Church, Katherine, 1979 January 10
Abstract
The Church interview discusses major events like the Flu Epidemic of 1918 (churches closed), and living conditions in her neighborhood as a child (neighbors played in the street). She describes people in Highlandtown as hard-working, honest, mostly Germans, with other nationalities (French, Polish). She discusses the Abbott Memorial Church (Dr. Jones, Dr. Hughes, relations with Catholics, friendship with Cardinal Gibbons).
Dates
- 1979 January 10
Creator
- Young, Helen, 1951- (Interviewer, Person)
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research use.
Biographical Note
Katherine Church was born on February 27, 1907 to an Episcopalian mother and Presbyterian father. Her father was born in Maine and her mother was from New York. Her father built a house on Fleet Street. He worked for an ice company based out of the Weisner’s Brewery Building that was started by his father. Katherine is a graduate of the Teachers College at Johns Hopkins University. She taught at Baltimore City Public Schools after working as a secretary until 1969.
Extent
120 Minutes
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Existence and Location of Originals
Original format: 2 compact cassettes
Physical Description
Biography form, interview notes, tape index, 25 page transcript.
Scope and Contents
The Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project Oral History Collection contains paper records and audiocassette recordings from 1978 through 1980. The paper records are composed of the files kept on each narrator (the person being interviewed) and the administrative needs of the project. Narrator records contain biography forms, interview notes, and tape indexes for approximately 212 narrators. The interview notes briefly describe the circumstance surrounding the interview(s) session. The tape index includes the name of the narrator, the name of interviewer, the number of tapes, the tape(s) length, and the primary subjects covered. Seventy-nine of the records include transcripts. Transcript length ranges from 8 to 65 pages. Some are single-spaced; others are doubled-spaced. The interviews range from twenty-five minutes to three hours in length. One file, #183, and its accompanying cassette(s) were removed from the collection.
Thirty-two interviewers participated in the project. Typically, the interviews were one-on-one sessions between interviewer and narrator; however, single interviewer and double-narrator situations occurred, as did three group “nostalgia” sessions. Most interviews were prefaced by unrecorded, pre-interview sessions that occurred days before the recorded interview.
Each narrator abstract includes the following information when available: the BNHP interview number; the name of the interviewer; the date of the interview; the place of the interview; the length of the interview; the number of tapes used; the length of the transcript; and the file contents, such as subject index, interview notes, and biography form. The abstracts follow the numerical order of the interview number. However, interview numbers are not consecutive, but site specific. That is to say, any omitted number within a site can be found in another site.
When controversial or outdated terms, especially those referring to race and ethnicity, are mentioned in the abstract, the politically-correct term is used and the term or terms used by the narrator has been placed in parenthetical (“ ”) quotation marks. Specific terms from the interviews and textual uncertainties are often placed in parentheses alone ( ). Maiden names of female narrators are placed in brackets [ ].
Creator
- Young, Helen, 1951- (Interviewer, Person)
Repository Details
Part of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library Repository
H. Furlong Baldwin Library
Maryland Center for History and Culture
610 Park Avenue
Baltimore MD 21201 United States
4106853750
specialcollections@mdhistory.org