#KellyDanner

[iph-interns-2018]

Hi y’all! My name is Kelly Danner, and I am one of the summer interns for Jefferson’s University, the Early Life Project, 1819-1870 (JUEL). Throughout the summer, the other interns and I will be helping the JUEL team expand a digital archive that focuses on the early history of the University of Virginia. JUEL is a project dedicated to sharing the story of Mr. Jefferson’s University by digitizing documents that reveal information about the University--its people, architecture, events, etc.--and by then conducting in depth analyses of these primary sources. 

After some training sessions dedicated to learning how to use Oxygen XML Editor and how to navigate and use the JUEL site and database, I began editing and transcribing letters written by and to George Julian Pratt, a student at the University from 1858 to 1861 and then a solider in the Confederate army as a member of General John Daniel Imboden’s cavalry force. These letters provide a unique perspective on the Civil War and its aftermath as it was experienced by the soldiers and their friends and families back home. 

After we finish the G.J. Pratt letters, the other interns and I will delve into other letters and diaries that will provide further historical information about how people linked to the University experienced the nineteenth century. As the summer progresses, I look forward to developing further familiarity with XML, practicing my editing skills, exploring and learning more about the history of the University and the United States, and sharing that historical information by writing research pieces based on my discoveries. 

[iph-interns-2018]

The Diary of Walter Bowie Jr.

Following the transcription of the George Julian Pratt letters, the other interns and I took on an exciting new task - transcribing and completing the XML markup of the diary of Walter Bowie Jr. Bowie was a student at the University in the late 1840s and early 1850s, and his diary -- a daily log of his activities and personal thoughts on and reactions to various events -- provides unique insight into University life in antebellum Virginia.

Each entry opens with remarks regarding Bowie’s health and the weather that day, and following these updates, Bowie then proceeded to comment upon the news and events of the day. For example, he attended Chemistry, Moral Philosophy, and Law lectures and commented upon these classes and the professors who taught them. He detailed his exploits with such friends as Thomas, P. Cowherd, and Fripp -- including frequent walks to town and around Grounds, a trip to Weyers Cave (“It was certainly the grandest looking natural curiosity that I ever beheld.”), and social gatherings in their rooms (which often included eggs and coffee and lots of singing and debating!). Bowie was also a member of the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union -- an organization founded in the mid-1830s and still on Grounds today, nearly 200 years later -- and he debated such questions as: “Which exirts the greater influence over mankind, the love of money or the love of woman?” “Shd. the system of Free schools be adopted in Va?” “Would a disolution of the Union be disadvantageous to the South?” My personal favorite diary entry, however, recounts, “After supper I thought perhaps a little exercise wd. do me service, so I went up on top of the rotunda. I climbed up from the new building, and when I got on top the dome, I climed up the lightning rod, and stood upon the pen (the weather cock).” Although such an exploit would be frowned upon today, it certainly does sound fun!

Having just finished the Walter Bowie Jr. diary, the other interns and I will now move on to the diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean who, at the time of writing (1861-1865), was a former student of UVa, the husband of the daughter of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, initially a private with the 11th Virginia Infantry, and eventually chief of the Confederate Bureau of War under John Archibald Campbell. As we delve into this diary, I look forward to learning more about the Confederate war efforts and Kean’s personal insight into the intrigues of the Cabinet of the Confederate States.