Erik Beck – In the Cause of Common Humanity: The 1907 Kingston Earthquake

Originally posted to the TR Center blog on September 25, 2019.

Throughout the summer our interns have the opportunity to handle a variety of different documents from Theodore Roosevelt’s world, from family letters to sheet music to government correspondance. Cataloging material from 1907, Intern Eric Beck had the opportunity to relive the events of an earthquake in Kingston, Bahamas, that year. through historic documents. 

In additional to learning archival methods, metadata schema, and copyright law, each intern also gets the opportunity to dig into an aspect of Roosevelt’s life in their own research, creating either a digital humanities visualization, or a blog post. 

Using a tool called Tiki Toki, Eric used historic documents to build a timeline of the events. Learn more about the United States Navy’s response to the 6.5 magnitude quake that killed more than 800 people, and left some 10,000 homeless. 

Click here to enter the timeline