I have taught my department’s senior research seminar several times over the past decade. The topics include the Federalist era, the War of 1812, and most recently last fall, the ratification of the Constitution. In each class I devote a day to reading eighteenth-century handwriting. Fortunately, most of my students were taught cursive. I use a mix of documents, including letters discussing public and private matters, diaries, notes of legislative proceedings, and legislative petitions. The next day, we go over the peculiarities of eighteenth-century language usage. Last fall I wanted to introduce a material culture element, but was faced with the problem of how to do that with a topic based on reading letters and newspapers. But that was the answer. The letter itself—the paper, the ink, the quill pen, the wax, the seal—was a rich trove of material culture, and a way to understand the mechanics of eighteenth-century life.

Photo by author.

We all use letters in our research but we tend to be separated from them as objects. In many cases, someone such as my former colleagues at the John Marshall Papers has transcribed, annotated, and printed the letter for us. In others, we do not handle the original but a photostat or a microfilm copy. Even when we handle the original, we read it for its contents, and pay little attention to how it came to be, or how a fragile piece of paper survived the passage of more than two hundred years. I wanted my students to understand that—that someone went through the labor of writing a letter, and someone else took the trouble to save it.

Of course, we would not be working with original letters in this exercise, but substitutes. This required some MacGuyvering. The first step for me was to gather the materials. In an office-supply store, I found a sketch pad that approximated the size and thickness of eighteenth-century paper. I bought a wax seal and a ribbon in a craft store, and ordered a bottle of ink online. For pens, I used some quill pens that came from Colonial Williamsburg thirty years ago. I couldn’t remember if they were real or not, so I brought in turkey feathers from the yard (I live on a turkey migration route). I had a feeling that facilities management would not approve my melting sealing wax in a classroom, so I used red Play-Doh instead. The total expenditure came to about fifty dollars, with the paper and ink being the most expensive.

An example of a letter used in the exercise. Photo by author. Available via a Creative Commons License at The Papers of Bushrod Washington, University of Virginia, http://bushrod.washingtonpapers.org/.

The day before class I prepared a couple of sample letters. I copied two letters onto the sketch paper (with a ballpoint pen), and folded and sealed them. The Play-Doh has to be spread very thin to look and act like wax. Mine was too thick. In class, we started with the prepared sample letters. One student almost tore the letter opening it. I was rooting for that, so we could discuss all of the ways a letter might be damaged. Next, we used the pens. I used the turkey feathers to demonstrate why they were used as pens. The feathers are made of a durable material that feels like modern plastic. The souvenir pens were already cut, so we used those for the actual writing. I signed my name with the quill, and then had the students do the same. Next, they folded and sealed blank pieces of paper. Most used the ribbon, which I told them was not only decorative but also acted as a pull tab. We ended with a discussion of all the ways a letter might be rendered unreadable—bad handwriting (with mine as the best example), smudging, burning, tearing along the seal, or simply being lost.

Many of our students are interested in public history and material culture, and are looking for a hands-on experience. I think my exercise gave them that. Of course, this was a first attempt, and there are always adjustments to be made. In a future class, I think I would have the students write something longer, such as a few lines or a paragraph, to demonstrate how the quill had to be constantly reloaded with ink. Also, I would prepare a few examples of damaged letters, including one sealed letter booby-trapped with too much wax. And I would spread the Play-Doh thinner.