What would you have asked someone that was around when President Lincoln was assassinated? Sadly, this isn't possible, because it was 155 years ago as of April, 2020. However, Ford's Theater asked this question, and decided to do the next best thing. The people may be gone, but the documents are still around and Ford's has been awesome enough to compile them. If you wish to look at the documents to better understand the mood after the assassination, I completely encourage that. However, today is our chance to be a PART of this project...to be forever linked to Ford's Theater.
Part of the deal with documents, especially old documents, is that we need transcriptions of them. What is that? It is a digital version of the writing. In other words, typing out what was written, or what was printed and is part of the picture. This is a slow process sometimes. Ford's decided to elicit the help of students. There are MANY former New Hampton Middle School students that worked on these in intervention. NHMS did the most of any other school during the initial push. We will continue this, as we have the ability to do this from home, and even in groups in your want.
Step one: https://rememberinglincoln.fords.org/browse/all/all/?searchterm=iowa
Go to this site to choose a document. You can search them if you want to find something about a specific things. You can search Iowa, funeral, Booth, Leale (the doctor that worked on Lincoln), etc. Or just choose a document. The printed documents are fairly easy, but if you want to do the most good, pick one of the hand written documents to work on.
Step two: Open a google doc to write your transcription. As you go, you should write the words exactly how you see them spelled. There very well may be misspellings, but that is okay. You should also go to a new line every time the line in the document goes to a new line. If you want to work with a partner, or a group, share your doc and divide up the work.
Step three: Share your transcription with me and I will get it to Fords. Make sure to write who all worked on the document with you so I know who gets credit.
Attached are two documents that will help you if you are looking at hand written documents. Yes, I know cursive is tough, but it's good for you to see and try to decipher. If you're struggling, have your parents take a gander. If they help, make sure to include their names on the transcription team report so they get credit.