Being at the archives again was a great experience. Being able to go through more things and physically touch them was both helpful and scary. It was helpful in the sense that I could take a better look at some of the documents. It was scary because of the constant fear of them crumbling in my hand, though that would never happen.

The documents overall were mostly statements of the amount of money that Henry Shaw owed. These were usually in the form of a receipt for purchases. One of the letters was one from Henry Shaw’s sister, Caroline. This document was just a general report of what had happened at the house and gardens, and how much money he owed. While Shaw was gone, his sister was to look over the garden. Other documents consisted of newspaper clippings of John and Mary Meachum’s houses being auctioned off. 

The voices that were the loudest inside of these documents were the newspaper companies publishing these stories about the Meachum’s, and Caroline. Although Caroline only had one letter from what I saw in the collection, it still shows a lot of depth. The silence of the Meachum’s was something that I noticed, all of this talk about them but not one word from them in the newspapers. Maybe the newspaper companies just didn’t want to have their statement on their house being auctioned, or they just didn’t want their input at all. I’m not sure how we would be able to fill the silence since the documents are so old and outdated. I’m not sure if It wants us to put what should be in the newspaper from a couple hundred years ago or how we would change it today. If it were today, I would add what happened to the Meachum’s and how they ended up living in the future.