Nothing’s New: Episode 6 – Sources

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Transcript

[00:00:01] Andrew: You're listening to Nothing's New on GNAT-TV, a
[00:00:05] historical podcast connecting the past
[00:00:07] to the present with Paige Vignola, Shawn
[00:00:09] Harrington, and Andrew McKeever.
[00:00:15] Hello and welcome back to another edition
[00:00:17] of Nothing's New.
[00:00:18] Today is Thursday, May 21st.
[00:00:20] Great to have you all with us today.
[00:00:22] This is where we talk about things from the historical past
[00:00:25] that help us, hopefully, understand
[00:00:27] the present a little bit more, a little bit more better.

[00:00:31] Boy. [laughter] Shawn: A little better.

[00:00:33] Paige: That's how we're starting huh?

[00:00:35] Andrew: Boy. Oh well. Okay. Anyway, I'm Andrew McKeever,
[00:00:40] and it's great to be back with my two colleagues here on
[00:00:44] our podcast.
[00:00:46] Paige Vignola is the assistant director of the Manchester
[00:00:49] Community Library, Shawn Harrington,
[00:00:51] is the curator of the Manchester Historical Society.
[00:00:54] Welcome to you both.
[00:00:55] Good to be all back here in the room.
[00:00:58] So today our topic is going to be one, I know we touched
[00:01:01] briefly on it in one of our
[00:01:02] earlier, earlier podcasts, talking about historical
[00:01:07] sources, primary sources, secondary sources.
[00:01:11] Basically, how do we know what happened in the past in some
[00:01:15] historical event or, or
[00:01:17] whenever that it actually happened the way the history
[00:01:21] books told us it happened?
[00:01:23] So there are all kinds of different sources of information
[00:01:26] we can draw on for that to kind
[00:01:32] of help us understand what we know and perhaps
[00:01:35] what we don't know.
[00:01:38] But anyway, let's dive in, because this is certainly a
[00:01:41] kind of a fascinating subject
[00:01:42] for all of us to kind of find out how
[00:01:48] reliable our information really was in Shawn.
[00:01:50] Let's start with you.
[00:01:51] I mean, there's probably some events that have happened in
[00:01:56] Manchester's history will sort
[00:01:58] of keep it local for the moment.
[00:02:01] That maybe there's a question marker to us to whether what
[00:02:06] records we draw on are
[00:02:08] really what, accurate or really tell us the full story.

[00:02:12] Shawn: Yeah, thanks Andrew.
[00:02:14] I get the privilege of sharing history that
[00:02:18] history from our local communities, Manchester
[00:02:21] and the mountains, and I always say I don't really have to
[00:02:25] have any original ideas.
[00:02:26] I just get to retell stories.
[00:02:29] Then sometimes it's uncovering those stories and where do we
[00:02:31] find those stories and
[00:02:33] how are they passed down through the generations?
[00:02:35] The Historical Society was established in 1897.
[00:02:39] As a result, we have a pretty large collection which we're
[00:02:41] selling the process of cataloging
[00:02:44] Manchester, who had visitors come in from all around the
[00:02:47] country and certainly from around
[00:02:49] the world to a degree.
[00:02:50] Not only do we have the Manchester Historical Society's,
[00:02:54] but there's also repositories of history
[00:02:57] at the Bennington Museum, the Vermont Historical Society,
[00:02:59] University of Vermont has a special collections
[00:03:02] and digging further, there's the Library of Congress.
[00:03:05] These are all places where I've found bits of Manchester.
[00:03:08] The National Archives,
[00:03:10] the New York Public Library actually has a
[00:03:12] very fascinating archives,
[00:03:13] which is really fun to kind of dig through.
[00:03:16] And then all sorts of archives, Harvard, Yale,
[00:03:20] institutions out west.
[00:03:23] Recently I gave a talk at the Lincoln Symposium at Hildene.
[00:03:28] And we know that Mary Todd Lincoln came to Manchester in
[00:03:33] 1863 and 1864.
[00:03:35] So that's a story, everybody nods and you know, say,
[00:03:38] yeah, I've heard that too.
[00:03:39] Well, how do we know she was actually here?
[00:03:42] One of the primary sources, for instance, that we have
[00:03:45] from the National Archives,
[00:03:47] and I know I'm just going to kind of hold it up.
[00:03:49] I just printed it off just to kind of show a little bit.
[00:03:51] This is a telegraph from Abraham Lincoln to Mary on September
[00:03:57] 1864,
[00:03:59] where he writes, Mrs.
[00:04:01] Lincoln, Manchester, Vermont, all well,
[00:04:03] including Tads, Pony and Goats.
[00:04:07] Here's the text messages from our president
[00:04:10] and Commander -in -Chief,
[00:04:11] who's overseeing the military operations of the Civil War,
[00:04:15] but also letting his wife know that the
[00:04:17] Pony and Goats are doing well.
[00:04:20] Mrs. Colonel Demick died night before last.
[00:04:24] She was a woman who actually,
[00:04:26] her children were friends with the Lincoln children.
[00:04:29] Bob left Sunday afternoon, said he was not sure whether he
[00:04:33] would, he should see you,
[00:04:34] so Bob being Robert Todd,
[00:04:36] you know, because he had been up here and then gone
[00:04:39] down to see his father
[00:04:40] and then was going back up to New York.
[00:04:42] So, you know, and then assigned a Lincoln.
[00:04:44] So this would be considered a primary source,
[00:04:47] you know, so we know that
[00:04:49] Mr. Lincoln sent this
[00:04:50] telegraph up here to Manchester.
[00:04:53] You know, what's the story that we can tell behind this?
[00:04:55] Well, you know, there's, you know, you can parse just this
[00:04:57] very small telegraph down into,
[00:05:00] you know, kind of a whole storyline.
[00:05:02] So that's just one kind of very small example of how I can
[00:05:06] take a little thing and just really spread it out over 15, 20
[00:05:09] minutes if I wanted to.
[00:05:12] But, you know, I mean, all of that, which is incredibly
[00:05:14] important and, you know, when somebody
[00:05:16] comes to me asking about, you know, a home, a house, a person,
[00:05:20] you know, what happened or a story.
[00:05:22] I mean, it's always going to find, well, how do we have a
[00:05:27] document? You know, was it in the newspaper?
[00:05:29] Was it written up? Do we have letters?
[00:05:31] You know, is there oral history?
[00:05:32] All of which, you know,
[00:05:34] were written down by someone or recorded by someone and then
[00:05:38] their interpretation of it,
[00:05:40] you know, the newspapers, I mean, going back to our
[00:05:42] Manchester Journal 1861, always had an editor
[00:05:44] who always had his slant on how he viewed any topic of the day.
[00:05:49] So it's interesting how you can
[00:05:52] look at history, right, Paige, and, you know, and to look at it
[00:05:55] and take it as, you know, gospel.
[00:05:58] And, well, as you know, gospel doesn't always have the best
[00:06:01] intentions for everyone involved.

[00:06:04] Paige: It's a moral. Great.

[00:06:07] Andrew: So, Paige, I mean, I'm wondering, let's extend
[00:06:10] this, extend this idea
[00:06:11] over further. I mean, you're a scholar of medieval history and,
[00:06:16] you know, what happened in the
[00:06:19] more distant past, shall we say, before a lot of things were
[00:06:22] written down at the time they happened,
[00:06:25] right? So how do we know that, you know, what someone so said
[00:06:30] was really what went down?

[00:06:33] Paige: So, first and foremost, I want to just kind of piggyback
[00:06:35] on something that Shawn was talking about.
[00:06:36] He's talking about, like, going to archives and finding
[00:06:38] documents and information and whatnot.
[00:06:40] There are so many different historical sources, like, it's
[00:06:44] not just written word, right?
[00:06:45] I mean, you could take, like, a pair of shoes, for example,
[00:06:49] from, say, the 1830s. And that might
[00:06:51] tell you something about the person who wore them,
[00:06:53] if you knew where they came from.
[00:06:55] It might tell you something about fashion trends, right?
[00:06:57] It might tell you something about socio -economic
[00:06:59] status, right? There's a lot of different information that can
[00:07:02] come from sources of history,
[00:07:04] right? I mean, like a trained ticket.
[00:07:06] You know, maybe you know people's migration patterns.
[00:07:08] Maybe you know, again, you know, how much it costs to get from
[00:07:10] one side of the country to another.
[00:07:12] So, it's not just necessarily historical narratives that give
[00:07:15] us information. We're not necessarily
[00:07:16] just, you know, telegrams or whatever that will
[00:07:20] give us that kind of information.
[00:07:22] And the interesting thing about that is that there are a variety
[00:07:24] of different branches of
[00:07:26] history that I think that a lot of people don't really think
[00:07:28] about. I mean, we think about history
[00:07:29] as being perhaps, like, political history or military
[00:07:32] history. I mean, there's cultural history,
[00:07:34] right? I mean, there's social history.
[00:07:37] Social history. I mean, social history is probably,
[00:07:39] in my opinion, the most fascinating aspect of history,
[00:07:42] right? I mean, like, who's doing what and
[00:07:43] where and when and how? I mean, it's kind of described
[00:07:46] oftentimes as history from the bottom up,
[00:07:48] right? Because it's not necessarily about the great
[00:07:50] people that everybody knows about. I mean,
[00:07:52] history fundamentally is just the story of like, you know,
[00:07:56] like, who's doing what to whom, right?
[00:07:58] So, I mean, like, and that's what it is.
[00:08:00] It's about people, for the most part. Anyway,
[00:08:03] so I think that that's kind of interesting.
[00:08:04] And the other thing that Shawn touched on is like,
[00:08:06] he's got a primary source document.
[00:08:09] But so, you know, what is a primary
[00:08:10] source? And that kind
[00:08:11] of that kind of matters, right?
[00:08:13] Because a lot of times the idea is
[00:08:15] that, well, it's a primary source
[00:08:16] that must be accurate. Okay.
[00:08:19] So a primary source, by definition, really,
[00:08:21] is like kind of like a
[00:08:22] first -hand view of an event that took place or a first -hand
[00:08:26] time -specific contemporary source
[00:08:28] to an event. And a secondary source is typically somebody at
[00:08:32] a later date who is reviewing primary
[00:08:34] sources and maybe analyzing them, maybe categorizing them,
[00:08:38] maybe, you know, like writing about a
[00:08:41] context using multiple primary sources.
[00:08:44] Okay, that's great. But a primary source then doesn't
[00:08:46] necessarily have to be a reliable depiction of fact,
[00:08:50] right? A primary source is a great way of
[00:08:52] knowing what somebody was thinking or what somebody was
[00:08:56] trying to do. You know, I mean, everybody
[00:08:59] has an agenda. Everybody has an agenda, even
[00:09:01] people who are writing history.

[00:09:03] Andrew: And there's really a whole lot of potential primary
[00:09:07] sources, right? I mean, I suppose we think
[00:09:10] of them most likely as written documents or something that's
[00:09:14] preserved in some way. But a building
[00:09:16] could be a primary source, right?
[00:09:19] It showed that in 400 BC, you know, somebody built something
[00:09:23] here at Temple or whatever,
[00:09:25] or maybe it's paintings or...
[00:09:29] Absolutely. I mean, archaeology provides

[00:09:31] Paige: the predominant number of primary sources for ancient
[00:09:34] history, for sure.
[00:09:36] I mean, art historians can
[00:09:37] tell you all kinds of things about a particular culture and a
[00:09:40] particular society based on what is
[00:09:42] depicted. I mean, it's fascinating what you can get
[00:09:44] from these materials of history. I mean,
[00:09:46] it's actually one of my favorite classes when I was in grad
[00:09:48] school with literally material history
[00:09:50] where you don't even think about the things that you could
[00:09:53] possibly use as a source.

[00:09:56] Andrew: Well, I mean, there must be some example from
[00:10:01] the ancient past, not
[00:10:04] really. A thousand or so
[00:10:06] years ago, some event that might have happened that you could
[00:10:09] argue, well, we think it happened
[00:10:12] this way, but maybe it didn't.

[00:10:15] Paige: So I think you could probably say that about
[00:10:16] almost any
[00:10:18] historical event in the past, right?
[00:10:20] We think it may be happened this way,
[00:10:21] right? So we'll just
[00:10:23] for an example, right?
[00:10:24] Because my area of interest tends to be medieval Britain,
[00:10:27] although the
[00:10:28] Battle of Hastings is a little earlier than my usual time
[00:10:31] period, I think that that's a fantastic
[00:10:32] example, right?
[00:10:33] Most people know that the Battle of Hastings was the Norman
[00:10:37] invasion of England,
[00:10:38] right? So William the Conqueror or William the Bastard,
[00:10:40] depending on how you look at him,
[00:10:42] you know, came over and landed on the shores of England and
[00:10:46] defeated King Harold
[00:10:47] and then he became the King of England and that's what started
[00:10:50] the change that took place
[00:10:52] in Britain, moving from an Anglo -Saxon culture to a very much,
[00:10:55] you know, French Viking,
[00:10:58] really kind of culture, right?
[00:10:59] Norman culture. But like, so we'll take a look
[00:11:02] at our sources for
[00:11:03] that, right? And there are many, right?
[00:11:05] So the primary source from an Anglo -Saxon perspective,
[00:11:09] one could say, would be the Anglo -Saxon Chronicle, which is
[00:11:12] fantastic, except for the Anglo -Saxon
[00:11:14] Chronicle isn't a single source.
[00:11:15] There's like five different variations of the Anglo -Saxon
[00:11:18] Chronicle because it was a Chronicle of history that was
[00:11:20] written by monks that was written down
[00:11:22] keeping track of things that took place.
[00:11:25] So each of these different variations of the Chronicle
[00:11:28] are not going to be exact because they're going to be
[00:11:30] written by different people. And again,
[00:11:33] four different reasons, chronicling different things,
[00:11:35] things that they keep, that they find interesting.
[00:11:39] But also that's an Anglo -Saxon perspective of an event, right?
[00:11:43] Versus say the Norman perspective
[00:11:45] of an event, right?
[00:11:46] Obviously, they're not going to look at the same event in the
[00:11:49] same way. I used
[00:11:50] to tease my students in class all the time.
[00:11:53] It's like, look, have you and I are watching a hockey
[00:11:54] game? And it's the, you know, the Leafs versus, I don't know,
[00:11:58] the Panthers, right? Like, okay,
[00:12:00] are we watching the same game?
[00:12:01] I don't know. Panthers is a team, right?
[00:12:03] Yeah. So are we watching the
[00:12:05] same game? I don't know. If I'm supporting one team, I'm
[00:12:07] probably going to have a very different
[00:12:08] perspective on how well a ref made a call than if you're
[00:12:12] supporting the opposite team, right? So
[00:12:14] again, that's just a matter of perspective.
[00:12:16] So we have the same thing with primary sources. All right,
[00:12:18] so take, for example, the idea of William of Normandy was
[00:12:24] chosen by Edward the confessor to be
[00:12:26] King of England. And so therefore, Harold was the
[00:12:28] usurper, right?
[00:12:29] I mean, obviously the Normans
[00:12:30] like that narrative, right?
[00:12:33] And absolutely because that was, it was
[00:12:34] ordained by God that William
[00:12:36] was going to be the King of England.
[00:12:38] Anglo -Saxon Chronicle doesn't say that
[00:12:40] shockingly. The Anglo -Saxon
[00:12:42] Chronicle does not say that, like, manuscript A, for example,
[00:12:45] says, here passed away King Edward
[00:12:47] and Earl Harold succeeded to the kingdom and held it for 40 weeks
[00:12:50] and one day, and here came William
[00:12:52] and one England. Okay, well, that's pretty cut and dry,
[00:12:54] right? I mean, that's like, maybe the
[00:12:56] Reuters version of it, right? You have another version of it,
[00:12:59] which is D, and that talks about the
[00:13:02] fact that it was an act of succession by the King's council
[00:13:05] that says that the King's council voted
[00:13:07] Harold to be King, right?
[00:13:09] And so, and it says nothing about William.
[00:13:12] And then another, you know,
[00:13:14] the Peterborough Chronicle says, Harold succeeded to the kingdom
[00:13:16] of England just as the King had
[00:13:18] granted it to him, and explicitly mentions that the men
[00:13:20] chose him for it before he was blessed
[00:13:22] as King on 12th night, right?
[00:13:24] So, I mean, all of this is like very clear that the
[00:13:26] Anglo -Saxon's
[00:13:27] thought that perhaps thought that Harold was, and again, I
[00:13:31] say perhaps, because what do we really
[00:13:33] know that he was the legitimate King?
[00:13:35] Now, the Normans, on the other hand, say that at, well,
[00:13:39] Edward the Confessor had promised the throne to William
[00:13:41] because Edward didn't like Harold Godwinson,
[00:13:44] didn't like the Godwins at all, and that he preferred William,
[00:13:49] and that at one point in time,
[00:13:50] Harold actually even went over to Normandy and told William,
[00:13:53] you know what? Yeah, you be King,
[00:13:54] that's great. I'll support you if you come over here.
[00:13:57] Anglo -Saxon Chronicles saying nothing about
[00:13:59] that. So, we don't know, is it in a mission?
[00:14:01] Maybe. Did it actually happen?
[00:14:03] I don't know, but we
[00:14:04] don't have anything written about it from that perspective.
[00:14:07] And I think that's kind of interesting.
[00:14:08] Another great one, right? This is an example just again with
[00:14:10] the Battle of Hastings. Almost everybody
[00:14:13] who knows anything about the Battle of Hastings knows that,
[00:14:15] you know, King Harold died getting
[00:14:17] shot in the eye, right?
[00:14:18] And that's an example from the Bayou tapestry.
[00:14:22] None of the Anglo -Saxon
[00:14:23] sources say that. Some of them say that he was attacked by a
[00:14:27] swarm of William's men and hacked
[00:14:28] down on the battlefield. Some say that, you know, he was just
[00:14:33] died, right? I mean, that's it, like,
[00:14:35] yeah, the battle. And one of the sources actually say that he
[00:14:37] died early on in the battle, and he
[00:14:38] didn't last through to the end of the battle.
[00:14:40] So, okay, big question there.
[00:14:42] The Normans, of course,
[00:14:43] as you can imagine, probably have a fairly different
[00:14:46] perspective on this one, right?
[00:14:47] So the Normans,
[00:14:49] who are, and mind you, all of these sources are after the
[00:14:52] fact, right? We have, for example,
[00:14:55] the song of the Battle of Hastings, which was written by
[00:14:58] the Bishop of
[00:14:59] Amien. That was within
[00:15:01] months of the battle. He says, Harold himself was slain,
[00:15:04] pierced with mortal wounds. Cool.
[00:15:07] Where he says, the first cleaving his breast through the
[00:15:10] shield with his point, drenched the earth
[00:15:12] with a gushing torrent of blood, the second smote off his head
[00:15:14] below the protection of the helmet,
[00:15:16] and the third pierced inwards of his belly with his lance, and
[00:15:18] the fourth huge off his thigh,
[00:15:20] and bore away the severed limb, the ground held the body thus
[00:15:23] destroyed. I'm side note, I think it's
[00:15:26] really interesting that they huge off his thigh and carried
[00:15:29] off his severed limb, which seems
[00:15:30] a little euphemistic to me.
[00:15:32] But I mean, that's also symbolic, right?
[00:15:34] I mean, like you're decapitating
[00:15:37] and emasculating who would have been king, right?
[00:15:40] So I mean, kind of symbolic. But that's one of the
[00:15:41] earlier, one of the closest to the actual event, Norman
[00:15:45] sources. Later on, we're coming to like
[00:15:49] the 1070s, right?
[00:15:50] So maybe five to 10 years after the battle.
[00:15:53] You have descriptions that are
[00:15:56] William of Poitier and the deeds of William is what the document
[00:16:01] is called, which should also tell
[00:16:03] you something, right? I mean, this is not a chronicle, right?
[00:16:05] This is a story about the deeds of William,
[00:16:08] which means that we're going to try and make William look kind
[00:16:10] of cool, right? I mean, we want we
[00:16:12] want William to like us when we tell his story.
[00:16:15] And so Harold was himself recognized by certain
[00:16:20] Marx, Marx, not by his face for he had been dispoiled of all
[00:16:23] signs of status. Oh, yeah, so we
[00:16:26] hacked away at Harold there, right?
[00:16:28] And then the Bayou tapestry, which is again from the 1070s,
[00:16:32] right? Somewhere in that 1075, 1077, I'm kind of
[00:16:37] flubbing those dates a little bit because I don't
[00:16:38] remember the exact dates of it.
[00:16:40] But in any case, about 10 years, maybe five
[00:16:42] to 10 years after the event,
[00:16:44] again, a commissioned piece of artwork, which may have had an
[00:16:49] arrow. There's an image in there
[00:16:52] that has a picture of what could be Harold.
[00:16:55] And we say that because it's labeled Harold underneath,
[00:16:57] which looks like an arrow going through his eye, which
[00:17:00] maybe wasn't an arrow, maybe it was a
[00:17:01] javelin. Maybe it was Harold.
[00:17:02] Maybe it wasn't. We say that because
[00:17:04] written underneath it, or I
[00:17:05] should say embroidered underneath it, it says Harold
[00:17:07] Rex Interfectus S, which means, you know, the
[00:17:09] king Harold was killed. And it looks like there's an arrow
[00:17:12] going through his eye. But the Bayou
[00:17:14] tapestry, again, 10 years after the date, it was, you know,
[00:17:18] something that was was embellished
[00:17:19] perhaps. It was something that was commissioned.
[00:17:22] If it's commissioned, there's a reason for it,
[00:17:24] right? And then our later historians use the earlier
[00:17:27] historians in order to be able to tell
[00:17:28] the narrative. And of course, by the time you get to the 12th
[00:17:31] century, early 12th century, you've
[00:17:33] got, you know, the deeds of the English kings, William of
[00:17:37] Momsbury, right? I mean, and he's
[00:17:38] basing it on earlier tales, William of Poitier and Bishop of
[00:17:43] Amiens, Henry of Huntington, same thing,
[00:17:45] right? And again, it's all about the glorification of Duke
[00:17:47] William at that point. So Henry of Huntington
[00:17:51] tells us, Duke William instructed the archers not to
[00:17:53] shoot their arrows directly at the enemy,
[00:17:55] but rather into the air so that the arrows might blind the enemy
[00:17:57] squadron. Meanwhile, the whole
[00:17:59] shower sent by the archers fell around King Harold and he
[00:18:02] himself sank to the ground, struck in the
[00:18:04] eye, which is fabulous.
[00:18:06] And it's a great narrative.
[00:18:08] Did it happen? I don't know.
[00:18:10] Great story, though.
[00:18:13] No, but I mean, again, all of this is just, but what
[00:18:15] it does is it gives us a
[00:18:16] great vision into what was popular culture,

[00:18:20] Andrew: right?

[00:18:21] Paige: I mean, once you have, you know, the Norman,
[00:18:23] and again, Duke of Normandy, William didn't just 1066.
[00:18:28] And now everybody is subservient to him,
[00:18:30] like it took five, six years.
[00:18:32] I mean, there were rebellions over and over again
[00:18:33] before he actually
[00:18:35] settled in. And, you know, I mean, he wrote his big
[00:18:38] compendium or had written his big compendium
[00:18:40] in the Doomsday Book in order to build a tally up what was going
[00:18:42] on in the country. So we have
[00:18:45] roles and registers of who was owning what property, who owed
[00:18:50] faulty to whom. We have all that
[00:18:51] sort of stuff, which is very much documentary kind of
[00:18:54] legalese rather than a narrative,
[00:18:56] different type of historical document.

[00:18:59] Andrew: What do you think about the reliability of, like,
[00:19:02] oral history, you know, where, you know, something wasn't
[00:19:08] written down, perhaps. And it's been passed
[00:19:11] down. A lot of, a lot of cultures have their history as
[00:19:15] basically was oral, orally transmitted
[00:19:17] from generation to generation.
[00:19:19] Is oral history, can we consider that reliable? Yeah, I mean,

[00:19:23] Shawn: two degree. I mean, I had, you know, it was one of the
[00:19:26] probably the most, the deep dive that I
[00:19:31] did into that area was I was actually a trustee at Vermont
[00:19:34] Folklife, which is based up in Merlington,
[00:19:36] Vermont. And it was founded in 1984 by Jane Beck, who had spent
[00:19:41] hours with Daisy Turner,
[00:19:43] who was the daughter of an enslaved man, and they moved to
[00:19:47] Vermont. And she lived to be, I think,
[00:19:50] a hundred and two, a hundred and three.
[00:19:52] She was in a Ken Burns Civil
[00:19:53] War. She actually wrote a book.
[00:19:55] So she spent all these hours listening to Daisy.
[00:19:58] And if you do watch Ken Burns Civil War,
[00:20:00] she's the old lady you could see who's telling the stories and
[00:20:03] kind of half -sing it. She's
[00:20:04] absolutely a fabulous, fabulous woman.
[00:20:08] And so Jane spent all this time, you know, listening to her
[00:20:12] stories and then what she did was she went and she found
[00:20:15] sources because, you know, she would tell
[00:20:16] the stories and she would found out exactly when did the ship
[00:20:19] sail? What were these places in
[00:20:21] Africa she was talking about?
[00:20:23] When was, you know, her father enslaved
[00:20:25] where? You know, so it started
[00:20:26] cross -referencing all of her memories to the historical
[00:20:30] timeline. And it was interesting to see
[00:20:34] some of the disparage, you know, some of the disparage
[00:20:36] discrepancies, excuse me, that's where
[00:20:39] I was looking for the discrepancies and her memory,
[00:20:43] which doesn't mean it wasn't true,
[00:20:44] it's how she remembered it.
[00:20:46] And it was also how her father told her, you
[00:20:49] know, so it's a generational
[00:20:50] story as it's told down.
[00:20:53] And then when you go back and look at the, you know,
[00:20:55] the actual, you know,
[00:20:56] the historical events that she had recounted, when did they
[00:20:59] happen? How did they happen? Sometimes
[00:21:00] they didn't happen in the exact order.
[00:21:02] It's a fascinating book to read and also made being
[00:21:04] questioned my own memories of things that I remembered.
[00:21:09] And, you know, which just brings me to a
[00:21:10] quick thing that I wanted to talk about.
[00:21:12] Back in 1979, there was a book that came out called Motel
[00:21:17] of Mysteries by David McCulley.
[00:21:19] Do you remember that book? It was kind of a graphic
[00:21:21] novel. And it
[00:21:22] took place in the year 4 ,022, 4022.
[00:21:27] And it was about an archaeologist who found a
[00:21:28] motel, a motel
[00:21:30] room. And it was his interpretation of what he found
[00:21:34] in the motel room. It was like, you know,
[00:21:35] there were two bodies on a bed.
[00:21:37] Well, this must be an altar.
[00:21:39] And, you know, he was communicating,
[00:21:40] they were communicating to the gods.
[00:21:42] And there was a television set sitting on a bureau and
[00:21:45] and then went to the inner chamber, the inner sacred
[00:21:47] chamber, which was the bathroom. And, you
[00:21:49] know, the toilet was, you know, because it was pure
[00:21:51] porcelain, it was this holiest of holies
[00:21:53] in the waters for cleansing.
[00:21:55] And you wore the, the seat as a collar and took
[00:21:58] the paper strips and
[00:22:00] wrapped them around your forehead.
[00:22:01] And the water was used to
[00:22:02] purify yourself. I mean, you know,
[00:22:03] because that was there in interpretation, because then no
[00:22:05] idea what it was for. That was a toilet.
[00:22:08] So it's, it's kind of, you know, so this is a book written at
[00:22:11] night, which is a great book. So
[00:22:12] you can still get, I wonder if the library has it actually.
[00:22:15] The motel of Mysteries.

[00:22:17] Andrew: So it was

[00:22:18] Shawn: an interesting look at, you know, how are things today
[00:22:20] going to be interpreted in the future,
[00:22:22] especially if there's no knowledge attached to it.
[00:22:24] You know, I mean, we still, you know, as we look
[00:22:27] at, you know, all these anxious, like they still don't really
[00:22:30] know how the pyramids were built,
[00:22:31] right? I mean, you know, it's kind of interesting.
[00:22:33] Yeah. One of the seven wonders of the world.
[00:22:35] And there's theories, probably some really good ones, but they
[00:22:39] still really don't know how they were built.

[00:22:41] Paige: All right. All right. All right.
[00:22:42] To go back to your earlier question,
[00:22:44] because I think this is
[00:22:45] sort of interesting. The idea of oral history, I think
[00:22:48] that, I mean, I think we've all played the
[00:22:51] game of telephone at some point in time in the course of our
[00:22:54] lives. And, you know, obviously,
[00:22:55] it's easy to tell that if I whisper something into one
[00:22:59] person's ear as it goes around the table,
[00:23:01] it's probably going to change.
[00:23:04] There's going to be an alteration.
[00:23:06] Somebody doesn't hear things,
[00:23:07] something properly. Somebody thinks it's funny or to say it
[00:23:10] another way. But I think back as well,
[00:23:13] towards poetry, right?
[00:23:16] I mean, let's take literature as an example.
[00:23:19] And the reason why I say that
[00:23:20] is because I believe that, and this is not my area, specialty
[00:23:23] by any shape or form, but cultures
[00:23:25] that are predominantly based in oral history, right?
[00:23:30] I mean, they have formula, formula, I should say,
[00:23:33] that are how they, how they, they create these narratives
[00:23:36] similar to poetry,
[00:23:37] right? And when you
[00:23:39] think about a song that you have known since you were, I don't
[00:23:43] know, maybe 15, 16 years old,
[00:23:45] you probably don't have to have heard it in the last 10 years,
[00:23:47] but you're going to remember it
[00:23:48] because the rhythms and the rhymes and the way that it sort
[00:23:52] of, it stays in your brain in that
[00:23:56] format. And so there are a variety of different styles of
[00:24:00] narrative that will help keep a story
[00:24:04] cohesive. And again, this is not my area of focus at all, but I
[00:24:07] think about things like, you know,
[00:24:09] the poem Beowulf, right?
[00:24:10] Like, okay, great. And you would have scops who would
[00:24:12] travel around and
[00:24:14] would have the entire thing memorized.
[00:24:15] They're not reading from a script as they're going around
[00:24:17] narrating this poem. And, you know, obviously, there are going
[00:24:20] to be variations, but predominantly,
[00:24:22] the poem stays the same poem in, you know, one manuscript to a
[00:24:25] next, the next when somebody's
[00:24:26] writing it down. Or you think about, you know, like Homer,
[00:24:28] right? I mean, like, how many different
[00:24:30] ways, if you look for the various different formula that
[00:24:33] are within that narrative of, you know,
[00:24:35] like the wine dark sea, right?
[00:24:37] I mean, you know, while you, you know, Odysseus, these types of
[00:24:41] things help lock in the information in such a way that
[00:24:45] it's not necessarily going to alter
[00:24:46] tremendously. And so the original question of, you know,
[00:24:50] how reliable are oral narratives? Well,
[00:24:52] I mean, probably about as reliable as a written narrative,
[00:24:55] if you consider that everybody who writes
[00:24:57] something has an agenda.

[00:24:59] Andrew: I guess I'm wondering, you know,
[00:25:02] what, maybe the central question around all
[00:25:05] of this is, why does this all matter?
[00:25:07] I mean, does it matter that we know something happened in
[00:25:12] a certain way that the history books have always said it did
[00:25:15] because we have a written document,
[00:25:18] or we have some kind of hard information that's really
[00:25:22] pretty, you know, seems like it would be
[00:25:27] incontrovertible. Or, or, or, or, or is it a, you know,
[00:25:33] something to kind of not, maybe, well,
[00:25:35] worry about maybe how certain historical events are explained
[00:25:40] and understood when really, you know,
[00:25:43] we don't, as we said, nobody's still alive who actually was
[00:25:48] there when, when something happened,
[00:25:49] but does it make a difference when we have to worry about
[00:25:53] primary versus secondary versus oral versus
[00:25:58] a painting, a building, a speech?

[00:26:02] Paige: Well, I think you can get to the closer to the
[00:26:04] truth of a situation
[00:26:05] with corroborating evidence, right?
[00:26:07] I mean, like, it's like Shawn was saying about, you know,
[00:26:09] the example of the narrative history, well, and then going
[00:26:11] back through and finding documentation
[00:26:14] that supports the narrative history, or you find, you know,
[00:26:17] a piece of clothing that also helps
[00:26:19] support that, or you find a letter that helps support that,
[00:26:21] you know, I mean, like, so I think that
[00:26:23] there, when you have more than one source that are
[00:26:26] contemporary, you know, or contemporaneous,
[00:26:29] perhaps, it is easier to have a little bit more of a sense of
[00:26:33] surety about the narrative that
[00:26:35] is being told.

[00:26:38] Andrew: I mean, we have so many conversations nowadays about
[00:26:42] conspiracy theories about things
[00:26:44] happen a certain way, but no, they didn't, you know, it's
[00:26:47] clearly, clearly the sources of where
[00:26:49] this information is coming from matter in terms of least our
[00:26:53] understanding or belief that certain
[00:26:56] things happen a certain way.
[00:26:59] But, you know,

[00:27:00] Paige: I think, I mean, you're talking about basically media
[00:27:01] literacy, right? And I think if you look at modern media
[00:27:04] in the same way that you would look at
[00:27:05] historical sources, you're coming really close to, I mean,
[00:27:09] an ability to determine what is
[00:27:11] believable, so to speak, and what is not.
[00:27:13] I mean, I used to have for my students, I just dug it up
[00:27:16] this morning, as if that was, when we were talking about this
[00:27:17] yesterday, made me think about it,
[00:27:19] a list of questions that they would have to ask themselves and
[00:27:23] then come up with answers for
[00:27:24] historical sources that they would have to address,
[00:27:28] right? So, I mean, it would be an annotated
[00:27:29] bibliography for a work that they had.
[00:27:31] You know, origin, purpose, value, and limitations, right?
[00:27:34] So, origin, who creates it, like, who's the author, when is
[00:27:37] it published, where was it published,
[00:27:38] who's like all that sort of stuff, right?
[00:27:40] Purpose, why does the document exist, right? I mean,
[00:27:42] somebody wrote something for a reason, and I've said over and
[00:27:45] over again today, right? I mean,
[00:27:46] like everybody who tells a story has an agenda, whether you're
[00:27:48] aware of what your agenda is or not.
[00:27:51] So, you know, why did the author choose that particular format,
[00:27:54] right? Who did the author think
[00:27:56] they were going to be addressing, right?
[00:27:57] So, what is the purpose of the text?
[00:27:59] If you can answer that,
[00:28:00] it doesn't mean that even if it is highly biased, it doesn't
[00:28:03] mean that it's not useful information
[00:28:05] because you understand what the purpose is, right?
[00:28:07] So, again, value. What can you tell from
[00:28:09] the work that you have, right?
[00:28:11] I mean, and that goes back to, again, different types
[00:28:13] of historical
[00:28:15] outlooks, like, is it legal history?
[00:28:16] Is it military history? Is it economic history? Is it social
[00:28:19] history? And then limitations, right?
[00:28:21] And all sources have their own limitations. And it just
[00:28:25] so happens, and I'm just going to do a quick plug for one of my
[00:28:28] favorite podcasts. It just so happens
[00:28:29] at last night, as I was kind of like doing my Instagram scroll.
[00:28:33] I saw a reel from one of my favorite
[00:28:38] podcasters, right? So, it's called History After Dark, and
[00:28:40] the podcaster's name is Anthony Delaney.
[00:28:43] And he did a whole, he did a whole little reel on this
[00:28:45] exact question, which I thought was
[00:28:46] interesting. So, I'm going to just kind of paraphrase him
[00:28:48] because I thought it was the way he did
[00:28:50] it was fabulous Instagram style, right?
[00:28:51] Purpose. Who created the source and why? And he's talking about
[00:28:54] historical sources, but this works for modern media as well.
[00:28:58] What are they trying to do with the
[00:28:59] source? Who are they trying to convince?
[00:29:00] Because there is always an agenda,
[00:29:02] right? He says number two,
[00:29:04] always use multiple sources because one source is never
[00:29:06] enough, right? But it doesn't mean necessarily
[00:29:08] that you have to find corroborating evidence, right?
[00:29:11] Maybe the other source that you're looking for
[00:29:13] is a different perspective, right?
[00:29:14] And I think that that's fabulous as well,
[00:29:16] right? So, I know for
[00:29:17] a fact that this is what happened, do you?
[00:29:19] Because there isn't, is there another way of looking at it,
[00:29:21] find another source that can give you a different opinion,
[00:29:24] you're going to be able to get a little bit
[00:29:25] more insight into an event.
[00:29:27] And the other one that I love is which voices are
[00:29:30] missing, right? I mean,
[00:29:32] you know, talk about important, right?
[00:29:34] I mean, who's, who's giving you the history?
[00:29:37] So, whose voices
[00:29:38] are left out? And who benefits from having voices left out?
[00:29:42] And again, that can apply to modern media
[00:29:44] literacy as well as to historical sources.
[00:29:47] And fundamentally, and this is how he ended his real,
[00:29:49] and I think this is the best thing to remember for anything,
[00:29:52] whether it be history or modern media,
[00:29:54] people lie. Really?
[00:29:56] People lie, right?
[00:29:58] So just because you have written something, just because you
[00:30:00] have said something, just because you have recorded
[00:30:01] something, just because any, it doesn't mean it's the truth.
[00:30:05] And you have to take that into consideration when you're
[00:30:07] when you're evaluating sources.

[00:30:09] Andrew: All right. Shawn, I just wondered, there must be some
[00:30:13] event in the past history of Manchester,
[00:30:16] you've explored, studied, looked at where there's a question mark
[00:30:20] around whether or not something happened.
[00:30:22] And as we're talking here, I'm thinking back to that famous
[00:30:25] trial that took place.
[00:30:27] I think around 1814, 1815, the Bourne trial I think it was?

[00:30:31] Shawn: Yeah, the Bourne murder trial, which resulted in the
[00:30:33] first wrongful conviction in the United States.
[00:30:35] I mean, if we go back and that was around 1820.

[00:30:37] Andrew: That's a kind of a question about, well,
[00:30:39] what really did happen, right?

[00:30:40] Shawn: Well, I mean, it was, I mean, yeah, because
[00:30:42] it was based on, you know, it was based on human testimony.

[00:30:45] And, you know, and again. Paige: People lie.

[00:30:48] Shawn: Well, yeah, I mean, there was also kind of a
[00:30:50] supernatural twist to
[00:30:51] that a little bit, but we have the court records, you know,
[00:30:54] which were referred to, and it was
[00:30:55] documented by, you know, who was, you know, the lieutenant
[00:30:58] governor who wrote it, wrote about
[00:31:00] excessively. I think he wrote it up in the 1860s.
[00:31:04] I think something like that.
[00:31:08] Lieutenant Lieutenant Governor Sergeant, and he was on the
[00:31:13] defense council.
[00:31:14] But, you know,
[00:31:15] going back further than that to 1790 -91, which was the, you
[00:31:19] know, the Manchester vampire,
[00:31:21] you know, the demon vampire,
[00:31:23] you know, which was a secondary, which was a, it was hearsay,
[00:31:26] it was secondary source, because the, you know, judge, judge
[00:31:29] Patabona actually wrote about it,
[00:31:31] and he also wrote about it in 1860 by somebody who was there
[00:31:34] and wrote about.
[00:31:35] Now, there wasn't an
[00:31:36] isolated incident. This was a case of where, you know, where
[00:31:39] the Deacon Burton's wife had passed
[00:31:41] away. He remarries.
[00:31:43] He remarries. The second wife gets sick from tuberculosis,
[00:31:46] and they, you know,
[00:31:47] so then the thought gets into the people's minds.
[00:31:49] They, well, it must be the first wife rising from the dead
[00:31:52] sucking life from the second. So they, you know, they-

[00:31:54] Paige: That's the most logical option.

[00:31:55] Shawn: -disinterred her and, you know,
[00:31:56] burned her entrails in the, in the forge of Jacob Mead, and,
[00:32:00] you know, and, you know, made a potion
[00:32:03] to give to the second wife, and when she died anyway, and he
[00:32:05] buried a third time. But, you know,
[00:32:07] so there's a case of that we know that this happened.
[00:32:10] This was something that was brought over. These
[00:32:11] were superstitions were brought over from Europe that happened
[00:32:14] in New England. I mean, I think
[00:32:15] Mercy Brown was the last one to happen in the 1890s, 1891 down
[00:32:18] in down in Rhode Island.
[00:32:20] So, you know, these things that we think of today, do we have
[00:32:24] actual proof that this happened? No,
[00:32:26] we have this one paragraph and this longer narrative of
[00:32:28] Manchester history, which is very, you know,
[00:32:31] from the days of the revolution and, you know, about, you know,
[00:32:34] raising sheep and so on. And then
[00:32:35] also there's this two paragraphs kind of stuck in the middle of
[00:32:38] this of the story of, you know,
[00:32:40] Rachel Burton, which, you know, caught my attention.
[00:32:42] But, you know, and that's, you know, that's kind of
[00:32:44] the folk history.
[00:32:46] You know, I mean, folk life is a whole, you know,
[00:32:49] study of itself, you know,
[00:32:50] my friend Andy up in Burlington as a PhD in folklore.
[00:32:53] I mean, you know, how did things happen,
[00:32:55] how did they get passed down?
[00:32:57] You know, and how things get
[00:32:58] interpreted. How many times have you
[00:33:00] looked up a song that you listened to in the 60s when they
[00:33:03] didn't have the lyrics written on the
[00:33:05] back or you could just Google the lyrics and I have absolute
[00:33:08] assuredly in my mind that this is
[00:33:10] a way songs go and sometimes it wasn't while I'll look up the
[00:33:12] lyrics and be like, I wasn't even close.

[00:33:14] Paige: That's what they

[00:33:15] Shawn: were saying. I wasn't even close, you know, like, you
[00:33:18] know, I had the whole chorus
[00:33:20] and the harmonies. I'm like, yeah, that's what I thought it
[00:33:22] was, you know, but no, it's really not.
[00:33:25] You know, it's all about, you know, what is the chord
[00:33:30] progression? What's this? No, that's actually
[00:33:33] that. I mean, to me, that shows kind of even in the modern day,
[00:33:37] in our own memories today,
[00:33:39] you know, what our interpretation of, you know, a
[00:33:41] song is, what are the words?
[00:33:43] How does the song go?
[00:33:44] You know, and if we had a blind and we had to write it down,
[00:33:47] maybe we had three different,
[00:33:48] you know, tell me, you know, tell me about the,
[00:33:51] you know, the first opening line,
[00:33:52] Sir Bridge, bridge over trouble waters, you know, how does that
[00:33:55] go? And we would all write it down

[00:34:00] Paige: Yeah, I mean,
[00:34:01] also
[00:34:02] to a point you made yesterday, Shawn,
[00:34:03] I just think of fantastic, right?
[00:34:05] We don't even have to go back to 1978 or whatever it was that you
[00:34:07] were asking about, but, you know, what were you doing last
[00:34:09] Tuesday at 3 p .m.?
[00:34:11] Right, so because
[00:34:12] the source is contemporary, because it was written within,
[00:34:15] you know, six months of an event,
[00:34:16] does that mean that it is a completely accurate
[00:34:18] interpretation? Human memory is fallible.

[00:34:21] Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Well, before we have to run, I just wanted to
[00:34:25] kind of maybe close this conversation
[00:34:27] on one question actually, Shawn, you had talked a bit about this
[00:34:31] earlier, but it reminded me that
[00:34:34] it'd be kind of interesting to think about what are going to be
[00:34:38] the primary sources or
[00:34:40] reliable sources of information of our times today?
[00:34:45] Would it be podcasts, for instance?
[00:34:46] Might be, would they be considered primary sources,
[00:34:50] reliable sources or television shows, video,
[00:34:54] social media? There's a whole range of things that,
[00:34:58] you know, his story and looking at, you know,
[00:35:00] something from 50 to 100 years ago would never ever be
[00:35:03] bothering with, but 100 years from now,
[00:35:06] his story will try and try to understand the 2020s,
[00:35:10] we'll be looking at a whole different

[00:35:11] Paige: range of sources I would assume.
[00:35:14] I mean, to answer
[00:35:15] the question of whether it's going to be a
[00:35:16] primary source, I think it entirely depends on what
[00:35:18] you're trying to evaluate, right? Because,
[00:35:20] again, a primary source, a podcast could be a primary
[00:35:21] source, or it could be a secondary source
[00:35:23] because it is using other primary sources in order to be
[00:35:25] able to narrate something else, right?
[00:35:27] I mean, it entirely possible.
[00:35:29] So what type of history are you trying to get at in order to
[00:35:33] be able to determine what source is a valuable source?
[00:35:36] I personally think all sources are
[00:35:38] fabulous sources for social history.
[00:35:40] I mean, you can learn so much about the way that people
[00:35:43] behave and the way that people think, and the, well, maybe
[00:35:45] not the way that they think, but the way
[00:35:46] that they outwardly demonstrate their thoughts through a variety
[00:35:50] of sources. So yeah, podcasts,
[00:35:53] I think, and, you know, Instagram Reels for that matter,
[00:35:56] it captures a zeitgeist, whether or not
[00:35:58] it's going to be accurate information that they're
[00:36:00] reporting on, I have no idea, but it's definitely
[00:36:03] capturing the moment.
[00:36:04] It's capturing a feeling, a sense, maybe a societal or a
[00:36:07] cultural trend.
[00:36:09] Well, people are thinking of the time.
[00:36:11] And not to end this on a cynical note, but, you know,

[00:36:13] Shawn: there's the, you know, the saying, you know, those who
[00:36:16] do not study history or do them to repeat it,
[00:36:18] well, those who do study history are helpless to
[00:36:21] watch others repeat it.
[00:36:22] Oh,

[00:36:24] Andrew: well, that's a good point.
[00:36:27] And unfortunately, yeah, it's, that's
[00:36:29] probably true. I don't know,
[00:36:30] the, what's, this discussion has also made me think about, you
[00:36:36] know, what about all the lost
[00:36:38] civilizations that, well, proceeded us here and in this
[00:36:42] part of the world, you know, the
[00:36:44] indigenous people that lived here before, contact with
[00:36:48] European settlers, but what they like,
[00:36:50] you know, see you should

[00:36:53] Paige: have come to the talk at the library last week.
[00:36:56] Professor Colin Callaway
[00:36:57] was addressing that and he was talking about the various
[00:36:59] different sources that he was using
[00:37:01] in order to be able to piece together history of indigenous
[00:37:04] populations in New England as fascinating
[00:37:06] conversation. I think actually, Jeanette is going to have it on
[00:37:09] their, on the website, so

[00:37:11] Andrew: we'll probably be able to access it. Definitely have to
[00:37:12] watch that then. But it's kind of interesting,
[00:37:14] could think about, you know, all these, all these cultures, all
[00:37:17] these civilizations and
[00:37:19] various parts of the world that, you know, they never really
[00:37:21] wrote stuff down or, or even when
[00:37:23] they did, let's say ancient China, for instance, where there
[00:37:25] was a lot of documentation. I mean,
[00:37:27] how, again, how reliable was that the various dynasties that
[00:37:32] went from one to the other and how
[00:37:33] they evolved?

[00:37:34] Shawn: Well, maybe it was in the library of ancient Alexandria
[00:37:37] out there. It was just right.
[00:37:38] All right. There you go.

[00:37:40] Andrew: Well, all right. Why don't we leave it there for
[00:37:42] today? And again,
[00:37:43] thank you both very much for being here and really an
[00:37:46] interesting conversation. Paige Vignola,
[00:37:48] the assistant director of the Manchester Community Library,
[00:37:51] Shawn Harrington, the curator of the
[00:37:53] Manchester Historical Society.
[00:37:55] Thank you both very much.
[00:37:57] And thanks to all of you and with us,
[00:37:58] we'll be found out about program interesting and we'll see you
[00:38:01] again the next time for the next
[00:38:03] edition of Nothing's New.