Figuring out the archives

I’ve never done archival research before, so I hadn’t realized how difficult it can be to figure out where you need to look in order to find the documents you want. Before our class’s first trip to the archives, Dr. Nunn explained what finding aids are and showed us the ones for the Hower family records. Finding aids are very short, very general descriptions of what's stored in a given archive box or folder, and ideally, the contents of the archive box will match what is described in the finding aid, though sometimes documents get misplaced or mislabeled.  

The Hower family papers, which comprise the professional and personal papers of the three generations of Howers who lived in the house, are organized chronologically by person: so John Henry Hower’s correspondence is Series I, son Otis Hower’s correspondence is Series II, and Otis’s wife, Blanche, has her correspondence in Series III, while Series IV holds the papers of Blanche and Otis’s daughter, Grace. Then there are a few catchall/miscellaneous series and some subseries (such as Otis’s financial statements, which are a subseries of his collected papers in Series II).  Each series/subseries is then broken down into folders that are stored in boxes, and the folders have short descriptive phrases that give you a general idea of what’s inside. 

I was a bit overwhelmed by the finding aids for the Hower family papers because I didn’t know where to start. I’d been hoping there would be a box labeled something like “household accounts 1909” that would contain servant pay stubs, hiring papers, receipts for laundry, and anything else that might give me information about the people who worked in the house. However, the family papers are largely organized by person, so instead of what to start with, I first had to figure out who to start with.  

I knew that Blanche and Otis did a lot of large-scale entertaining at the house in the early 1900s and therefore must have had a lot of help, so I figured I’d start with them. But, I wondered, should I look in Otis’s papers or Blanche’s? As lady of the house, Blanche likely would have been the one to deal with matters concerning the servants, yet all her papers appeared to be related to her work in the community. Otis’s papers included general correspondence (filed by year and then alphabetically within each year), but would household account information be included in those papers? And if I chose Otis, what year of his papers would be most fruitful?

Keep in mind that there are boxes and boxes and boxes of documents, and each one must be retrieved from the stacks and carried to the reading room by one of the archives staff, so I wanted to choose carefully so as not to waste anyone’s time.

I ended up starting with a box of Otis’s general correspondence from 1906 just to see what kind of papers were filed in there. Most of what I found was unremarkable except for the novelty of seeing mundane bills, receipts, and business letters from 120 years ago.

I did find a letter from a man interested in the position of coachman for the Howers, and Otis replied that they were keeping their current coachman but invited the applicant to try again in a year.  The applicant, Chas. V. Cottrell, replied with a letter thanking Otis for his consideration. 

Finding the coachman’s application letter among a whole lot of repetitive and, for my purposes, irrelevant business documents made me realize that nearly all of Otis’s correspondence concerns outside interests: except for an occasional receipt for bulk orders of fish or bills for carriage repairs, there are hardly any documents relating to household concerns. A home the size of the Hower House would’ve required a lot of goods, services, and hired help in order to run smoothly, and it seems that there should be a lengthy domestic paper trail. So where were those documents? 

I snapped some pictures of the coachman’s letters and Otis’s response just for fun, but I left campus that day feeling like I hadn't found anything useful. 

On my next trip to the archives, I decided to try looking in Blanche’s papers. Initially, I had skipped over her series because the finding aids sounded less promising than Otis’s “general correspondence.” Blanche's series includes boxes of documents regarding her work on the Board of Education, her involvement in the running of the Akron Public Schools and overseeing the Hower Vocational School, and her work as a State Representative. There are nine folders full of speeches she gave for various events. There’s an entire box of her business correspondence from 1924-1929. I didn’t think I’d find anything about servants in those papers.   

But among all the professional documents, there was a single folder marked “Personal correspondence, 1927-1938.” Blanche lived from 1860-1953, so there are clearly a whole lot of her personal papers missing, but I crossed my fingers and hoped I’d find a household ledger or letters that would shed light on the servants’ relationships with the family members.  

Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything helpful for my project in the folder, though it was fun combing through Blanche's personal letters.  Archival work is good for nosy people.     

I’d also requested a box of Otis’s correspondence from 1905 as I thought that was the year the family had hired Valinda Hurley, a locally famous cook about whom Mark Price of the Akron Beacon Journal did a story in 2020. (You can read the article here.) The article does not give a date for when she was hired by the Howers, though it does mention that she advertised herself as available for work in 1905. 

I thought perhaps there’d be something about Mrs. Hurley being hired in Otis’s papers, so I requested the correspondence from 1905 and looked under “H” for Hurley.  Nothing.  I tried “V” for Valinda, but mysteriously, the V file was missing from the box.  I tried “C” for cook, but there wasn’t anything there either.  I didn’t know what else to try, so I just pulled out random folders, hoping to stumble on something like the coachman’s letter, but I didn’t find anything good.  

I left feeling like I’d wasted another precious 90 minutes of in-person research (precious because it takes some effort for me to get time on campus during weekdays, which is the only time the archives are open), and it was small consolation to remember that I can at least rule out Otis’s 1905 correspondence as a source for information.

Now that I have a better sense of what’s in Otis’s correspondence (and what’s not), and since I didn’t find anything pertinent in Blanche’s one folder of personal correspondence, I’m going to cast my net a bit wider.  I have a new list of boxes I want to look through (which will likely require at least four trips to the archives), but I’m most hopeful about a few boxes of cancelled checks.  A cancelled check won’t provide me with a whole lot of information, but at this point, I’d be thrilled to find any documents relating to household expenses, particularly if they include names of the domestic staff.