone fell off, as there were no railings, there is no way they'd get back onto the pipe which is a few feet above water level! Public safety in America doesn't seem to be #1 priority; last night leaving Charleston I asked the Greyhound bus driver where the seatbelts were, who just laughed and replied ''Watchyou want seatbelt's for? You plannin' on fallin' down or somethin'?'' !

 The James River

Williamsburg was our next point of call, me and Joseph both agree it was one of the highlights of our holiday. The whole town is set in the 1770s in the midst of the American revolution, with all the staff dressed up in colonial period costumes and the shops set in the past.

We saw a fife and drum procession, an actor as Thomas Jefferson read out part of the Declaration of Independence (he held out his arm to me in a photo, such a gentleman), saw General George Washington ride in on his horse to give us an update on the revolutionary war, and watched colonial infantry fire cannons and muskets. It was a really special experience, and very different to living history museums I've been to in the UK such as Beamish.

An unpleasant 22 1/2 hour journey with a wait from 3am-8:15am in Fayetville, NC bus station, brought us to Charleston, which is a gorgeous southern city set right on the coast and surrounded by sea islands. Every street is lined with palmetto trees, the state symbol of South Carolina, and the houses along the harbour and old cobbled streets have huge French balconies and shutters. It reminded me a lot of New Orleans' French Quarter, where we will be in a few days. Charleston was of course the main focus of my research, and it certainly delivered. We managed to get out on the harbor and visit Mount Pleasant across the bay, and go to a few museums including the Confederate Museum, where the daughters of the Confederacy have collected a staggering amount of civil war memorabilia, the old Exchange and dungeon where prisoners and traitors to the crown were kept during the revolutionary war (there we learnt of Charleston's own 'tea party', overlooked in the shadow of Boston's), and the Old Slave Mart museum, the largest indoor site in the area where slaves were bought and sold.

The College of Charleston were extremely accommodating to me and actually gave Joseph and I four nights in one of their guest houses on campus, giving me easy access to their libraries, and they covered the costs for us, which was wonderful of them. The dean of the college libraries John White was my contact there, given to me from Ben Houston, a US history lecturer at my University. I met with John whilst doing my research and he's a great guy, we're very grateful to him and the College for the beautiful accommodation. We also got a ride in a police car because it was raining, from the public safety office where we picked the keys up, to our guest house, which was an experience! That's southern hospitality for you.

Me on the water taxi.

But most of the time was spent inside the College of Charleston's Addlestone library which houses the special collections, and the collections of South Carolina's History Society. I was able to find some wonderful information on the Jenkins orphanage band, including some amazing pamphlets written about the band that I could not get access to anywhere else. I have not had time to digest all the information that I found as that will be a job for when I get back to the UK as I work on my poster for my scholarship. I also spent some time in the Avery research center for African American history and culture (http://avery.cofc.edu/).
There me and Joseph met with the amazing Dr Karen Chandler who has done so much work and research on Jazz music in the area, and on the Jenkins orphanage band. Together with Jack McCray, sadly now passed, she set up the Charleston Jazz Initiative which both aims to uncover the incredible history of Jazz music in Charleston, as well as researching into the lives on the musicians who came from there and the fantastic careers some of them went on to have. Some of you reading might know trumpet player Cladys 'Jabbo' Smith, a talent rival to Louis Armstrong, or Cat Anderson who played in Duke Ellington's orchestra, both of whom were taught music at the Jenkins orphanage. The Avery center contained all of the original documents from the orphanage, including bills, receipts transactions and financial information, administration files, donations and funding records, records of every child to ever attend the orphanage, and Reverend Daniel Jenkins' death certificate. And of course, I found many wonderful photographs which I was able to photocopy (I've only put one in here of Daniel Jenkins, not sure yet about copyright for the others.)

Something very touching I read through were folders and folders of handwritten and type-written letters from mothers, family members and friends of orphans in the care of Jenkins. Some wrote asking if their child could attend and what the procedure was for admittance, as they had heard of how good the musical education provided at the school was. Some children who went there were not orphans.
I read in the records that in 1947, the average cost of feeding a child was $1.44 a day, or $43.23 a month. Daniel Jenkins himself said ''I promised God when I started out to build an orphanage that I would give the boys and girls plenty of corn bread and molasses, and other things whenever I could, and make them work for an honest living.'' A devoutly religious man, he made all children go to church on a Sunday no matter what. Sarah Finley Dowling, matron of the orphanage for over 50 years, wrote of them ''it would have done your heart good to see the children on Sunday going to church.' Sometimes the boys went to church wearing girls shoes or coats, 'they did take up a lot of room but they had a special place in that church... They went to church and they tried; they did what they were told to do.''

Reading these personal accounts, holding the documents in my hand, seeing Reverend Daniel Jenkin's personal replies to some of the mothers who inquired after places for their children, seeing photographs of the children dressed up in their uniforms and smiling for the camera because Jenkins had a vision that gave so many destitute children a home and a way of living, made the band come alive more than ever.

A few days ago I visited the original orphanage building on Franklin Street. Today the area around is quite run down. One of the first things you notice about the building is that it is situated right next door to the now derelict and quite spooky-looking town jail. I'd read the day before that the poor children could hear prisoners moaning and shouting at night.

The plaque outside the orphanage building.

Me outside the orphanage, 20 Franklin street, August 2015.


These children's story is a very important one and I am so excited to further research it.

Another quote from Sarah Finley Dowling perhaps sums up best how I feel even though I wasn't even there, though I can close my eyes and hear their music.

''The music lessons, the practice sessions, the beat of the drums, the shining horns, the colorful uniforms, the flash and dash, the excitement of those marching bands exist only in the reminiscences of those in whose lives they played such a memorable part.''

My excitement over the museums and history here

Hi!

It's been a while since I posted, to be honest in the two and a half weeks I've been in the US I haven't done too much research because I haven't got to the place yet where most of my research will be (Charleston).

So far our trip has included Washington D.C, New York City, Philadelphia, and we are currently in Richmond, Virginia.
We arrived in the US on the 9th July and stayed 5 days in D.C with a family friend, Hilary, who is absolutely lovely and immediately made us feel at home. She has taken us to so many places we didn't expect to go to, along with her son and daughter-in-law Jake and Kerstin who've been wonderful too, driving us around and giving us so many experiences we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. We're so grateful to them! We went back to D.C after going to NYC and Philly so had a further 5 days with them earlier this week.

Just some of the non-History things we've been up to include Baltimore and Ohio Railroad museum, visiting Luray caverns in Virginia, driving up the Shenandoah Valley, going to a huge shopping mall (I fell in love with Macy's), being at the top of the Rockerfeller centre in NYC, taking a cruise to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island, the Natural History museum in NYC, Philadelphia art museum, an indoor swim centre in Maryland, D.C national botanical gardens, visiting the National Harbor near Alexandria and going up the big wheel, babysitting for Kerstin and Jake's two boys, going to Harper's Ferry where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet, seeing wild beavers, turtles, deer, hawks and eagles, going to an adventure centre and climbing high ropes and whizzing through trees on zip wires, walking along part of the Appalachian Trail, and eating some very amazing food (my personal highlights are the Mexican grill Chipotle, and Waffle House which I've read about in books and always wanted to go to one!)

So yeah, it's been an amazing and packed two weeks!

In terms of history, all the places we've gone to have been an American History lovers dream, I have loved every second. D.C's Smithsonian museums are all free, an incredible thing when you think of the status of museums in the UK. There are 19 of them in total covering all subjects such as air and space, science, art, and history; we visited some of the art and sculpture ones, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National American History museum. Both had fantastic displays and exhibits inside and put you right into history itself. The highlight for me was the third floor of the American history museum which was dedicated to America at war, and covered the Revolutionary and Civil wars, as well as the war of 1812 with GB, the French and Indian war, both World Wars, the Cold War, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan... it covered everything you can think of to do with military history, and the displays were absolutely fantastic and included lots of original artefacts, video, pictures, and interactive stations. By the time we got to the third floor we were nearly museum-ed out; I wish we had started at the top and dedicated the most time to that exhibition. Washington monument and Lincoln's memorial are of course must-visits in D.C and were the very first things we saw. It was very humbling to stand beneath the giant statue of Lincoln and read his famous speeches such as the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address on the walls beside him. I admit I may have bought out the gift shop buying Lincoln memorabilia. I'm a bit of a fan. (Who isn't?) Though we didn't get to see inside Fords Theatre where he was shot, we saw it from the outside; it looks quite unsuspecting and ordinary, but knowing what happened inside is enough to make anyone take a few seconds to look.

Philadelphia has a lot of importance in America's history. We had a guided tour round Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed and sat in the very room it was signed in, saw Thomas Jefferson's house where he lived when he wrote the document, saw an exhibit in George Washington's house and read about the lives of his slave servants, got to see the Liberty Bell and learn about its significance in so many people's fights for liberty, visited the Philadelphia Historical society, and saw innumerable statues and memorials to the first presidents' and their memorable feats. All of the above mentioned were free!

Today in Richmond we had a free tour around the Virginia State Capitol, which doesn't look much from the outside, but I found it to be probably the most amazing place we have visited so far. Richmond was the capital city of the confederacy for most of the Civil War, but fell to the Union soldiers in 1865 and was set on fire by its own inhabitants as they fled the city. The original building of the capitol escaped intact and was restored in the early 20th century, and inside is absolutely beautiful. It was designed by Thomas Jefferson himself, and was the very first building in the United States to be modelled based on classical architecture; a new style of building for a new republic and its outlook based on self-governance and liberty. It contains the original State Senate Chamber, the House of Delegates Chamber which still meets and was where the Bill of Rights was ratified into the US constitution, the Virginia Supreme Court, and the General Assembly which still meets in the Capitol every January. The guide who showed us around today was so knowledgeable and had memorized an inceredible amount of information. I know I live in the wrong continent. The sort of career I want, combining my love for American history and the museum industry, can't be found in the uk!

This is the only statue of George Washington made out of a mould whilst he was still alive, and is now in the capital building.

I could go on and on for pages about the amazing places we've visited, but I should probably stop there. This blog is supposed to be about my own research!

I spent two days in the Library of Congress this week, the largest library in the world. And it is huge. I talked to a research helper when I arrived and we registered to get ID cards printed out, and he recommeded the places I should go for information. I started in the Performing Arts reading room and a guy there helped me use the library's search facilities for articles on the Jenkins House Band I am focusing on. I found some fascinating stuff and was able to print them out for free. A few articles were by Dr Karen Chandler who is the current director of the Charleston Jazz Initiative where I am visiting to conduct research in a few weeks. I have been in touch with Dr Chandler and will be meeting up with her, so finding her work was exciting. There is also a great article on Booker T. Washington's visit to Charleston and how his path crossed with the band, and some work by James Arthur Briggs, and Frederick J Taylor, on research into black music which discuss the orphanage band. The motion picture and television reading room did not have much relevant for my project, and neither did the photographs and prints room, despite me spending a few hours searching through drawers of stereographs taken of President T. Roosevelt and Taft's inaugarations, to try and see if the orphanage band was anywhere in the photographs as I know they played at those events! I didn't find them anywhere.

The newspaper and periodicals room held much more of interest, and I was able to print out many relevant newspaper articles using the library's subscription databases which I could not access at home. My favourite article that I found (yes, I have a favourite) was a very racist and critical piece on the band's presence in London, which excited me because it was great to have an opinion of the band written from an English point of view. I know that the band travelled outside the US to perform but have not been able to find any other accounts of their travels so far.

This is the Library of Congress' main reading room.
There aren't many photos on this blog yet because most of the photos I'm taking are on my camera and until I get back home in mid August I can't upload any from there.

I know that Charleston holds much more specific information I can access that will be more helpful for my research than the Library of Congress did. I had hoped to find more, and was hoping to find some photographs. But I guess I haven't done too bad finding what I have here.

In summary, apologies for the long post, we are having a really amazing time, and I absolutely can't wait to see what the rest of the US south has in store for us! We're only in Virginia and some people here have such strong southern accents it's hard to understand them sometimes. But everyone here is friendlier by far than the more northern cities: people just getting on a bus or walking past in the street have said hi to us and asked how we are! I can conclude that it is even friendlier here than the North of England.

Hopefully you aren't too bored if you made it to the end... thanks for reading.
Look out for my next post!
Emily