Transparency
The Unstable Archives Project borrowed the materials in the Palmer Family Archives from January 2020 until May 2021. The material traveled with Megan Robb from the family home to the project office at the University of Oxford. While the archiving and digitization process was underway the materials were stored in a secure office at the University of Oxford and stewarded by Sneha Krishnan. After receiving a rough valuation of the materials from the family, the University of Oxford insured the materials in case of damage and offered a secure office for their storage on the campus, with the family being given a copy of the insurance guarantee. When a member of the family changed their mind and requested one item in the collection back in May 2020, the project immediately arranged for its safe return. In other words, family members could request artifacts back or decide not to digitize the items in their family collection at any time in the course of the project. Now that the Palmers are once again in possession of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa’s archive, they may decide to keep, bequeath, or donate the materials.
Affect and Access
Born-digital archives allow families to balance competing commitments to facilitating valuable research while keeping treasured family archives in the home long-term. Born-digital archives allow greater access to scholars who may be interested in researching a valuable family archive. Access to a born-digital archive is not dependent on a scholars’ ability to travel to the country where the archive lives, to negotiate access to the family home, and on the family’s ability to host multiple scholarly visitors. By loaning family archival materials for the creation of a born-digital archive, scholars can access a valuable archive using an open-source website while family members are not put in the position of choosing who is permitted access to the items, since access is universal. Materials in family archives may be more likely to host unconventional archival materials organized around particular figures, rather than being organized according to genre conventions or medium (as happens in some archival or library institutions). This form of affective organization offers opportunities for a re-thinking of the archive across multiple media and languages, while highlighting the role of family construction in the construction of imperial ambitions.
Case Study: The Palmer Family Archive
Dowager Lady Palmer and her husband, the late Lord Palmer, loaned a treasured family collection to the Unstable Archives project. Dowager Lady Palmer below has written an account of their journey to learn more about an ancestor about whom little was known, Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Ducarel. One aim of this project is to establish a model for working ethically with families whose private archives are important to scholarship but also hold affective value for family members who may wish to keep the items in the household, or to donate them to local archives scholars may have difficulty accessing.
Dowager Lady Palmer has given us permission to share her account below. She and her late husband, as well as an enthusiastic member of their extended family, Fergus Madden, became passionate about learning more about the significance of this little understood figure in their family’s past. They sought out help from scholars to understand their family archive better, particularly a collection of 18th-century Persian letters that were indecipherable. It is apparent from the below account that in the Palmer family, Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa is part of a lineage whose history holds great importance for the present members of the family. It is also apparent that discovery of materials within the family depended upon serendipity and chance; research on any family archive requires acknowledging and accommodating silences and erasures.
“It was not until my husband John, retired in 1990 and we settled in Devon that we opened a large box marked ‘archives’, and what a fascinating box it has proved to be.
Half the Ducarel archives were there, including the bundle of Persian letters, together with a note to say the rest of the archives were in Gloucester.
We had also inherited several portraits and found others on an Uncle’s garage floor, in most cases they were unidentified. Over the years they have been restored and we have discovered who they all are. It has been a challenging but rewarding task, and latterly enjoyable living with them. In conjunction with the written archives we felt we really started to know the Ducarel family. Two outstanding ones were the Grand parents of Gerard Gustavus, Jacque Coltee Ducarel (1680-1717/18) and his wife Jeanne, nee Crommelin (1690-1723).
As Huguenots they fled to England with their three young sons. The youngest, Adrian (1718-1745) was the only one to have children and so ultimately his only surviving son, Gerard Gustavus stood to inherit from not only his father but also his two uncles.
Thus all the Ducarel records came together at the Manor House in Exmouth, where Gerard Gustavus and Sharif un -Nisa lived. Their son Philip John (1778-1855) was the next custodian and after a short time at Walford Hall in Somerset settled at Newland, then a fine Georgian house with panelling supposedly by Kent (now in the museum of fine Art in Boston). Sadly Philip’s only son died as a child so there was no male heir, thus his sister Jane (1785-1862) became the next occupant and the archives remained intact. Newland then passed to a niece of Philip’s, Elizabeth Julia Palmer, (born Finch Simpson), she too changed little in the house. The problems started when her son Frederick Archdale (1857-1933) took over, he sold both land and artefacts as and when he needed money. Finally when the house was sold it fell to two surviving sons, John Archdale (1894-1963) and Philip Somerset (1899-1984) to clear the house. There does not seem to have been much logic attached to who took what. Hence some pictures were kept by John Archdale, John’s father, while Philip took several and others were sold. Even sets of books were split. The two brothers took a box each of the archives, then Philip gave his box to the Gloucester Archives, this was indeed a good move as they have been extremely well preserved and documented. The other box is still with me but will be joining the first in Gloucester.
Good fortune has played a part. Not only were the two pieces of jewellery reunited -- one was in a bank in Northumberland and the other in the bottom of John’s Mother’s jewel box-- [also] the scent bottle was found amongst the Aunt’s clothes.
The other crucial stroke of good fortune was a visit from a distant Ducarel cousin who showed great interest in the Persian letters and so it was Fergus Madden who first made contact with Megan Eaton - Robb whose enthusiasm has carried the project forward. We are all deeply indebted to her and all her colleagues.”
The Palmers in an undated photograph
Bibliography:
“A Packet of Letters: Dā’īm Beg to John Shore; Dā’īm Beg to Sharaf un-Nisa.” Unstable Archives.
Letter from Andrew Ducarel to James Ducarel. 25 June 1773. Reproduced in: Two Huguenot Brothers: Letters of Andrew and James Coltée Ducarel 1732-1773. Gerard de Lisle & Robin Myers, eds. Leicester: The Garendon Press, 2019.