Today was my last day at the Archives. Which meant nose to the grind stone, trying not to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head screaming, "You've forgotten something!" I can't say I completely succeeded in ignoring it, but I didn't run around like a madwoman. Always a good thing.
It's honestly a little surreal. My mind keeps going, Wait, there's no work? You mean I can sleep in every morning? What about my walk in the morning? I don't get to say hi to Barack and Booth? What am I supposed to do with myself?
The short term answer is come up with a final tally.
Pension files pulled: 322
Legislative pension files pulled: 103
Some of the legislative files and pension files deal with the same person, so the total isn't the combination of the two. Once you account for those, here's the grand total:
354 pensions
Now we add the goodies. I pulled Mary Ann Bickerdyke's and Clara Barton's papers from the Library of Congress. Bickerdyke was involved in securing pensions for a number of nurses, and Barton was a member of the WRC Pension Committee, so both women had something to add to the bigger picture. We also have the huge petition the WRC circulated, a few tidbits from the 1892 Act file, and the 1888 Act file I pulled today. I have transcripts for the debate surrounding both bills and the names of several Congressmen involved in the bill (both for and against) who I can look into. I have the names of over a dozen women involved in the WRC National Pension Committee and the Army Nurses Association. And let's not forget the names of 354 women I can plug into search engines or send to historical societies to try and find personal letters.
I don't have a battleplan for Act 2 yet. I know it will consist of going through every single pension file, plugging the information into some sort of spreadsheet to look for patterns, and following up on all the leads I've been finding. And, of course, keeping up the blog. But for now, I'm heading home and putting my feet up for a few days. Sleep...
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