Carrie's Anthropology 196m Blog

I spent 7 hours helping with installation last Thursday and about 6 hours creating a "Basketry and Native Plant Conservation" flier that has the dual purpose of informing my co-workers (who are mostly plant ecologists) and museum visitors on the cultural importance of native plants. I'll have copies of it next week.

Total: 13 hours

OK, back to Spring Break ^_^

Hey archaeologists out there...wanna job?

For those of you interested in archaeology, and may or may not have missed my previous post, there have been some updates for the positions available...

I work for a federal agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and they are still looking for 2 archaeology students to assist the current archaeologists.

The jobs will now be based out of the Davis office. There will be travel required to Red Bluff and Redlands, but all travel expenses will be paid by the agency. They are very willing to work with student schedules and won't expect you to travel until school is out.

Requirements: field school and being a student. Really, that's it. The job is a temporary position till Sept. 30, but they really seem to try to keep people on if they like you. They are completely happy to have someone who is just learning. Seriously...it's an awesome place to work!

If you or someone you know is interested please email me (see previous post, or check SacCT for address) and I can get you in contact with my supervisor. They are under a time constraint and can't keep the job open for students much longer.

This week was pretty slow for me as far as lab hours go. I spent 3.5 hours today helping with fabrication and I've spent about 2 hours creating a flier for work that focuses on plant materials used in baskets. Hopefully it will get some more people interested in the exhibit.

Total: 5.5 hours

I got the events schedule today at work for the Native American Culture Days held at UC Davis. They are doing a lot of great stuff for the week (April 5-11), but they are presenting a lecture that I thought sounded particularly interesting:

Traditional and Contemporary Uses of Plant Materials by California Indians; Tuesday April 6 12:00 -1:00 Hart Hall 3201
presented by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) partnering with the California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA)
Basketry techniques as well as plant use and management for different goods will be demonstrated and discussed. Current natural resource issues for weavers and others will be discussed.

I'm considering going, even though it is inconveniently occurring the day before our opening. I would still make it to the museum in the afternoon at least. I'd have to miss folklore that day too, so I'll have to talk to Dr. Bishop...but it sounds so cool.

Anyone else interested in going?

for more info: http://ccc.ucdavis.edu/culture_weeks/nacd.html

Wowzers, this was a busy week! Here's what I've been spending my time on:

W 3/10

• 2 hours working on ancentry.com, trying to fill in holes in my research
• 30 minutes meeting with team 2
  

F 3/12

• 1 hour scanning and altering photos, getting them ready to add to the kinship chart
• 3 hours searching CDNC for Cotton related primary documents (and oh my, did I find good stuff!)
  

Sat 3/13

• 2 hours visiting the Slough House Pioneer Cemetery
• 2 hours writing/reading blog posts, writing a draft of the inventory list, and organizing a "plan of attack" for the huge project that is the genealogy chart

Sun 3/14

• 12 hours writing 8 Didactic Texts, 30 labels, organizing 18 photos/documents for Group 2's genealogy chart, emailing my wonderful group what must have been 50 emails and reading all their responses, and researching newly found holes in my understanding of the Cotton Family History.
  

Monday 3/15

• 3 hours finishing up one more didactic text and labels, and organizing everything...and of course more emails. Us group 2 folk were very liberal with our email usage this week! <3

Tuesday 3/16

• 5 hours creating an inventory sheet, reading and editing group 2 panels, applying the groups suggestions to my panels, getting the flash drive of our weeks work safely (God, I hope it's safe) on to the flash drive.
  

Making a grand total of: 30 hours, 30 minutes of work. Well, that's insane...If you're wondering...No. I don't have a life. Just a very understanding fiance and a very lonely cat.

GREAT JOB group 2 - You guys are wonderful!

I found a draft registration card for Joel Sheldon Cotton last week and I thought it was really cool. I assumed that he must have served in the war for a time, even if it's not mentioned in the articles about him.

But now, upon closer inspection, I'm beginning to doubt my original assumption. The Registration card is dated September 12, 1918 - he would have been 43, a little old for the draft. Plus the Obituary mentions that he moved to Ft. Bragg because of his poor health, which is also not really something the Army is looking for in a soldier.

So, boo. I thought I had a great little addition to his story, but I think all I have is a registration card and no actually drafting to accompany it. (well, boo for me...I'm sure he was pretty happy about it)

What do y'all think? Is it possible that this is a sign of him entering the military? or is it just piece of government paperwork that was never used to send him anywhere?

I meant to post this before, but I forgot...Group 4 gave me an idea during their presentation last Wednesday. I like how they posed the titles of their sections in a question form: "What is Consultation?" I think was one. I was thinking of my title being "Who was Joel Sheldon Cotton?"

What if we used the question format throughout the exhibit? I think it would give the exhibit a sense of cohesiveness and flow.

Thoughts?

Here are some pictures from the cemetery. I think Laura has better ones, but I wanted to give everyone a a quick glimpse. All relationships are from the perspective of our collector, Joel S. Cotton. I have some more pictures of the surrounding area, but this is a big enough post, so I'll put those up later. Enjoy!

EDIT: I tried for an hour to make captions for this post, but Blogger has decided to be annoying so here is a key instead of captions:

Photo 1:Entrance to the cemetery
2: Plaque at the entrance
3: Grandfather, originally owner of sloughhouse
4:grandmother: Catherine Rhodes Sheldon Mahone Dalton (she was married 3 times, one (Mahone) ended in a divorce in 1870). Was a mid-wife and delivered our collector and his sister.
5: maternal uncle. I believe he inherited the land after Jared Sheldon died.
6: Wife of William C. Sheldon (aunt, by marriage)
7: Maternal aunt, died at age two of drowning
8: Father, committed suicide
9: Mother, died from an infection shortly after his birth
10: Sister. I don't know much about her, except she was raised by her grandmother.

I found a fantastic website yesterday, California Digital Newspaper Collection that allows a search of many Californian newspapers, some going back at least to the 1850s.

I found the article about Jared Sheldon's murder: Horrible Riot upon the Cosumnes. It's on page 2

And this is Cotton Sr's suicide: Sacramento Items. It says his middle name is "H." and up to this point I've always seen it as "S" and Sheldon. It's bothered me that he had the same name has his father-in-law. I think attributing "S" to the senior Cotton was a mix up between the two. EDIT: even more confusing is in the Pioneer book I have, he is Joel S. Cotton. Maybe I'll just leave his middle name out of the genealogy chart?

I also found numerous articles discussing Joel Cotton (Jr.) guardianship as an orphan: Probate Court Feb 22 1877 and Probate Court April 11 1878

Wow, busy week!

Last Wednesday I spent 2.5 hours searching ancestry.com for genealogy info. I think I need to go back and do some more, I got a lot of great info on Jared Sheldon, but not much on the Cotton's. I would like more primary sources to add to the kinship chart.

2.5 hours were spent on Saturday developing a kinship chart for the Cotton family.

I spent about an hour with group 2 today (Tuesday) going over our story board, sharing research, and discussing each of the areas we're focusing on. We're going to meet tomorrow before class to finish our story board.

Then I spent a whopping 5 hours this evening reading over the incredible copies from a Pioneer Cemetery book that Laura and Stacey got from the Library. It has an awesome amount of information and allowed me to fill in some gaps in the kinship chart. I also spent some of that 5 hours working on my part of the story board, redoing the kinship chart, and figuring out where I still have (gaping) holes in my research.


P.S. Had to share my cat's not so subtle hint that I need to stop studying for the night!

given to me today by Laura, who did awesome research at the Library...

I used to think that history was a thing you saw in books;

It always seemed to be there,
You never had to look.

One day I heard there used to be some History of this town
But when I went to look for it
No one had wrote it down

How do you find your History when you don't know where to look?
How do you know what happened
When there's nothing in the Book?

You start to do some asking and you really look around,
and bit by bit you dig it out
until you've got some found.

You listen to the old folks and you study the artifacts,
and you put the bits together
'til you see just how the stack.

And, finally you get a story even though it's not that much;
as long as you can reach it, then
It's History you can touch.

You find the gentle Miwoks with their acorn grinding stones,
and the people who dug their graves up
Just to rearrange their bones.

Michigan Bar and Sloughhouse, where the stagecoach made its stops
where they carried all the gold out
through the valley of the hops

You find out who lived in Wilton and in Franklin and Elk Grove.
And you get to know a lot about the Sheldons, Kerrs, and Rhoades.

It is written on the tombstones and it's buried in the ground;
It's in the memories of the old ones
that's how your History is found.

-Elizabeth Pinkerton, (from the book: Historic Cosumnes and the Sloughhouse Pioneer Cemetery by Norma Baldwin Ricketts)

I'm not sure who Elizabeth Pinkerton is, but I seem to remember that surname in my research somewhere. Anyways, I thought it was cool, especially since it mentions our collectors grandparents (Sheldon and Rhoades).

Here's my first draft of the Cotton kinship diagram. Sorry it's so small, it's as big as blogger will let me make it. Hopefully you can still get the idea, you can see a somewhat larger image if you click on it.

I'm thinking on the wall, we can put the kinship chart up and have important documents around it (like the Diseno, newspaper clippings, census info, etc.). I color-coded the people that are important to our story, and I'm thinking we can post each of the side panels in corresponding colors so visitors can follow which info belongs to which person.

Another, different, idea I had was putting the documents directly under each name, though I think it would make the kinship chart really big and maybe harder to follow...I guess we can work those kinks out later!

Lab: 2.5 hours

EDIT: I put the wrong date of death for Jared Sheldon. it's 1851 not 1857. It's fixed in my original.

finally, I have proof enough that Jared Sheldon and Joaquin Sheldon are one in the same (woo hoo!). check out these links:

Placer County archives and office of historic preservation I've also found this great bio of his, note: there is an error in the date of his death, it's suppose to be 1851 not 1857.

I spent about 1 hour researching and doing a blog post on potential baskets to use as our basket for the exhibit.

about 30 minutes: spent helping people set up an RSS feed and fixing some blogger issues.

30 minutes spent reading blogs.

30 minutes: studying some information given to me by Mary Re: John Hudson. I would like to get together with others from group 2 soon to determine how much information we want to include about him and Carl Purdy. (and of course talk about all the other stuff we need to do as well!)...On a side note, Mary gave me some info for the Grace Hudson Museum. She was John Hudson's wife and an artist. One of the books of hers, "Grace Hudson, Artist of the Pomo Indians" has cover art depicting a Pomo cradle basket just like my object (BAS 156), which I thought was pretty cool.

1 Hour was spent trying to decipher the Sloughhouse land grants. The copies aren't the greatest, and the script is really hard to read. I was able to get dates and I found out that 5 square leagues were bought in 1844. Did you know that one land league equals 4,428 acres? That makes about 22,140 acres (i think), which lines up pretty well with the Sac Bee article I found last week. That makes me feel a bit more confident that I have the right land grant, considering the name from the Sac Bee was Jared Sheldon and State Archives only had a Joaquin Sheldon.

I also spent an 1 hour discussing the deed of gift assignment with Mary, and 30 minutes reading through the auction catalogs.

I think that's it for now, equaling 5 hours for the week. I will be spending some time tomorrow perusing ancentry.com for more genealogy info.