BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//pretalx//pretalx.com//spathum24//speaker//Z8MQFQ BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Amsterdam BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20230926T000000 TZNAME:CEST TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20231029T030000 RDATE:20241027T030000 TZNAME:CET TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240331T030000 RDATE:20250330T030000 TZNAME:CEST TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Beyond the Line: Mapping Early Twentieth Century St. Augustine thr ough Letters of an FEC Trainman’s Wife - Jeanette Vigliotti\, Jolene DuB ray DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240925T150000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240925T153000 DTSTAMP:20260913T120821Z UID:pretalx-spathum24-GUHHHX@pretalx.com DESCRIPTION:The city of St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States and\, at the end of t he nineteenth century\, it was the birthplace of modern tourism in Florida . At the end of the nineteenth century Henry Flagler\, who was an industri alist\, and co-founder of Standard Oil\, launched his robust hotel and rai lroad empire from St. Augustine. His businesses fundamentally altered the demographics of the former Spanish colonial city\, attracting the wealthy elite of the Northeast. Scholarly contributions about the Gilded Age in St . Augustine focus heavily on the creation of the Hotel Ponce de Leon and t he Florida East Coast (FEC) Railroad and the influx of wealthy visitors. H owever\, there is a notable silence in the scholarship. In recent years th ere has been a growing interest in the people whose blood\, sweat\, and te ars went into making Flagler’s vision come to fruition. What was the dai ly experience of the individuals who built their lives around Flagler’s vision? \n\nOur digital mapping project Beyond the Line: Mapping Early Twe ntieth Century St. Augustine through Letters of an FEC Trainman’s Wife m akes a significant contribution to the historical narrative of St. Augusti ne’s residents who witnessed and contributed to the rise of the FEC Hote l and Railway empire. We significantly reconfigure early twentieth-century conceptions of St. Augustine by layering insights from working-class resi dents alongside the more familiar narratives of tourism and industrializat ion. \n\nBeyond the Line will provide a better understanding of the conne ctions and tensions of gender and class in the early twentieth-century boo m in St. Augustine. A collection of correspondence recently uncovered in t he Flagler College Archives gives insight into what life was like for a fa mily living in St. Augustine and working for the Florida East Coast Railwa y during this boom. Most of the letters are written by a young newlywed sc hoolgirl named Susan Pollock\, who goes by the nickname “Chubby.” Her husband\, George Pollock\, was a trainman whose career kept him away from home. \n\nChubby’s letters not only allow a re-mapping of St. Augustine ’s early twentieth-century tourist boom but also conjure other locations connected by Flagler’s rail empire. Her letters followed George through out the eastern seaboard. Through her intimate contact\, our digital map c ollapses geographies to demonstrate the lived realities of this trainman ’s work—including the danger. Some of the details in this collection i nclude a first-hand account of the anxiety of having a loved one who lived the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous life of a trainman. This trade included long hours in a hazardous environment. Several of the letters go into detail about an employee who was killed in an accident\, and it bring s to light the significance of such perils. In 1909\, Chubby writes to her husband in multiple locations around the country and is sometimes unsure of his location or well-being\, which causes her much anxiety. \n\nOur ma p highlights the gendered experience of Chubby’s life in St. Augustine a nd George’s life on the railway. Her 1909 letters provide granular detai ls about what life was like for this family: daily activities such as clea ning and sewing\; the social network of other women in working-class famil ies\; the shortage of money to make ends meet\, and how women relied on th eir husbands to provide income. Chubby’s letters provide insight into th e social spaces of St. Augustine for women of working-class families and t he domestic tensions of Chubby’s intergenerational household. Our map dr aws from these letters to detail a tight-knit community of neighbors and o ther employees of the FEC railway and community social events such as the 1909 Ponce de Leon Celebration and baseball games featuring teams of FEC t rainmen. \n\nOnce the data has been collected from these letters\, and mor e information is gathered from other local heritage collections\, the data will be analyzed and digitally mapped to visualize this family's daily ex perience living and working in St. Augustine and for the FEC Railway durin g the progressive era. This collection is the jumping-off point to continu e to tell a more complete story from the perspective of the working class of the early twentieth century boom in St. Augustine. \n\nUsing archival materials from the breadth of Chubby and George’s life\, Beyond the Line effectively captures important social and demographic changes in St. Augu stine. In our digital map\, we will combine Chubby’s personal letters wi th other materials from the collection such as a series of receipts that s how George Pollock membership of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen from 1918 until 1947. Though in its infancy\, our project provides the startin g point to tell more diverse histories of twentieth century St. Augustine that weave class\, race\, and gender together beginning from the perspecti ve of an ordinary girl. LOCATION:MG2 01.10 URL:https://pretalx.com/spathum24/talk/GUHHHX/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR