by Harrison Miller
Bethany, West Virginia is an unlikely place for an archival internship; it is especially unlikely if you’re a resident of Boston like myself. But I consider my internship at the DCHS to have been an extraordinary gift, marked by generosity from beginning to end.
I arrived for my internship in the archives on June 16th and completed my work on July 3rd – we jokingly called the experience a “micro-internship.” Within that time I was given two responsibilities: to reorganize and create a detailed description of a historic collection, and rewrite policy and administrative documents for visiting researchers.
Policy writing was exciting for me, because it allowed me to learn more about how archivists make the archives welcoming for researchers, and how the rules you set can build a bridge where interested learners might otherwise see a wall. What this meant practically was turning the archives’ current list of “thou shalt nots” into recommendations for how to prepare yourself for a fulfilling visit with the materials. I was also excited about this work because it gave me an opportunity to lead discussions and present my ideas to the staff, who gave me good feedback and modelled what a healthy, generative work culture should look like. When people ask me about my internship experience, the opportunity to work alongside my gracious colleagues and supervisors is the first thing I mention.
But when people ask for pictures of my internship (and who doesn’t want photos these days?), I show them the intriguing documents and photographs I reprocessed from the Foreign Christian Missionary Society (if you want to know more about the society, read the administrative history I wrote here). The records had some previous work done on them, but it was high time to give these materials a more unified organization and detailed description. This need was proven by the intriguing discoveries I made: a large group of materials about fundraising efforts, documents about the purchase of a mission station in the Belgian Congo, and a treasure of photographs documenting the life of the missionaries and natives in the Congo in the early 20th century.
What I enjoyed most about this work, though, was not the discoveries I made in the materials, but the way that processing this collection turned into a hands-on history lesson about the Disciples of Christ. The struggle to create the FCMS was a lesson in its own right, about how hard it is to balance independence and cooperative missions efforts! But more importantly, through the efforts and documents of the organization I understood more concretely what it meant to be a Disciple: “to be and to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, witnessing, loving and serving from our doorsteps ‘to the ends of the earth.’”
History is everywhere at the DCHS. It took two weeks for me to realize that a printing press at the entrance to the DCHS offices was from the very mission station that I had spent so much time learning about! And my own desk during my internship was a communion table at the Centennial Convention of the Christian Churches. We stroll along the shoulders of giants and amble between the artifacts of our history.
I am grateful to Joel for his cheerful leadership; to Erin for generosity of knowledge and encouragement; and most of all to Colleen for her mentorship, commitment to my growth, and willingness to let me take on challenging, rewarding work. I will not soon forget all I learned at the DCHS!
