Cleaning and Sorting

Today starts another week of cleaning and sorting various archival collections. Today, the volunteer archivists at the museum this month are going through of box dispatches from the 1860s, as well as return receipts for letters received by the Colonial Office in Jamaica during the 1890s. The letters are heavily soiled and are being cleaned.

One miscellaneous sheet of paper listing correspondence received on Grand Turk allows an insight to what may have been included in the missing "government archive."

A few letters showed the effects of the American Civil War on the Turks and Caicos.

1863, July 10: "The Treaty entered into between Great Britain and the United States of America for the suspension of the African Slave trade."

July 16th: "Respecting the neutrality to be observed during the escalating hostilities between the Federal and Confederate States of America."

Dec., 12: "Respecting the proceedings of the confederate ships of war Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and Georgia at the Cape of Good Hope."

One can only wish we were cleaning the actual letters...