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Stumpage Reports
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Saturday, June 14, 2003 :::
The Spy Who Got Away
I was all excited this week because I got an email from someone who wanted me to transcribe the diary of Rose O'Neal Greenhow. The diary is here at the State Archives. Greenhow was a Confederate spy during the Civil War. I thought it was a little weird. The diary is 128 pages long and has never been published. Primary sources on spies during the Civil War are very rare and I couldn't understand why someone wasn't all over this thing.
I talked to the lady on the phone and went to the archives the next day to take a look at this thing. I soon found out why it hasn't been transcribed. It contains some of the most god-awful handwriting you have ever seen. I got photocopies of the first ten pages and took them home where I worked for an hour and got two partial paragraphs. I talked to some of the folks at the archives and there is one lady there who has been working on it for 10+ years. She transcribed it in about six months and has been working part-time on the annotations ever since. She admitted she hadn't looked at it for a year and was pretty sick of it. The diary concerns a diplomatic trip to Europe that Greenhow took and would probably require a trip to Europe to identify all the characters in it. Some guy in Missouri has been working on this thing for years also.
I emailed the lady and told her if she wanted it in two or three months I'd charge my usual hourly rate, I'd probably go insane, there would doubtless be some gaps in the transcription, and it would probably end up costing her about $1000. But I did say if she could wait til the end of the year, (she's writing a bio of Greenhow) I could do it for a reduced rate and it would probably come out better. She graciously emailed me back, thanked me profusely and said she might take me up on the latter offer but she's in contact with the guy in Missouri and trying to get her hands on his work. She told me to send an invoice to her for the time I had spent and I happily did.
One of the reasons I don't really want to do this is if I put that much time and effort into something like that, I'd rather do something for myself that has a chance of getting published. So I've been telling myself "Do something for yourself that has a chance of getting published!" That, combined with an article in the latest issue of the North Carolina Historical Review that I feel I could have written has got the research and writin' spark going again.
Quote of the Day:
Slavery is a system of labor eminently well adapted to our climate and soil, right and proper within itself, and that so far from being a sin, its establishment among us is one of the providences of God for civilizing and christianizing that benighted race.
--- North Carolina Governor, John W. Ellis, 1860.
::: posted by tom at 1:18 AM
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