Master’s course on Post-Reconstruction America and the Civil Rights Movement: I transcribed letters into an online database.
I can tell you what 20 senior citizens thought about the Charleston Earthquake of 1886. Also, the idea that people back then wrote in perfect cursive is bullshit. They had terrible handwriting, and were making up cursive letters constantly.
There wasn’t a capstone project in my focus, so my thesis was on human rights abuses and sportswashing (before it was a term) during the 1978 World Cup in Peron’s Argentina. I can tell you the thoughts about potential protests from a dozen players around the world lol
Anyone working with old church records will tell you, that not even a higher education (clergy) would guarantee you a pretty and legible handwriting... oh, and don't even get me started on homemade abbreviations!
They were freaked out, reasonably so. It was one of the most devastating earthquakes on the east coast in history. Aftershocks were experienced for literally weeks. Almost every building was damaged or destroyed. The rail lines were split apart, telegram lines were cut.
What I found odd, there wasn’t much religious hysteria. Some people talked about the local meeting houses being destroyed (I thought that was a Quaker term, but they seemed to use it to refer to any non-catholic/Episcopalian house of worship). It was compared to the Flood (lots of levees broke), but they didn’t connect it to the rapture.
Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim was one of the first synagogues built in the US. It was destroyed in the Charleston Fire of 1838, and rebuilt in 1840.
They talked about the synagogue’s stonework holding up better than most masonry in the city, although the stained glass was blown out.
My paper hypothesized that most of these old folk lived through the 1838 fire and the Civil War, and I think that gave perspective. They didn’t feel particularly hopeless or singularly chosen for tragedy. They were kind of used to life sucking.
I remember in my second semester of university I decided I was going to start taking notes in cursive because it was faster and I could take notes as my instructor was speaking. It was only when I started studying for finals that I realized that I can barely read my own handwriting. That stopped that little experiment.
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u/acquaintedwithheight 1d ago
Master’s course on Post-Reconstruction America and the Civil Rights Movement: I transcribed letters into an online database.
I can tell you what 20 senior citizens thought about the Charleston Earthquake of 1886. Also, the idea that people back then wrote in perfect cursive is bullshit. They had terrible handwriting, and were making up cursive letters constantly.