Unlocking the Secrets of Glensheen
“Don’t give up. Normally it is the last key on the ring which opens the door.” -Paulo Coelho
I started my internship at Glensheen in early June of this year. When I started I assumed, like most people, that there was not much new to learn about Glensheen or the Congdon family. I was happily proven wrong. When I began I was told of many of the ongoing projects and already completed projects. It allowed me to see that there was still much to learn about this historic estate.
My first project was simple. Take some keys and find where they go. The first couple of days I worked on finding where cabinet keys went. I took a box of several small keys and tried them in cabinets, dressers, and desks. After a couple days only a handful of keys had been matched up with locks. I was then put on a very similar job. I was to take a box of original house keys and find which doors they belong to. These were keys that were not known to open any specific door.
Some keys had tags attached to them. But, many of these tags were illegible or used terms that the current staff was not accustomed to. Each key was imprinted with an H, followed by a three digit number. The numbers ranged from 100 to 499. Each key had the same basic shape, except for a few keys that were slightly thicker.
In the beginning all I had to go on was a box of keys and a bunch of doors. I split the keys up into smaller groups, mostly by grouping the numbers together; the 100s were put together, as well as the 200s, and so forth. Once I was working with smaller groupings of keys, I could continue by trying each ring of keys on each door. I knew that the keys were numbered for a reason; I just needed to figure out the system.
I had used a trial and error system for a while. But while I was working on fitting a particularly difficult key into a lock, I noticed that on the plate of the door there was a number stamped. It was an H followed by a three digit number, the same as on the keys. This lit a light bulb above my head. The doors and the keys were stamped with the same number.
Some of the doors were locked, so I could not be sure if they were numbered or not. The Basement had doors that were numbered in the 100s, 200s, and 300s. The first floor had doors numbered with 200s and 300s. The second floor had doors labeled with 300s only. The fourth floor contained doors that were numbered with 100s and 400s.
After I had written down which doors had numbers, and which ones didn't, I went through my large collection of keys. I wrote down every numbered key so that I could see which doors had keys with the same number. I then worked on one floor at a time. Since some keys didn't have a door, and some doors didn't have a key, or were not labeled, I knew I would still have to try random keys into random doors.
Some of the keys would turn in the lock, but the deadbolt would not move. This could be due to several reasons, including age and non usage. Some deadbolts had even been painted over, causing problems with reading the stamped number, as well as making it difficult for the deadbolt to work. Many of the doors did not have a number stamped on them; these doors were usually bathroom doors and the pocket doors on the main floor.
Many of the keys did not match door numbers, and many of the doors didn't have a numbered key to go with it. So now the slow process of elimination continues. The keys that do not have a door need to be tried in doors that do not have keys. Some keys may never be found, but if they are found there is a tag waiting for them. The keys were then tagged with a number 1-100, and labeled with which door they went to. They were then organized and hung in a way that would make it easy for anyone looking for a certain key to find.
