By Keeley Tulio, Founding Forward Archivist & Collections Coordinator
Founding Forward was thrilled to recently participate in Archives Month Philly – part of National Archives Month – by hosting an event to share our history and collections. I hope events like these and our exhibits help people realize that archives are for everybody. In fact, most of the requests I receive aren’t from published historians. They come from individuals looking into their family’s history and finding a way that history intersects with the collections under the care of Founding Forward. Or it could be someone who connected deeply with a piece of art they saw on display in The Union League of Philadelphia and wanted to learn more about the artist.
Civil War soldiers’ letters reveal their humanity and vulnerability
Founding Forward has a unique and varied collection housed at The Union League of Philadelphia. Our Civil War-era collections preserve the letters, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and photographs collected by the Union League and the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia. I’m a social historian at heart, so I’m drawn to the personal accounts and writings of the Civil War soldiers. We have the letters that young soldiers wrote to their families. The letters reveal their motivations for enlisting and what they prioritize as important when writing home. You get a sense of their humanity and vulnerability, especially the physical and emotional toll of war.
Items for genealogical research
We also have items more suited for genealogical research, such as documents from the Union League and the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. The first and oldest Civil War fraternal organization in the United States, the Order was founded in Philadelphia by three Union Army officers concerned about protecting the government after the assassination of President Lincoln. In that way, it parallels the Union League’s 1862 founding as a patriotic society to support the Union and Lincoln’s policies. Then, we have the ephemeral and material culture objects related to the League as a social club and from the League’s other properties.
Every item tells a story
Each item in the collection tells a story. One of my favorite items in our vault is a bowling pin, as ordinary as any pin from a local bowling alley. At first it doesn’t seem to fit into the collection, except there was a bowling alley in the basement of the League House. It’s certainly not as significant as the pieces of Lincoln’s undershirt – one of which is in our collection – given to the soldiers who carried the assassinated president’s body to the White House. But both these items, like everything else in our collection, connect the past to the present, supporting Founding Forward’s education mission.
I invite the public to interact with our exhibits in the Heritage Center (Founding Forward’s home within the Union League), explore our online catalog and digitized collections, and learn more at our website, or contact me at [email protected] for special requests.