Bonus: A Humble Origin Story

In this bonus episode of Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant, Kathryn Gehred dives into the podcast's origin story. While working as an editor of the Papers of Martha Washington, Gehred became very familiar with how people wrote letters in the 18th and early 19th centuries. She noticed that people often abbreviated the closing of their letters which she found very relatable. This inspired the podcast and why Gehred presents women through an entire letter or another document, offering a deeper understanding of their personalities. 

 

Find the official transcript here. 

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. 

Episode Transcript

Kathryn Gehred (00:04):
Hey everyone, thanks for listening to our
first episode of season four. Asyou know, I end every episode
with the line, "I am as everyour most obedient and humble
servant," which also happens tobe the title of the podcast. I
get a few questions every nowand then about this, and I
thought it would be fun at thestart of the season to remind

(00:25):
you about my sign off and thetitle. My background is in
women's history, and for aboutseven years, I was an editor in
the Papers of Martha Washington.My job was finding, transcribing
and editing the historicalletters of Martha Washington and
publishing them into a volume.When a historian explores a
collection of letters, they'reusually looking for sources

(00:46):
connected to the argument thatthey're making. A lot of times,
they'll just go right to theindex to find the arguments that
they want. Almost nobodyjustreads a full volume of collected
letters. Most of the time, theseare tools. They're not something
for somebody to just read. Butas a documentary editor, I had
to read every single letter inits entirety, and I was working

(01:07):
on them a lot. I ended upgetting a really in depth look
into every single part of theseletters, including how they
addressed people and how theysigned off. And one of the
things that I noticed was theway everybody would sign off
their letters with your mostobedient and humble servant. But
when you're actually looking atthe letters, I noticed that they

(01:27):
actually don't write it all theway out almost ever. People
would abbreviate it within aninch of its life this sign off
your most obedient and humbleservant. So yes, they would use
it, but they would writesomething like y, r, O, B, T, H,
B, L, E, or Y, M, O, H, s, theywould not write out the entire
thing. And there's actually onegreat letter from one of Thomas

(01:49):
Jefferson's granddaughters whereshe basically like, I don't have
time to write the whole thing.And then she signed her name.
And so I thought it wasrelatable that these people who
could feel very distant andproper. We're using
abbreviations and sort of theway that we do today, in a way
that's really relatable. Andthat's kind of the point I want
to make in my podcast, is totake these people from a time

(02:10):
that's very different, and bringin what they were like as people
in a way that could be relatableand could help us understand
them. So I thought the titlewould be an insight into what
the podcast is about, becauseI'm featured in letters by
women, where we read the wholeletter. So we're reading the
whole signature out, and bylooking at the entire letter, we
get to know the whole person. Sonow you know why I am as ever,

(02:33):
your most obedient and humbleservant,
Your Most Obedient & HumbleServant is a production of R2
Studios, part of the RoyRosenzweig Center for History
and New Media at George MasonUniversity. I'm Kathryn Gehred
the creator and host of thispodcast. Jeanette Patrick and

(02:55):
Jim Ambuske are the executiveproducers. Hayley Madl is our
Graduate Assistant. Specialthanks to Virginia Humanities
for allowing me to use theirrecording studio. If you enjoyed
this episode, please tell afriend and be sure to rate and
review the series in yourpodcast app. For more great
history podcasts, head toR2studios.org. Thanks for

(03:20):
listening.