The letters, some written hundreds of years ago by the biggest names in American history, sit in a vault that would make Fort Knox gold feel protected.
And looking ahead, it might take folks at the New Hampshire Historical Society hundred more years to digitize these treasures.
Maybe longer.
But at least they’re trying, albeit a little later than many other institutions. Alice Noyes, a retired math teacher from Epsom, is a volunteer trying to transfer mountains of history into the technological age. I asked her how long it might take.
She laughed.
“I don’t know how many tens of thousands of letters they have,” Noyes said, sitting at her historical society computer last week. “ I really have no idea.”
Sarah Galligan knows. She’s the 29-year-old library director at the historical society. Before granting me special access into the vault, she told me the colossal building on Park Street, which was built in 1911 and looks like something from the Roman Empire, has more than two million manuscript pages and 250,000 photos, not to mention 50,000 books.
This process began about 2 ½ years ago. I asked Sarah if it were close to completion.
She held back laughing and simply smiled.
“About 4,000 items digitized in the archives section, which is about five percent, maybe 10 percent,” Galligan told me. “There’s always new stuff coming in, and it’s hard to keep up with the new stuff and then go back to the old stuff.”
Led by staffers like Galligan and Projects Archivist Korrena Cowing, volunteers such as Noyes, retired music teacher Tom Fisk of Concord and others are categorizing, transcribing, proofing and entering endless piles of material so historical society members can read what was said, which isn’t easy when viewing only the original documents, some of which date back more than 300 years.
(The originals and transcriptions are shown side by side. Non-members can see the original writings only).
“It’s a huge undertaking,” said Malia Ebel of of Concord, the reference librarian archivist. “It will speed up research because professional researchers will be able to read the transcriptions, and also it’s getting young people enthusiastic about history, and if they can see the transcriptions side by side with the original letter, that will make it come to life for them. They’ll read living history.”
Most of the good stuff that will be thrust forward to modern record keeping stops you in your tracks, humanizing our country’s giants. We read about these figures in books, but they never seem to be real people.
Galligan showed me that they were, indeed, real, bringing me to the vault to prove it. She led me to a steel door with a circular valve that looked like a little steering wheel. Nearby were two combination dials that reminded me of a black-and-white movie featuring a sinister safe cracker.
Inside the main vault door stood an additional pair of heavy steel doors, which Galligan unlocked with a key. Inside that was a narrow room, small, with shelves of books and folders up to the ceiling. The space is climate controlled, always between 68 and 72 degrees, always between 40 and 60 relative humidity.
A digital readout high on a shelf told us that on this day it was 69.6 degrees in the vault, with a relative humidity of 43.
“You have to have a consistent environment, because fluctuation is like a wooden door in a house when you can’t open it,” Galligan said. “It warps; paper does the same thing.”
The vaulted paper brought alive George Washington, whose letter to New Hampshire war hero John Stark during the American Revolution denied Stark’s request for funding.
“It will be absolutely impossible to further any of the sums solicited,” George wrote. “I have not been able to obtain any money for my own expense or table for more than three months.”
Laminated, it was dated Jan. 3, 1781.
I held it in my hands.
I also read something from a man named Thomas Jefferson, who wrote a letter to Rep. Salma Hale of Keene, telling him what he thought about a branch of Protestantism.
“The truth is Calvinism has introduced into the Christian religion more new absurdities than its leader has purged of its old ones,” Tom wrote.
That’s from July 26, 1818.
I held that in my hands, too.
And Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, the president of the Confederate States during the Civil War, wrote to his old friend Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the U.S., while Pierce was living in Concord.
This was dated Jan. 20, 1861, less than three months before the Civil War started, when states were deciding if they should remain loyal to the union.
“Mississippi, not as a matter of choice but of necessity has resolved to enter on the trail of secession those who have driven her to this alternative,” read the chilling words . “Civil War has only horror for me. . . but whatever circumstance. . . I trust. . . that you will not be ashamed of our former connection or cease to be my friend.”
Yep. Held that letter, too.
This is the stuff that will be digitized, providing more power and passion than any textbook could ever offer.
It’ll take a while, though, even with dedicated volunteers like Noyes, who grew bored after retirement and needed something to fill her time.
She found it, using her love of history and a magnifying glass to read tiny, old writing covering gigantic, timeless words.
“There are folders for each of us in a plastic bucket over there,” Noyes said. “Mine always stays very full. I can clean it out and clean it out and next week it will be bigger.”
Added Galligan, “We’ll never get everything digitized, I don’t think.
“At least in my lifetime.”