and ad adoptive son Patrick Hayes. In additio to digitizing and preserving addition partne partner materials in our Digital Library, we som sometimes work with students, staff, a and volunteers to transcribe selecti selections and increase access through enhan enhanced metadata. With collections alread already digitized, transcription is an ideal p project for remote work. John Barry—known as “the father of the U US Navy”—and his nephew and grand grandnephew have been the draw for most scholarship on the collection as the th bulk of the papers relate to thes these three men. However, there are seve seventy-five series in the collection, and— and—scattered throughout several of them—a th significant number of lett letters written in Spanish caught my attention. The letters were sent betw between members of the Moran fam family of Havana, Cuba, and me members of the Hayes family of Phi Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, mostly bet between 1815 and 1820. The fam families were business associates in shipping and mercantile, bu but the letters reveal that their pe personal and intimate connections ra ran much deeper. I wanted to hi highlight these letters in the co collection, not only to provide gr greater accessibility through tr transcription, but also to amplify L Latinx voices that had been p previously overlooked. the secrets Revealing letters love of D Deciphering Coded Language Pap ers . ry-Hay es Papers ry Barry-Hay ple from the Bar sample A letter sam . Museum Museum. t Seapor Courtesy of Independence Transcription and Translation of Nineteenth-century Spanish-language Correspondence Rebecca Oviedo, Villanova University s I began this project in 2020 by identifying the Spanish-language letters. Working remotely from home, I relied heavily on my Argentine-born husband Luis for help with transcribing and translating. But when I saw how many letters there were, I realized I needed more help—and I knew that this would be a great project for students to gain archival experience. My initial idea was to engage a Spanish-language class. When that did not pan out, I reached out to Villanova’s history department, and hired two graduate students during the spring semester of 2021: Micaela Miralles-Bianconi and Anamartha Hinojosa. Miralles-Bianconi and Hinojosa were both fantastic to work with and were eager about the project. As a small cohort, we worked intimately with the digitized documents, getting to know the Continued on page 24>> July/August 2021 ome collections carry hidden content awaiting discovery. In 2009, Villanova University digitized the Barry-Hayes Papers, owned by the Independence Seaport Museum, through one of our regional digital partnerships. 1 The collection includes the business, political, and personal papers related to American Revolutionary War hero Commodore John Barry and his nephew 6 ARCHIVAL OUTLOOK