The Story of William Wright

I started my new internship at Wright's Ferry Mansion two weeks ago and am absolutely loving it!

Three of the Wright brothers, descendants of Susanna Wright of the mansion, were in the Civil War. I have been transcribing William Wright's letters home. Most of them so far have been to his brother Samuel or to his mother Ann E. Wright, and they describe daily life in camp. I don't know how many letters there are in total, but so far they just keep coming! The next step will be placing them in the broader context of the Civil War. It's been fascinating so far to make some small connections. I began transcribing from September 1862 and right now I'm up to May of 1863. He never mentioned Chancellorsville by name, but it was neat to discover that he was mentioning it in his latest letter. I'm excited to really do the background research for these letters and make more of these connections. The best part, though, is to see camp life through the eyes of one person and to see his life unfolding before me. Sometimes it feels like I'm the one receiving the letters as I sit in Columbia, PA and read them. Oh, I forgot to mention that no one has read these letters before!

Meg, the curator, has been very welcoming, too. I feel quite at home and have certainly enjoyed my fill of hot tea each time!

I look forward to reading more of Will's letters!

How the Story Ended

From lancasterhistory.org

Well. It's been a long time. A ridiculously long time. I didn't even finish telling the story of my fall internship. Suddenly graduate school applications took up my free time and then it was busy Christmastime. But now I'm hoping to pick up my poor, neglected blog once again for the spring. I begin a new internship with the curator at Wright's Ferry Mansion on Tuesday, so I will be glad to share that story! I'm not really sure what I'll be doing yet, but I think it involves a project concerning the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in this area. Related to Wright's Ferry or Columbia, of course.

However, before I begin with that next week, I definitely need to sum up the end of last semester's internship. First, Barry gave me the extremely difficult task of designing the small children's exhibit that will make its appearance in the new gallery. It had to appeal to children, yet still look classy and fit the overall theme of "County, Commonwealth, Country." Talk about awfully challenging. I don't think my small ideas would have been so bad, but it was almost impossible to come to a consensus among everyone involved.

I never got to finish that job because the time came for the historical society to move back to its newly expanded home on President Avenue. The new building looks great! I spent my last few weeks packing up assorted odd objects, and then unpacking in the new (or should I say old?) location. The collections are now in open storage so that visitors can walk through and see them. It's really quite neat, especially since most of the objects are in storage at any given time and only a small portion are on display in the gallery. During most of my semester, the objects were stored off-site because the downtown location didn't have enough space. So I rather enjoyed this entire process since it was the first time I had seen anything besides paintings. My favorite part was unwrapping all of the glass and silver glasses, teapots, and trinkets. It was like Christmas! So that is pretty much how my internship ended. The rest of the month of January they will be unpacking, setting up, and completing an extensive inventory. The historical society will re-open in February for researchers, but will continue to prepare the gallery for the grand opening in April. I definitely want to be there for that!

So now I will look forward to telling all about Wright's Ferry Mansion! Stay tuned!