(Courtesy photo)
Mustang Daily Staff Report
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Two Cal Poly history seniors translated and researched letters written about the Central Coast in the 1860s.
Andrew Engdahl and Molly Prendergast interned with the Dana Adobe Nipomo Amigos (DANA), a nonprofit organization that focuses on the preservation of the historic Dana Adobe building and education about California’s Rancho era, to translate and research six original letters.
“They’re personal letters about day-to-day activities, mostly between sisters,” researcher and secretary for the DANA board of directors and researcher Susan Gray said. “There’s a lot of talk about clothing, illness, who’s sick and who’s not, financial difficulties and just kind of daily information, the type that today we would say in a phone call or email.”
The Spanish letters were sent to the Nipomo home of Juan Francisco Dana, known as the “Blond Ranchero.” Some were addressed to him and others were addressed to Juan Francisco Dana’s wife, Francisca Caroline Thompson-Dana. The letters were sent to Nipomo mainly from San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara.
Translating the letters was a huge undertaking for Engdahl and Prendergast because the letters were written in colloquial-style Spanish.
The authors were not well educated, so their grammar and spelling were very difficult to interpret, Prendergast, a Spanish and Latin American studies minor, said.
“There would be times where I’d be sitting there just staring at a word for like 20 minutes,” she said.
Still, Prendergast said the project deepened her appreciation for Californian history.
“Usually when you study history, you only hear of the big events of governments, but these letters provide information on the lives of ordinary people and what it would be like to live right here in the place I’m living, but 200 years ago,” she said. “California has a really dynamic history that sets it apart from other places in the United States.”
Engdahl, who is double majoring in business administration, said the content of the letters was interesting.
One of the letters talked about how a groom was rejected the night before a wedding. Because the supplies had all been gathered and there was little refrigeration during those times, they held a reception and celebrated the break-up instead.
“Another letter commented on an outbreak of the plague in San Luis Obispo, which ended up being smallpox, and the price of food in San Luis Obispo had gone up so a bunch of people were starving,” he said.
Realizations like these were the most interesting for DANA.
“To read about the conditions in a history book is much different than to have them put in such personal terms, which is much more compelling,” Gray said.
Engdahl and Prendergast will share their research on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Dana Adobe. The letters will be on exhibit, and docent-led tours will be available from 1 to 4 p.m.