Author: James Kaeser, Archival Field Fellow
As an archival field fellow with the Roving Archivist Program, I was excited to be matched with Plimoth Patuxet Museums (PPM)! I had worked in Plymouth before and I have a personal interest in colonial American history, so it was a natural fit. PPM has a large archive that documents the history of the organization and provides much insight on museum operations and historical interpretation. My project was to tackle a large collection documenting the Mayflower II, the museum’s faithful reproduction of the original vessel, that sailed across the Atlantic in 1957 and remains a major attraction and educational resource to this day. The collection contains a wealth of information on planning, design, sailing, and the ongoing operation of the ship, spread across documents, architectural drawings, photographs, scrapbooks, and news clippings.
When I examined the collection, I saw that a previous employee had taken a stab at arranging it, but unfortunately no one knew who did this or when it was done. This became an ongoing challenge with the collection—without this information, I was often in the dark about why the prior arranger made their decisions, and I had to make my best guesses at it. Some other apparent issues with the collection were the amount of rusted metal fasteners and acidic folders damaging the papers, and a large addition to the collection that had never been processed. The plan was to fully process the new addition, perform preservation tasks on several boxes at risk of deterioration, and draft a new plan for the reprocessing of the entire collection.
The collection’s contents were both fascinating and challenging. A good example of this was its large amount of oversize architectural drawings, full of intricate detail showing the planned construction of the ship. I had never worked with blueprints or other oversize drawings before, so I talked a lot with Roving Archivist Tom Doyle and learned the best ways to arrange and preserve them, and I went through a few different arrangements before settling on the best one.
Over time, the collection started to come together. I enjoyed processing the new addition’s contents, and reading all the documents while performing preservation tasks on them gave me insight into the collection and how to reprocess it. It was neat to see the benefits of my work, even before the project was completed: one day, a woman came in wondering if we had any information on Felix Fenston, a financier of Mayflower II who happened to also be her father. Already, staff were better positioned to assist her in finding this information with more ease.
In drafting the new processing plan, the absence of information about the first collection arranger’s work came up. There’s a principle in archival work called “original order”—the idea that the way in which a collection is initially arranged has value to a researcher. But was this “original order”, or was it some arrangement the prior employee imposed on the collection? Without that information, and with consultation from Tom Doyle and PPM’s Director of Collections & Special Projects, Tom Begley, I decided to forgo any notions of original order and set up an arrangement that we agreed felt intuitive and would improve discoverability.
Now that I have completed my fellowship, the Mayflower II papers are properly preserved, the new addition has been incorporated into the collection, and a plan has been made for the final arrangement of the entire collection! Thanks so much to Tom Doyle for all his knowledge and expertise, and to everyone at MA SHRAB for giving me this opportunity. I am also thankful to Tom Begley and Museum Volunteers Brenda, Jim, and Liz for their advice, institutional knowledge, and company every week at PPM.
The Archival Field Fellowship is a grant offered by the Roving Archivist Program. The Fellowships increase hands-on assistance to Massachusetts repositories and provide emerging archivists with professional experience and mentorship. In 2024-2025, three institutions representing a diverse cross-section of archival repositories are hosting field fellows. As the fellowships are completed, field fellows share reflections and insights about their site experience on the MA SHRAB blog. This program is funded through support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
