Delving into Delaware Documents

Katherine Riley, a second year Museum Studies and Hagley scholar, spent her summer digging through the manuscript collections at the Delaware Historical Society as the Stewart Fellowship Intern.

Delaware Historical Society’s Library and Research Center on Market Street

For this assignment, Katherine worked closely with the staff in the research library to inventory and to catalog the collections in their basement storage. Throughout the summer, she arranged documents from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, daguerreotypes, cartes de visites, and photographic prints, as well as bound volumes.

Some of her favorite materials included correspondence between Donald Stephens of Arden, Delaware, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, from the Stephens-Roosevelt Collection. By the end of her internship, she cataloged nearly 60 collections ranging in size from 2 boxes to over 100.

According to Katherine, her summer internship “was a wonderful way to interact with materials from the past and to learn more about the state of Delaware.”