AMERICAN CONTACT
Creators: Anonymous
Date of Creation: May 1790
Place of origin: Caracas, Venezuela
Physical measurements: Approximately 24 cm. x 18 cm.
Materials: Paper, ink, and pencil
Process by which it was made: Writing and illustration
Current location: Archivo General de Indias (Seville).
Information contributed by Cristina Soriano.
Creators: Judges, notaries, attorneys of the Audiencia de Quito, Baltazar Cárdenas, Luis Montesdoca.
Date of Creation: October 20, 1727.
Place of origin: Ecuador
Physical measurements: 45 folios (4 folios for the transcript) 20×30 cm.
Materials: Paper, iron gall ink
Process by which it was made: Handwriting
Current location: Archivo Nacional del Ecuador, Quito.
Further Reading
Burns, Kathryn. Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Dean, Carolyn (2009) “Beyond prescription: notarial doodles and other marks” Word & Image, 25:3, 293-316
Herzog, Tamar. Upholding Justice: State, Law and the Penal System in Quito. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004
Hull, Matthew. Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. University of California Press, 2012
Sellers-García, Sylvia. Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014.
Information contributed by Agnieszka Czeblakow.
Creators: Mary Leadbeater
Date of Creation: 1789
Place of origin: Ballitore, Ireland
Physical measurements: Eight-page manuscript booklet.
Materials: Laid paper, ink
Process by which it was made: Manuscript
Current location: UCSB Library Special Research Collections.
Further Reading
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, 2018.
Fuentes, Marisa. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. Philadelphia, 2016.
Ghaddar, J. J., and Michelle Caswell. “‘To go beyond’: Towards a Decolonial Archival Practice.” Archival Silence 19, no. 2 (June 2019): 71-85.
Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (June 2008): 1-14.
Schellenberg, Betty. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture, 1740-1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Information contributed by Rachael King.
Creators: Christoph Saur and Family, Trinity Lutheran Church.
Date of Creation: House built in 1731, torn down in 1860, site exists today
Place of origin: Germantown, Philadelphia
Materials: Stone and wood
Current location: Philadelphia
Information contributed by Bethany Wiggin.
Creators: Unknown
Date of Creation: 1768
Place of origin: Saint John’s, Antigua
Physical measurements: 7 x 10 cm
Materials: Heavy paper and ink
Process by which it was made: Text printed, type ornament
Current location: Library Company of Philadelphia
Further Reading
Barringer, Tim and Wayne Modest, eds. Victorian Jamaica. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.
Frohnsdorff, Gregory. “‘Before the Public’: Some Early Libraries of Antigua.” Libraries & Culture 38 (2003): 1–23.
Goodman, Glenda. “Joseph Johnson’s Lost Gamuts: Native Hymnody, Materials of Exchange, and the Colonialist Archive.” Journal for the Society of American Music 13.4 (2019): 482-507.
Information contributed by Maria Ryan.
Creators: Christoph Saur and Family, Trinity Lutheran Church, et al
Date of Creation: House built in 1731, torn down in 1860, site exists today.
Place of origin: Germantown, Philadelphia
Materials: Stone and wood
Current location: Germantown, Philadelphia
Information contributed by Bethany Wiggin.
Creators: Unknown
Date of Creation: 1762
Place of origin: Charleston, South Carolina
Physical measurements: 69” long, 31” across, 2’ tall
Materials: Stone
Process by which it was made: Engraving
Current location: Coming Street Cemetery, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston, South Carolina
Information contributed by Shari Rabin.