Side note: Christine introduced me to the assistant curator, Bethany Gray, last week and she is hilarious. Put those two women together and they are honestly a riot. It is NEVER dull day when they are both working on an exhibit together. I wanna be just like them when I grow up.
Back to my internship. If I'm not mistaken I got about 8 shelves done in the span of two days. I know that may not sound like a lot but this is also part of the learning process which is the people I work for have A LOT of meetings to go to. Apparently this is the norm. Learning to balance your work out around other peoples schedules. This is definitely something I need to keep in mind if I ever take a job on like this in the future. The reality is that there are a thousand things to do, everything from giving tours, sending emails, several meetings within a day and possibly holding down more than one job at a time. Time management has become my best friend so far and I've told procrastination to take a backseat.
I know it sounds like you don't have time to procrastinate but it is up to you (or really me) to set a pace, work on my own and get the job done. Advice to anyone who ever takes on a job like this or needs to take a large amount of inventory: as tempting as it is to get on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. just don't do it. I've learned that taking breaks is fine and even encouraged but social media or browsing the internet just because your mind wanders a bit isn't going to get you through that next box of phone manuals (I found way too many of those this week).
I found some really interesting things and learned some cool trivia about specific people and the files that were in the research library. Found a few books written by Rose Cleveland (sister and temporary First Lady to President Grove Cleveland). I was a little confused as to why her books were in any of the boxes I was searching through and why she even had her own file until I did a bit of research. Apparently Rose was totally in love with Episcopalian bishop, Reverend Henry Benjamin Whipple's second wife, Evangeline Simpson. For those who don't know, although Rev. Whipple lived his life mainly in Minnesota, he had a winter home in Maitland, Florida. After his death both Rose and Evangeline continued their lives together in Italy where Rose would eventually die and 12 years later Evangeline would also pass away and be buried next to her long time lover and possibly soul mate (no idea if they were soul mates but it adds to the drama). I just really want to know why this hasn't been made into a soap opera yet. Besides dramatic love stories I also promised to deliver some pictures of some of my more interesting finds and I shall not disappoint my readers.
A close up of some of Maitland's original minutes. As you can see there is a date written on there for 1906 but actually contains the minutes between 1897 - 1916.
Another photo of Maitland's original minutes
A very old toaster that I found. It even has the original detachable plug in the box.
The 1931 sign in book for the registered voters of Lake Maitland. Includes correspondence sent to the town clerk about people who signed up to vote but were possibly not from Maitland. Enclosed with this correspondence is a huge list of all the people who are believed to be real Maitland residents and a more detailed list of people who moved to other cities and the addresses they were possibly living at proving they were no longer Maitland residents.
Have a great weekend, hope you enjoyed my post and hopefully I'll have more pictures for you next week.
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