I’ve been working on publishing my first ArcGIS Story Map Series about the Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters National Historic estate boundaries. After experiencing some technical issues, I have finally published the story map and shared it on social media. The site staff have been helpful and supportive during all the small setbacks.

I have now focused my attention on to my second ArcGIS Story Map Tour. The project showcases items from the archives and museum collections that reflect the Longfellow family’s international travels. The family’s collection is full of souvenirs of their extensive foreign travel and tokens presented by friends and admirers from abroad. For this story map, I have worked closely with site staff to research items drawn from the site’s manuscript collections, objects of the month collection, and interpretive text. Our goal is to showcase 80 items from around the world. To do this, I’ve searched through the Longfellow house database to create item descriptions and linked the item with the Longfellow family member it was associate with. I then searched through the NPGallery Digital Asset Management System for photos of the items and worked with site staff to create new images. We combined all the information in the NPS Story Map Tour and tagged each item with a location on the map.

For this story map, I used four colors to highlight items from different collections on the map. I have color-coded items from Henry Longfellow’s collection in blue. Charles Appleton Longfellow’s items are in red, and Alice Mary Longfellow’s items are in purple. Other family members’ items are highlighted in green. Looking at the map, users can see that Henry did travel a bit but most of his items from this list were tokens sent to him from around the world. Charles loved to travel. He went to Paris, Russia, and India, where he stayed for fifteen months. In 1871, Charley lived in Tokyo for almost two years and on his way back home he spent four months in China and also managed to visit the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Between 1875 and 1891 he went to Cuba, Mexico, Scotland, Ireland, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Italy, North Africa, Turkey, France, the West Indies, Egypt, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, Wales, Colombia, and Australia. Alice, Henry’s eldest daughter, also traveled throughout her life. Items featured from her collection include group photos in Maine with family and friends and items from her family’s European trip in 1868-1869.

This story map is a great resource for those interested in the museum’s collection. The items are featured in chronological order from when they were collected; some of the first items date back to 1860s! The image above is a sneak peek of the Story Map Tour layout showing three features; an overview map with color-coded markers, a large item photo, and the item description. All items belong to the Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site collection in Cambridge, MA. To explore the museum collection visit www.nps.gov/long or the album ‘Around the World with the Longfellows’ on https://npgallery.nps.gov/

Agency: National Park Service

Program: Latino Heritage Internship Program (LHIP)

Location: Longfellow House