As Sydney’s posts have documented, one of the challenges we’ve faced is the difficulty of finding even super-basic information– like, names–of the members of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore.

Today, I happened to stumble upon a treasure trove of a document that had passed under the radar of our summer researchers. I was checking and verifying the names and addresses of the membership, which Sydney has painstakingly transcribed over about half of the summer. Names, we have all discovered, are very difficult to transcribe.

In the middle of a large, mostly empty, unlabeled book in the “Memberships” box of the WLCB, I ran across a few pages where the WLCB Constitution had been painstakingly copied, followed by an undated pledge signed by the membership.

We’ve been trying to find some of these names for some time. Mrs. George K. McGaw (Margaret!). Mrs. R. K. Cautley (Lucy!). If we had realized how momentous this document was when we’d run our eyes across it earlier in the summer, we’d have saved ourselves a lot of work– many of the most active members of the Club, unsurprisingly, appear on this list.

I was able to date this document tentatively to the 1898-1899 season. Part of my logic was that Mrs. John C. Wrenshall (Letitia!) took over the presidency of the Club from Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull (Francese!). I also referred to the lists of officers and Board of Management that Sydney & Clara have compiled this summer– and while the signatories here most closely resemble those listed in the programs for 1898-1899, they don’t match exactly.

So, an answer raises more questions: how stable was the Board of Management in the Club? Did people switch in and out after being elected? But for now, I am very happy that we now have first names for about 15% of the Club.

It is one of the few “public” documents of the Club in which the women made a concerted effort to use their first names. Now that I’ve become more familiar with the documents, I’m seeing first names scattered about here and there, including in the title page of the membership dues book from 1890 (which lists Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin as treasurer). They also sign their first names when elections are being held (They are the ones voting, after all, not their husbands!) Their first names also appear in the minutes, perhaps because those are more “private” documents.

On this pledge, there are only 2 or 3 instances where a signee has used her “married” name (Mrs. Thomas Hill), or used initials rather than writing out their full names. I find these hesitations both sad and touching.

If only they had written their names. With their names, we can start fleshing out their histories.