Preservation Week

     As someone who works with original documents, vintage photographs, and historically relevant items, it is easy for me to emphatically join in promoting the idea of preservation work.

     It’s a bit more difficult to put those intentions into practice. Yes, I have boxes of old photographs I’ve been meaning to organize. I have caches of old letters that are meaningful to me. They certainly need a better place to dwell in my home instead of the drawer where they are currently stashed. The JMC Library’s social media platforms will have more information about taking care of family treasures we haven’t “gotten around to” properly storing.

     Family records are all about connecting to past generations. A single diary can transport the reader to an understanding of the events of that lifetime. Family records can also be a part of the larger picture of a community.

     For example, the Tennessee Room has the World War I diary of Preston Rushing, a soldier of Company B 105th F Signal Battalion. In 1918, he wrote from the Western Front and described the adversity he confronted in The Great War.

     The experiences Rushing described included getting strafed by German biplanes. This little diary was transcribed, studied, and published in history journals by Tennessee Room volunteer Catherine Carls.
     Remarkably, it has been published far from its West Tennessee archive, in Revue Historique Ardennaise [2022, No. 54]. The article was published in France because the Preston Rushing Diary revealed previously unknown information about World War I.

    Our staff is thrilled when our collection contributes to the body of history or genealogy information in that way. As my take on Preservation Week, throughout the week I’ll share other examples of publications that include local history or genealogy research from our Tennessee Room.
    Tennessee Room librarians Emily Tupa, Jack Wood and I are happy to answer questions about preserving family documents. Library social media will stress the importance of taking care of your family papers.  Your family’s generations-old diaries just might have something new to reveal about the people, the places, and times from which they are written.
    Keep your family papers safe and pass them down.