The first step to creating our digital artifact, was figuring out our research question. We came up with the research question, “How much agency does John Willey have?”. The question came up when we created our story map and also our relationship entities. Our relationship entities allowed us to see how much he traveled, and when we compiled dates of each time he traveled we saw that he was not spending much time at each location. Our group immediately wondered why he would spend only one to two years at a place, and why he did not have a stable role at a certain congregation. The story map also helped us see just how far the distance he traveled every single time, and the fact that he never returned home to England after being called to serve in Northern Ireland. At that time there were no cars, so traveling that much would have been tiresome and irritating. We then started to pick apart the actual words in the memoir. John Willey was “called” to serve at congregations, he did not voluntarily travel so far and frequently. He also “lamented” his job was a laborer in Fulnec. The word choice of the memoir and close analyzation of the text really brought us to our research question.
Once we decided on our research question and presented it to Professor Faull, she suggested we research the Moravian Church and find out what the actual role of laborer meant and how decisions were made. I then borrowed her book, Speaking to Body and Soul, and found out necessary information to answer our research question. Moravians were assigned to four different groups within the Church; Single Brethren’s Choir, Single Sisters’ Choir, Married Persons’ Choir, and Widows’ Choir. In these groups were members labeled as “laborers”, and the laborer’s job was to conversate with each member of their Choir in order to guide them to strengthen their personal connection to God. We also discovered that decisions in the Moravian Church was decided through “the lot”. The lot involved praying over a dilemma, and then putting bible verses into a box and drawing one. Depending on if the bible verse was positive or negative determined the solution to the dilemma. This directly applies to John Willey’s life. John Willey lamented his work at Fulnec, when he was appointed Laborer of the Single Brethren’s Choir. Now knowing this background information we can apply that most of the decisions in John Willey’s life were not determined by him but rather through the lot.
After discussing our question and figuring out our answer, it was time for us to create our digital artifact. We decided to have different pages for each of the tools we used to answer our research question. The Story Maps we created is just one of the useful tools we were introduced to in class that helped us answer our research question. The Story Map illustrates John Willey’s travels through England and Northern Ireland. This offers new information that the memoir alone could not provide. Bodenhamer states, “all spaces contain embedded stories based on what has happened there” (16). When simply looking at the memoir it’s hard to fathom how far and frequently John Willey was called to serve, but looking at the Story Map really puts it into perspective. Just one example of how Bodenhamer’s statement and our research question play hand-in-hand when observing the memoir through a Story Map is when talking about Cootehill. Cootehill is located in Northern Ireland and at this time the area was dealing with poverty and hunger due to the Potato Famine. This could explain why the Church sent John Willey there, especially since it is described to be in poor condition. This is just one example of how one of the tools in our digital artifact has helped us determine John Willey’s agency.
I personally have never worked with wordpress and was very unfamiliar with creating my own website. One of our group members seemed to be somewhat familiar with the platform but due to personal problems was not able to contribute. This left Tyler and me scrambling, trying to figure out how to work wordpress and also how we would make up for the extra work we now had to do. Professor Faull and Carrie Primann were instrumental in helping us create our website. Without them, our digital artifact would be unnavigable and our answer to our research question would have been very weak. The snaptalk presentation was also very helpful, as it forced us to figure out our research question, tools we would use to answer the question, and the layout of the website before we had anything concrete. I think one of the most important things we did as a group was look for sources outside of the curriculum, like Professor Faull’s book and our secondary sources like the list of Yorkshire Families that revealed information on John Willey’s family.
Overall, I am very pleased with the state of our digital artifact and think it came out really well. It is clear and navigable, and I think Tyler and I did a good job overcoming some adversity and successfully answering the research question using evidence to back our claim. When I first signed up for this class I had no idea what to expect. To me, the first assignment seemed so random to me. I thought to myself, “Wow the only thing I have to do for this class is read a random guy’s memoir from hundreds of years ago and type it out word-for-word?”. As the course has progressed however, my view on the assignments and this memoir has changed. This memoir has become more than a document written from someone hundreds of years ago. Now this is someone’s legacy that I have helped to preserve and have honestly grown to love to work on. I find it fascinating how much information can be pulled from the pages and how I started by simply transcribing a document to making a full website based off the text. This digital artifact is the physical manifestation of my progress in this course and I will miss working on John Willey’s memoir every week.
Jacob Hubbard is a sophomore at Bucknell University, and is from San Francisco, CA.
