The William Parker Express cover collection is a research collection containing handwritten notes, illustrations, photocopies of images and auction sales, letters pertaining to express cover collecting, and newspaper and journal clippings.
The collector, W.R. Parker, arranged most of these binders alphabetically by the express company name, then, loosely, by date and then by type of material (i.e., the express company notes, franks, types or handstamps). There was also a menagerie of material relating to Express companies (but not specific to an Express Company), migration to the West, maps of territories, states, and mining areas, and, in general, history of the West during the mid-19th century. Most of this material was labeled “California” notes, but there were also notes for other states and territories.
18 binders were donated to APS by Larry Lyons around 2017, they were evaluated several years ago and both the binders and the individual pages were found to be in very poor condition.
During the processing of this material, we found that many of the pages were glued together at the spine, including hand-written notes and scraps of papers contained on ruled paper sheets. This was likely done to keep the pages from breaking loose from the binder and getting lost, however, the glued pages obscured some of the writing. When possible, the pages have been separated carefully with the hope that the contents can be preserved by future digitizing. In some cases, the separation would have caused too much damage and loss of content, and in these cases the pages are still glued together.
The contents of the binders were carefully removed and added to acid-free page protectors to protect the fragile papers. The pages were then placed in archival storage boxes with a drop side so that they can be easily removed without damaging the pages further.
These basic preservation steps should extend the life of the papers in this collection, and should allow for some handling by a careful researcher.
Eventually, the APRL digital team plans to scan some of these documents, so that the most useful sections will be accessible more widely to interested researchers without the need to come into Bellefonte and handle the fragile documents.
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