When one visits an archive and requests records, the documents often come out in nice, neat boxes. A visiting researcher can typically count on them being clearly labeled. They’re often dust- and dirt-free, too.
Having clean and organized records is great, but to me, records in the archives can feel sterile, detached from the world they were created in. The origins of many archival records are a lot dirtier (and sweatier) than you might think.
I’m an acquisitions archivist at the Pennsylvania State Archives, so I’m on the front lines of records collection and preservation. I get to see everything in its original state, before my colleagues clean and organize them for research. It’s fun and dirty work.
My job is to track down historically significant records from Pennsylvania’s government agencies and bring them to our archive. Sometimes it feels like I’m running around the state on a scavenger hunt where I have to figure out what’s on the list and then find it all.
During the summer, I was fortunate to find a trove of records from Danville State Hospital, a state-run mental institution deep in the heart of central Pennsylvania. The still-operating institution has been home to many thousands of people since it opened in 1869, and lucky for us they had a hoard of records dating back to day one.
Danville State Hospital’s administrative and main ward building, built in 1869.
Over the past few years, I’ve been working to fill the gaps in our collection from Pennsylvanian mental institutions. Since the 1850s Pennsylvania has operated nearly 50 different institutions, and we’re missing administrative and patient records from many of them. These records have important information about thousands of people who were institutionalized, and we believe that many researchers could utilize these records to learn more about the history of medicine, disabilities, and mental illness.1
Danville residents, c.1890. (Historic photographs reproduced courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives; Accession 7641, Danville State Hospital, Record Group 23: Records of the Department
of Human Services, Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg.)
For many marginalized people who were institutionalized, these records can be the best documentation of their lives. This is especially true in 19th-century records that have detailed patient histories and other records that record individual day-to-day experiences. Without those records, this history, these people disappear.2
Male residents in Danville’s “Occupational Therapy” ward, c. 1890.
Office space in facilities like Danville is at a premium and there’s only room to keep the newest and most frequently-used records on hand. Inactive administrative and patient records that are rarely or never accessed are often moved to storage areas far away from working staff where they can easily be forgotten. In a busy facility like Danville, it’s easy for lots of historical records (even records that are only 10-20 years old) to get stored in this way.
Most of Pennsylvania’s state hospitals have closed in recent decades, putting their records at risk for further neglect, accidental destruction, or loss. For example, when the Pennhurst Center (an infamous institution for people with intellectual disabilities) closed in 1987, the archives did not immediately transfer any of its administrative or patient records. The facility’s buildings have since been sold, and most of its administrative records were lost and presumably destroyed — except for the patient records, which were moved to a location near Philadelphia and stored in a derelict building for decades. When the patient records (many of them over 100 years old) were finally transferred to the State Archives in 2018, they were in poor physical condition, and many of the files are still missing. There are records all over Pennsylvania like this, unavailable for research and slowly deteriorating; part of my job is to find them and bring them to the archives where they can be preserved, organized, and eventually accessed by researchers.
So I notified Danville’s records office and asked to visit and inventory their inactive records, to see if any should be transferred to the archives. I learned there were a lot of old volumes stored in a conference room, but they were behind locked cabinet doors and no one knew exactly what was there. My curiosity was piqued, and we arranged for a records inspection.
Doing my usual background research before my trip got me even more excited to see the records. Danville’s original Board of Trustees included Dorthea Dix, Thomas Kirkbride, and John Curwen — all foundational figures in the 19th-century mental health reform movement. Any surviving records from Danville’s early years could be an amazing resource for researchers interested in how these reformers’ theories and ideas were actually put into practice in a working institution.
I drove up to Danville with our archives’s summer intern, Isaac Shoop, and the two of us were equipped with a dozen empty boxes, a notebook, and a camera. When we arrived and saw the records for ourselves, we were instantly floored.
Danville’s conference room and de facto historic records storage area.
Inside the administration building, we soon found ourselves in a stately and ornate room. Our eyes were immediately drawn to the tall and colorfully painted 12-foot ceiling. The walls were covered with beautiful wooden paneling made of original growth Pennsylvania hardwood, the floor overlaid with a multicolored tile pattern. Our hospital staff guide said this was the original superintendent’s office. Most exciting to me, though, were the two giant cabinets on both ends of the room, each covered floor to ceiling with leather-bound volumes that looked (and smelled) like the 1800s. We had struck the motherlode.
Ceiling of the Danville Conference Room.
A locksmith unlocked the cabinets with an ancient-looking key, and then Isaac and I pored through the records. Because of state record laws and our archives collection policy, we have to be careful only to collect original records and not published material that researchers could find elsewhere. So, we had to figure out who created each item and then what has high research value and should be transferred to the archives. Records appraisal is exacting and painstaking work.3
Me, inspecting Danville records stored on the highest shelf.
Trying to inspect hundreds of volumes, files, and documents is hard enough, but we had a few surprises that slowed our work down even more. A construction crew was working right outside our open window with a jackhammer and I could feel my skull rattling inside my head. On top of the noise, there was the heat. Pennsylvania summers can be pretty brutal, and this day was especially hot. I had to make sure the sweat from my brow didn’t drip on the documents. And by the end, our hands turned ochre red from handling degraded leather bindings (we call this red rot).
A few dirty and sweaty hours later, we determined about half of the volumes were published medical journals and textbooks (and also one suspicious-looking 1930s-era pornographic magazine), and the rest were original records created by Danville staff and other Pennsylvania government agencies.
When I’m determining research value of new records, I look for materials that are detailed but not redundant to other existing sources of information and provide unique perspectives on decisions and events. I also look for records that preserve the voices and experiences of historically under documented groups. 4
This page was pasted to the front cover of Danville’s first Board of Trustees minute book, likely used as a reference during Danville’s construction.
Page from Danville’s 1921 Board of Trustees minute book.
It didn’t take long to find the value in these records, particularly several bound sets of board of trustees’ minutes and superintendent’s diaries. The records reveal the day-to-day operations of Danville and frequently mention experiences of individual patients. The debates, decisions, and analysis of results recorded in these pages paint a vivid picture of the changes in mental health diagnosis and treatment that occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was also a thrill when I realized that the first volume of minutes were written and signed by none other than John Curwen, one of Danville’s first trustees!
The minutes from Danville’s first Board of Trustees’ meeting, held in 1868, were written and signed by John Curwen, a colleague of Dorothea Dix and national leader in psychiatry for most of the 19th century.
The collection’s completeness was incredible. We had full sets of Board of Trustees minutes, annual reports, superintendent’s daily diaries, staff newsletters, and Pennsylvania Committee of Lunacy reports. We also found dozens of gorgeous 19th-century photographs and an interesting set of early 20th century “mental health bulletins” that spelled out treatment and diagnosis procedures used at the time in great detail. In all, we collected over 200 volumes and other original documents, enough to fill 17 banker’s boxes full to bring back to the archives.
Except for red rot and a few books with damaged spines, the Danville records were in good physical condition. I’ve experienced too many trips of finding records stored in dank basements, squirrel-infested attics, decrepit barns, condemned buildings, and even morgues and were just too damaged to salvage. Archivists and researchers owe a lot to the people who take good care of historical records well before they end up in archives.
Even records stored in decent environments decay over time, as shown in Danville’s first three minute books used from 1868 to 1920.
When we finished our appraisal, Isaac and I carefully boxed up and organized all records destined for the archives. We had just enough room to fit everything in our car, but could feel the heavy weight of the records on every hill as we drove back to Harrisburg. Nevertheless, it was a satisfying drive home.
Two hours later we were back in the archives with our exciting new acquisitions. I handed everything off to our processing archivists who will label the documents and put the collection in the archival boxes you’ll soon see in our reading room. They’ll also conserve damaged items, write a collection finding aid, and update our website’s collections list. It won’t be too much longer until the collection is stable enough for long-term preservation, but also well described and arranged for easy access.
To make all our labors worth it, we’re looking for curious and eager researchers to come and dig through the new Danville records. That’s what all our work is for. If you’re interested, come visit the Pennsylvania State Archives. I can assure you, the trip is worth it.
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- Of the dozens of mental institutions that have operated in Pennsylvania, the best documented are the Pennsylvania Hospital (established in 1751 in Philadelphia), and the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Asylum (established in 1851 in Harrisburg). See Nancy Tomes, A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum Keeping 1840-1883 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Ernest Morrison, City on the Hill: History of Harrisburg State Hospital (Harrisburg, PA, 1995).
- For one of my favorite discussions of the importance of detailed institution records and an example of the scholarship it can produce, see Barbara Taylor, The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Own Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
- The State Archives’ official mission statement is “The Pennsylvania State Archives collects, preserves and makes available for study the permanently-valuable public records of the Commonwealth, with particular attention given to the records of state government.”
- Works on archives appraisal theory that have most influenced me include F. Gerald Ham, “The Archival Edge,” American Archivist 38 (Jan. 1975): 5-14; and Howard Zinn, “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest,” Midwestern Archivist 2 (1977): 14-26. .
