HANDS-ON HISTORY

Jake Ehleiter

This past spring, Jake Ehleiter, a senior at Lancaster Country Day School, created an index for the recorded transcripts of the Donegal Scotch-Irish Presbytery from 1730 to 1750. What follows is his account of his volunteer experience.              

Hands-On History
by Jake Ehleiter

     When it came time to choose my senior project, I batted around a number of ideas. Keeping in mind the goal of giving back to the community, I considered building a seismograph. Too scientific. A documentary seemed beyond my artistic talents. But when an opportunity at the Lancaster County Historical Society was offered to me, I jumped. The excitement of the senior project was rediscovered.

     Summoning the will to meet a challenge, I passed up the basic (though crucial) chance to catalogue historical items. I chose instead to attempt the daunting task of creating an index for a tome of historical records—more specifically, the recorded transcripts of the Donegal Scotch-Irish Presbytery from 1730 to 1750.

     The Presbytery, as it turns out, kept the minutes of all of their meetings across the county and beyond. These were later transcribed to a more legible, typewritten, 459-page notebook. It was this notebook, a primary historical source, that desperately needed an index. Without one, it would prove extremely challenging for future historians to use and reference.

     I set to work days after agreeing to fill this index void. At first I attempted note cards. Page by page I searched, recording names of people and places. Each new name meant a new note card, with page numbers recorded below by hand. Aside from the frequent writing cramps in my hand and neck, I quickly encountered a difficult problem with this system. I simply had too many note cards.

     Kept on a ring, the cards proved to be time-consuming, difficult to handle, and confusing. How much progress could I make when I kept forgetting my previous entries, when each new note card meant ripping up an old one? Frankly the note cards bred frustration toward the project. I was forced to devote most of my efforts to managing my resources, taking away from my enjoyment of my primary source. The tedium of the note cards made an exciting learning experience seem long and arduous.

     Though I’m not one to trust a computer further than I can throw it, I caved to the superior ease of technology. I transferred the note cards to one document on a laptop. It was easy to carry, with a five-hour battery life. Best of all, I could view every name at the same time, scrolling quickly through all of them and fixing/margining numbers with one quick flick of the wrist.

     Logistics aside I finally got to the heart of the project and the idea for the title of this article. I got my hands on the history. I read about church elders accused of adultery. Drunken debauchery by members of the congregation. Theft. Condensed into these 459 pages was a 20-year soap opera, with the church as a backdrop. Elders were expelled. Trials were held. Almost every day I encountered new charges being leveled against someone I may not have heard of before.

     It all seemed very dramatic, but please, before I continue, do not leave with the wrong impression about the “characters” in my soap opera.

     The people I read about took their faith very seriously. They were dedicated to their church and their duties. The daily operations of the presbytery were amazing. They assigned their elders to preach at other congregations. They raised money and support for other members of the community. The trials and expulsions were merely a way of ensuring that the members were not slipping in the execution of the moral and civic duties.

     Though there was much to be learned about these people, the greatest lesson I took from the making of the index was about how “history” is made. It’s not as scientific as I once thought. When three different people are all referred to by their common last name, one has to interpret what the source is really talking about. Was “Thomson” supposed to mean John, Samuel, or Mary? Was “Ja. Anderson” James or Jacob?

     While I was trying to index a history that had already been re-recorded, historians elsewhere were interpreting records firsthand. Their intuitions, their choices were determining what we would accept as historical fact.