Omeka Post 1: http://omekahst251.jenniferandrella.com/items/show/35
The reason I choose this photo of the women is that I find it interesting in a few different ways. The first thing I notice is the woman seems to be old and somewhat wealthy. This leads me to wonder if she had any significant power. The next thing I see is that the book under her arm is the history of slavery. This leads me to wonder if this woman was in either the slave trade or another business that deals with slavery or if she even wrote the book herself. One research question that may arise from this photo is on the subject of the book. Being labeled as the history of slavery I wonder how much racial bias has gone into the making of the book and how that racial bias affected public opinion on slavery.
Omeka Post 2: http://omekahst251.jenniferandrella.com/admin/files/show/48
The reason I choose this specific document is that it deals with one of the two large topics from the class. This being slavery and the civil war and how they were very interconnected. In this document’s specific case this black soldier is getting paid for his service in the civil war. I think this a very interesting part of the history of the United States because it deals with a technique the north used to win the civil war. These specific techniques help the north get an edge on the south who had better generals and armies. If it were not for these soldiers the union may not have won the civil war and America may look much different than it does now. The research question then I find myself asking is if the north did not have as many black soldiers fighting would they have won as many key battles and the overall war.
These sources are unique in the sense that the metadata available about these items doesn’t give very much information for us to make interpretations. I love encountering photographs in archives, but I often run into the experience that you described in which you don’t know who the subject is or the context of the photo. Similarly with the treasury office receipt, both of these sources leave us with more questions than answers. Additional information, like learning about the collections in which these pieces reside, might help us better understand their meaning and significance.