Another Discovery

I thought that I was pretty well past the day of surprises. I am in Year five of my work at the historical society. The first two years were spent opening boxes, looking at just what it was donated to the Historical Society Library.  No one can research history, if you don't know the contents of the library. After going through most of the holdings, there was only one archive room that I had not completely explored.......the closet in the newspaper room.

This closet is full of rolled up maps and blueprints......and there was always something more important to do, than label old blueprints.

Monday, with my trusty volunteer keeping me organized, we decided to finally explore that room.

All of our archives rooms are similar....shelves along the walls, and a table in the middle of the room, to work on.

The newspaper room had one problem......people kept finding things elsewhere, and just piled them on the center table.  Our first job was to clear everything off the table, so that we would have a clear surface to work on.   In the center of the table, was a large cardboard box.......opening it up, I found it completely full of photo negatives, still in the original photo envelope from the store that developed the film.   What was this??????  I discovered that each envelope had the name of a bride and groom and a date written on it...........these hundreds of envelopes were those of a professional photographer who took wedding pictures in the 1980’s.........

Now, the HUGE job ahead of me, is to create an index!!!!  I actually saw one bride name for someone that I used to work with!  What a surprise!  What a fabulous discovery!  What a lot of work ahead.

But my day was not over.

After clearing off the table, we discovered that there were two large cardboard boxes stacked by the closet, and so I decided to check out those boxes before tackling the closet.  We were labeling and reorganizing....so let's finish the boxes before we tackle the blueprints.

One of the boxes contained a very heavy old leather book, wrapped in archival paper to keep the dust out.  The outside was labeled as containing a book from a Title and Abstract Company of Chicago, with an added note that there were some Fond du Lac people named in the book.......

There was also a note that the spine of the book had  a label  E S Bragg.

I really became curious.....just what was this old leather book.   It appeared to be a typical record book of the time...the first pages in the book were an alphabetical index to the contents.  The balance of the book concerned court cases, listing several counties including Dodge, Fond du Lac and Washington Counties.

What I was holding, was a log book for a lawyer, showing each case he was working on, and dates when he received or sent out paperwork regarding that specific case.

This was none other than General Bragg's court case book, showing the cases he was working on, work he did on the case and expenses he incurred for that case.

This gem is no longer stuffed away in the newspaper room archives.