The NHPRC grant allows PRINT to expand significantly by making a larger pool of researchers available than before. As such, several teams will be working at once to create digital records and metadata for collections material received from PRINT’s various collaborating institutions. To make the most of grant-expanded resources and to provide accurate results for PRINT and its partners, it is important to standardize data across projects. This reduces the amount of time required to sort and process the data; ideally, standardized data can be machine-read uniformly. Creating standardized data starts with making precise, yet user-friendly and approachable across teams with a variety of experiences and backgrounds.
To begin metadata input, we first needed to confirm the ways in which it was encoded. While developing our EndNote Protocol document, we encountered a few challenges to the generalized structures we were outlining. While our protocols are applicable across collections and instances, the nature of some data we are attempting to capture complicates machine-readability. Special cases arise when reducing the complexities of life and lived experience to ones and zeroes. Some letters were written while at sea. When thinking how to encode these, there is potential in using ship manifests and logs to track the journey of these travel networks. Tracking voyages is a valuable network and an exciting prospect to explore further. But, as part of the visualization, it is a step for a later time.
Tracking intermediaries, however, begins with metadata encoding. As correspondence moved along networks, it did not always follow a direct sender to receiver route. In a world before post offices and mailing addresses, routes of postal delivery and communication often relied on “intermediaries” to receive letters. Throughout PRINT records are instances of Senders relying on an intermediary to receive the letter with the expectation that the intended Receiver would soon visit. Encoding instances of this communication network in motion adds two facets to connections between people and their movement or location within networks.
In the Pemberton Papers, those who used intermediaries to receive letters were often what is termed “Traveling Friends”—Quaker itinerants who traveled from town to town to hold or visit meetings and to attract new followers through their preachings. Roger Longworth, considered by many to be the most “well-traveled Friend,” often received letters this way as he returned from months-long voyages across Europe. One frequent intermediary in the Pemberton Papers is Susannah Millner, a presumed shopkeeper or publican at the Red Lion located on Wood Street in London.
More than one intermediary sometimes rendered the path from Sender to Intermediary to Receiver more complex. If a Traveling Friend was in Germany but another was expected in London before going on to visit other parts of England, it was likely they would encounter each other at a local meeting when both were in England—the Traveling Friend often departed from an English port when returning to the American colonies, while many Pennsylvania Friends regularly returned to England to maintain business or personal connections. This is the likely circumstance regarding a letter written by Phineas Pemberton on June 10, 1680 (May 31, 1680 Old Style).
While the salutation addresses Roger Longworth (Figure 1), the back is addressed to James Harrison (Figure 2). As an agent for William Penn and Phineas Pemberton's father-in-law, James Harrison was often the recipient of letters from Phineas while Harrison was in London on business. In this instance, Roger Longworth was likely on an extensive voyage across England or continental Europe, and Phineas believed James Harrison would encounter him at some point in both their travels. The role of Susannah Millner as an intermediary is intriguing—both as a waypoint in travel networks and as a woman associated primarily with a business in seventeenth century London. A dictionary of London places reveals many instances of Red Lion/Lyon establishments with several potential candidates to be the one associated with Susannah Millner. We do not yet know much about her nor the location of her establishment beyond Wood Street in London. While briefly investigated, it is unfortunately a matter for another time.
Encoding accurate metadata is a balance between wanting to investigate threads and learn more, and "keeping it moving" to meet expected progress. The paths of Friends as they moved and interacted along networks reveal a complex web of relationships. The complexity of these networks is such that the desire to see them beyond mentions in a document and instead in motion constitutes the original idea for PRINT’s network visualization. The locations of Longworth and Harrison can better confirm if this scenario was indeed the truth, but it is a matter of prioritizing attention as project goals move forward. Given the complex nature of adapting historical inquiry to historical data, it is a multi-multistep process requiring extensive time and effort. While constantly presenting exciting opportunities for inquiry down the line, data must be taken one step at a time to ensure it gets to the next step in the process!
Image Citation: Phineas Pemberton, to Roger Longworth via Susannah Millner, London, England; at Red Lion, Wood Street, 1680-06-10, vol. 1, pg. 139, Pemberton Family Papers, 1641-1880, 0484A, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PRINT, 15888, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/printmigrationnetwork-pemberton/126/.
Comments