During February, I devoted some time – 32 hours, to be precise – to processing a 16 linear foot collection at Bryn Mawr College: The Woman’s Club of Germantown records. It was officially my first “mplp-2-hours” collection and I think it went quite well.
The Woman’s Club of Germantown (WCG) was a long-standing institution in Germantown, Pennsylvania, with an active membership from its inception in 1917 until around 1981. Like so many woman’s groups created around that time, it offered a structured means through which women in the then growing northwestern neighborhoods of Philadelphia became better engaged with each other and in the social and civic activities of their community. The women participated in war-work for World Wars I and II, hosted luncheons and other social events, assisted the American Red Cross and established a child care program in an under-privileged neighborhood, among other things. In addition, for its clubhouse, WCG took charge of the Johnson House, a colonial era building, famous for its witnessing of the Battle of Germantown during the American Revolution and later for its use as a stop on the Underground Railroad before the American Civil War. According to the organization’s records, it seems that the WCG assumed responsibility of all maintenance and historic preservation for this building for numerous years in the mid-twentieth century.
The Club’s records are not complete; however, there is a fair sampling of documentation evidencing its administration and work for most years of its existence. In addition, the records offer a glimpse into community life in Germantown. Broadly speaking this collection related to two major movements in early twentieth-century American life: the development of women’s groups and their work, and the communities that were created as a result of the mass migration of middle and upper class people away from city-centers.
With the exception of around 10 files that were already transferred to acid free folders, the collection was previously untouched by an archivist. Materials were quite mixed up, but record types were easily identifiable and easy to move around and collocate. Additionally, because the collection contains straightforward documentation – meeting minutes, yearbooks, annual reports and scrapbooks – folders were easy to title and arrange within series as well. There are only a handful of files in the collection that would benefit from further arrangement though I am not sure the quality of documentation in those particular files warrants that attention. What this collection does need are phase boxes for the many oversize scrapbooks that are unfortunately in poor repair. It also would have been nice to have a couple more hours (really, just one or two) to read through some of the papers, especially the meeting minutes, to determine how extensively the Club women documented their meetings and activities.
I’d say this collection was helped immensely by minimal processing and I think it was an excellent candidate for our project. I believe it is now to a point of near-complete accessibility and I probably would not recommend much more in terms of processing for this collection.
