Kingsport: Kingsport History

I noticed something exciting, today! The finding aid for the Hugh B. Brown Family Papers has been published in the Church History Library online catalog. Yippee. Access, away, people! Love, loss, and letters in the archive.

I have been home from the Church History Library for two weeks, now. So long. I really miss it, but someone had to go home and finish her Masters degree: me! I have resumed volunteering at the City of Kingsport Archives and processing the Muriel C. Spoden Collection. The feature photo up above is from the Archives’ blog. I am more than halfway completed with the processing and should start the finding aid and final box and folder markings and inventory in the autumn. Meanwhile, I’ve been working on Series VI, the Netherland Inn Records, which includes material about the very origin of Kingsport, once Christianville. Series VI includes research and photographs of early Boat Yard structures, landscape, and many original documents of the businesses associated with the Boat Yard, such as the store and shipping company.

This Bill of Lading for the mysterious Southern Express Company, a freight company in the south which began operations at the beginning of the secession, is dated 1869.

Bill of Lading

The Southern Express Company may have been a front for the Northern-owned Adams Express Company.


The names on the bill are of interest. Mr. Wolford ran the Boat Yard store and the last name of Bowman was very prominent in East Tennessee, as part of Washington County, TN is named Bowmantown (an area popular with cyclists for its low traffic and rolling hills).

I plan on blogging about something from the Spoden collection each week until I am finished. It will motivate me to document and share the items of note. Plus, that old Archival Diet principal, “If you know you have to report on your progress–you will make more progress,” can surely work in Tennessee just as well as it did in Utah. After all, I processed 24 boxes in two WEEKS, there. Come on, Kari. Pick up the pace!

Kit Hayes, the writing consultant for ETSU’s Liberal Studies program gave my Archiventures blog a generous and eloquent shout out, recently. Her post was called, Your Paper Trail, and had to do with the kind nature of the Browns’ correspondence between family members. This was an aspect of the collection that was very meaningful to me, so thanks, Kit. I hope you’ll read her blog and support her. She is an awesome consultant. Kit has asked me to be a guest blogger later this summer, so I am currently compiling a list of the best writing tips I have received during my education years.

I am presently looking for a collection on which to base my Capstone Project. When I find it, I will have much more to blog about. Until then, I will try to keep having Archiventures.

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