From the Geil Archive (36)—Sentimental Geil

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To learn more about William Edgar Geil, click here for the Accidental Ethnographer Resource Center

A year ago on Round and Square (30 October 2012)—La Pensée Cyclique: Rural Religion in China (30)

Two years ago on Round and Square (30 October 2011)—Hurtin' Country: I Fall to Pieces

[a] Keeping Tickets RF

Click here for other posts written by Guest Contributor Amara Pugens:

1-About Me                                      2-Unlike the Others                      3-One of Earth's Travelers       

4-Don't Call Me Reverend               5-Intellectual Bricoleur                  6-The Perfect 2

7-Sentimental Geil

Today's Guest Contributor on Round and Square is Amara Pugens. Amara is from Brookfield, Wisconsin, and recently  graduated from Beloit College with a B.A. in history and anthropology and a minor in museum studies. She is currently working with four other Beloit College graduates to digitize, process, and research the William Edgar Geil Collection at the Doylestown Historical Society in Pennsylvania.

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Please note that all items marked "DHS" are property of the Doylestown Historical Society, and used with DHS permission. If you wish to use an image, you need permission of the Society. Please contact Robert LaFleur (lafleur@beloit.edu), and he will put you in contact with the appropriate people.

[b] Foochan Ticket DHS

Geil has again made me question my character.

As a Midwesterner on the East Coast, I have been taking the opportunity to visit all the major historical sites; I went to Valley Forge and Gettysburg, and I even ventured to New York City to see the Hamilton Grange Home and the Tenement Museum. Through all my travels, I have kept my ticket stubs and maps in hopes to create a scrapbook of my time in the Mid-Atlantic.

Now I see staring at me, Geil’s ticket to Foochan, China. Geil, in all his travels, also collected items to remember his time in new places. After working so much with his personal papers, which include journal entries and photographs, it should have been no surprise that he would also collect tickets…like me. Geil and I are once again alike.

With all this documentation, Geil was enriching his memory of that moment in time—a time that can never really be recaptured again. He was creating a history of his life and adventures. This discovery of his ticket reminded me of the first document I ever saw in Geil’s archive: an advertisement for one of his public appearances, with his handwritten note “my first lecture.” It seems Geil is a little sentimental.

[c] Geil's First Lecture DHS

So why would Geil and I collect these tickets? We already have written descriptions of our travels and even photographic evidence. So why—already with so much documentation—would Geil (and I) still collect more? Because there is a desire to have a physical link to the past. Why are there thousands of historical sites? Why each day are there hundreds of visitors at Independence Hall and the Statue of Liberty? Because it is human nature to not only remember history, but to also be part of it and be able to physically touch it. By writing about his experiences, taking photographs, and keeping tickets, Geil was capturing the physical aspects of the moments of his life he truly wanted to remember.