COLLECTING ORAL HISTORIES

By Frances Karttunen, NHA Research Fellow

In the summer of 1960, The Inquirer and Mirror sent me to interview a visiting celebrity. I knew very little about her or her accomplishments, and there was no way in those days to do a fast search, so what I turned in was not worth printing.

In 1965 I apprenticed with a master fieldworker recording rural dialect samples from Finnish immigrants in the US. The goal was to get people to speak at length, and the questions came from a list of events and personalities in Finland just before and after the emigration years. This strategy elicited some riveting oral history.

I spent most of my academic career writing about the indigenous languages of Mexico. I was studying how people spoke, but I could not ignore what they spoke about, and this led to my book Between Worlds

Shortly after the publication of Between Worlds, I retired home to write The Other Islanders, for which I interviewed Nantucketers whose parents or grandparents had come to Nantucket from other countries, including from the Cape Verde Islands. In 2002 I organized Jag!, an exhibition in the NHA’s Research Library Whitney Gallery for which Nantucket Cape Verdeans donated nearly a hundred family photos to the NHA photo collection.

The NHA returned to the theme of Nantucket Cape Verdeans in 2021 with Shoulders Upon Which We Stand, an exhibition in the Whaling Museum, followed in 2022 with Cape Verde in Our Soul. For this, I conducted seven one-hour interviews with nine individuals, and I also spoke with two others in a Food for Thought program presentation. Although there was hesitancy from some at first, these Cape Verdeans had confidence in me because of our previous positive relationship and because the 2021 exhibition had taken a first step toward representing their history within the walls of the Whaling Museum. We conversed easily because of long acquaintance and my familiarity with past generations of Nantucket families. Challenges came in scheduling all the interviews within one winter month and carrying out one long-distance interview. Another challenge for me was transcribing Cape Verdean Kriolu words and phrases. The interviewees had learned these by ear, but had yet to learn how they might be written down. There had also been recent spelling reforms for written Kriolu. However, an up-to-date glossary of words and phrases and consulting with Carl Cruz of New Bedford provided clarity.

Of prime importance with oral history interviews is transcribing each interview as soon as possible after recording and being able to check with the interviewee during the process. However, there are always things that need clarification, and it is essential to get the names of people mentioned and the spelling of their names correct.

Reviewing a 2001 interview I conducted with Eileen P. McGrath (1923–2021) about her schoolmates in the Nantucket schools in the 1930s, I came across a previously-overlooked nugget about Nantucket Cape Verdeans.

Eileen: Jareaseh Arges St. Jean. I grew up with her. …The Arges kids lived with the Rodericks in that lovely old Nantucket house on the west side of Surfside Road just before the road going in to the youth center. Their family made the bayberry candles.

Another nugget from our conversation:

Eileen: …a laundry in back of York Street on what’s called Onion Court.

Frances: Onion Court? I've never heard of it.

Eileen: Between York and Warren there’s a big block, and in there is a little thing called Onion Court. I don’t know if it's even recorded, but that is what it was called.…My father had a man who worked for him who lived on Onion Court.

Frances: You learn something new every day.

Eileen: You do, you do! And that's what makes it such fun.

Filming the Cape Verdean oral history interviews was a team effort that included Al and Mary Novissimo, Liz Schaeffer, videographer Joanna Hay, and myself. The positive warmth among the team members and the interviewees was a joy.