Citations for historic letters

Sdarnowsky wrote:

Please forgive the long post, but I have several questions related to the historic letter citations covered in the fourth edition of EE.

Sdarnowsky, in return, I have to ask you to forgive the delayed answer. A question of this length, with this many parts, does make it hard to find a large enough block of time, amid daily deadlines, to work through the all the issues raised.  Below, I'll paste in sections of your query, with answers below each.

QUESTION: Author's Location

Template 7 on page 123 says to handle the first reference note the following way. (I am omitting the sentence for the descriptor and using bold to call attention to my area of concern.)

F. A. Charleville to "Dear Sister" [Athanaise Charleville Faris], letter, California, 15 November 1867; Mills Family Papers, 1850--, privately held by E. S. Mills, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Hendersonville, Tennessee, 2023.

However, section 4.34 on page 169 handles it like this (again omitting the descriptor):

F. A. Charleville (Fiddletown, California) to "Dear Sister" [Athanaise Charleville Faris], letter, 15 November 1867; Mills Family Papers, 1850--, privately held by Elizabeth Shown Mills, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Hendersonville, Tennessee, 2023.

I personally like placing the author's location after the author's name …

In EE4, before the templates are offered, several important foundational points are presented:

EE 2.1: “Citation is an art, not a science.”

EE 3.1:  “Citations are flexible structures … Standard building blocks can be assembled in various ways to fit each need.

EE 3.3:   “Creating Flexibility:  History sources are complicated … . Creating those citations, as cautioned at 3.1, requires flexibility. Flexibility is achieved through the use of two formatting tools: Building Blocks [and] Layers.”

Each template in Chapter 3 demonstrates how to assemble the building blocks for a specific type of source.  Column 1 of the template specifies the building block. Column 2 analyzes the record and places each significant piece of information into the appropriate building block. Then the whole is assembled, to show how a citation to that particular source might look.

Chapters 4-15 each take a different class of records and provides citation examples for many variants that we find in the records. EE 4.34, which you question, demonstrates a common variant. You say you prefer this variant. Wonderful. Either is appropriate.

QUESTION: On a related note, if the city is well known (such as Cincinnati or Philadelphia), is it necessary to include the state?

With cities such as New York City and Chicago, omitting the state is common. With other cities, we might ask ourselves: Is this the only city in the world that carries this name? It's a judgment call.

QUESTION: Some of my letter writers named their house or estate, and thus sometimes gave their location as Windon or Cartraff. Should I include that as the location ...

That, also, is the type of judgment call we make when using historical records. Is that piece of information needed to locate the record? Or is that simply a piece of personal information of the type that the letter is filled with?

QUESTION: ... then add a descriptor, like "Windon was the summer home of Samuel R. Shipley."? Do I have to prove how I know that? And if I have given that descriptor once, can I omit it from subsequent citations?

EE4  2.4: “Common-Knowledge Rule: Any statement of fact that is not common knowledge must carry its own individual statement of source.

QUESTION: Author's Name

One of my authors, Eleanor Hannah Davis, never signed her name that way. She typically signed it Ellie or Ellen or E. H. D. Would I cite the letter using whatever her signature was, but then add her full name in square brackets? Would I put her signed name in quotation marks, or is that done only when the name is a pronoun, like Mama or Sister? When I give her full name, is it OK to just use her middle initial (Eleanor H. Davis), or should I spell out her full name?

Ellie [Eleanor H. Davis] to "Dear Hannah" [Hannah T. Shipley], letter, ...

Also, this collection of correspondence includes letters written by Hannah Davis Taylor under her maiden name (which she almost always signed Hannah D. Taylor) and her married name (which she almost always signed Hannah D. Shipley). After she married, should I cite her name like this:

Hannah D. [Taylor] Shipley to Murray Shipley, letter, ...

To make matters more confusing, she had a daughter named Hannah Taylor Shipley, who usually signed her own letters Hannah T. Shipley. Can I just leave it at that?

EE 2.11 addresses these issues.

QUESTION: Recipient

The example in EE includes the full salutation ("Dear Sister"). If the salutation includes the recipient's full name, can I omit the greeting? For example, can I cite "My Dear Friend Murray Shipley" as simply Murray Shipley? If the letter was addressed "Dear Murray," would I cite that like this:

Hannah D. Taylor to Murray [Shipley], letter, ...

Or like this:

Hannah D. Taylor to "Dear Murray" [Murray Shipley], letter, ...

Past the points already discussed above, these also fall into the categories of judgment calls and personal preferences.

QUESTION: Date

I have a few letters where I know by context that the date written by the author is wrong. For example, a letter dated December 3, 1872 talks about the New Year's calls they received, which would have occurred on December 31, not December 3. Do I use the author's date in the citation, but then include a descriptor about why I think it's wrong?

EE 2.55 provides general guidance for the use of editorial brackets. Past that, if you’ll check the index entry for “errors, correcting.” You’ll find numerous examples.

QUESTION: Owner of the Document

I'm going to be citing dozens of letters from a particular private collection. After I have spelled out the owner of the first document in full in the first reference note (Shipley Family Papers, 1842-1899, privately held by The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 2024), can I use the shortened name (Shipley Family Papers) even when I'm referring to letters in that collection that are by different authors on different dates?

“Shipley Family Papers, 1842–1899” [with an en dash] would be your collection name. As shown at EE 4.24 “Basic Pattern: Family Artifacts,” a shortened citation cites everything down through the collection name. Everything else that the first full citation gives to identify that collection does not have to be repeated.

QUESTION: Lastly, I am fairly sure that this collection was assembled by Hannah T. Shipley, one of the founders of the school, but I don't know the provenance for certain. I do know that she received some of the letters herself, and others she gathered from other family members. (For example, after her mother died, I know that her cousin sent her all the letters she had received from her mother.) Shall I omit any descriptor that I'm not positive about, or indicate what I think happened and cite the appropriate level of uncertainty?

The exact explanation you will make is again a judgment call only you can make, depending upon each individual situation. Chapter 4 (Archives & Artifacts), in its introduction to “Private Holdings” at 4.23: Basic Elements, states the basic issues to consider. The examples that follow in Chapter 4 demonstrate various ways of handling various situations and types of knowledge, when the source is a privately held artifact.  The index entry for “provenance” points to other examples for other types of records. Beyond that EE 2.4 always applies: If we make an assertion that is not common knowledge, we explain our justification for making that statement.

May I also offer a bit of general advice, given your earlier statement that you have begun a book?

Your desire to present sound documentation in this book is one all authors should emulate. As with many authors at the beginning of that venture, you seem to feel that if you follow prescribed formulas exactly you will avoid mistakes.  However, every person makes mistakes, even authors.

Meeting standards in the identification and evaluation of historical sources does not mean following a formula in every jot and tittle.  That works only when we use simple publications.

If, for each type of source, a researcher or author “looks up” that type of source and focuses on a model to follow, their citations will have issues because the discussion presented at that one model cannot provide all the instruction needed to understand longstanding citation practices.  (If EE or any guide attempted to repeat the same basic points over and again each time a new record type or quirk is introduced, it would be the size of the OED.)

Within EE, the QuickStart Guide and Chapters 1-3 provide the foundation that all history researchers and history authors need for sound work.  It may be necessary to read those fundamental chapters 1 through 3 more than once. The time spent studying those chapters, absorbing those basics, will be recouped many times over as you proceed with your project—and it will give you much more confidence in your judgment calls throughout the project.

Best wishes, sdarnowsky.