Like many of my friends, I'm an amateur history buff. So when the boss' boss asked me if I liked history, I gave her a noncommittal "yeah" so as not to break cover.
But I almost squee'd when she showed me what the renovators recently found moldering in San Francisco Treasury records: handwritten documents from day-to-day operations. Original 1910 deposit receipts from the Bank of Italy. Property tax records from the 1890's - which mean that you can document who owned where!
This is potentially huge for local historians. Yeah, there's a lot of crap there too: daily cash inventory levels for 50 years, who cares. But plenty of nuggets buried in the sand.
But I almost squee'd when she showed me what the renovators recently found moldering in San Francisco Treasury records: handwritten documents from day-to-day operations. Original 1910 deposit receipts from the Bank of Italy. Property tax records from the 1890's - which mean that you can document who owned where!
This is potentially huge for local historians. Yeah, there's a lot of crap there too: daily cash inventory levels for 50 years, who cares. But plenty of nuggets buried in the sand.