Friday, September 05, 2003 :::
I've Been Working on the Railroad, Part 6B
I'm back doing some research for the railroad company. The work I was doing before involved going through records and papers from the 1920's to the 1950's. The stuff this time is from the 1860's and 1870's so that makes it a little more interesting. Of course, interesting is all relative, I'd rather go through a railroad company's records than the papers of an insurance company.
I've learned two things this go around, everyone wanted a free ride on the railroad and everyone else wanted their kid to get a job selling candy and newspapers on the train.
One thing I do to keep myself awake is to enjoy the ornate letterheads and sometimes goofy sounding company names. For example: "James Whitted, Manufacturer of Bright Plug and Twist Tobacco," or "J.W. Finch, Groceries, Grain, Feed, Guanos, Hides, Furs, Etc." Its always nice to get mail from the "Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands" and you have to smile when you get a letter from "W.T. Hollowell, Grand Keeper of the Records and the Seal, Knights of Pythias."
They also got mail from some outfit called "The New South Club." Can everyone say "White Supremacist Organization"?
::: posted by tom at 3:38 PM
