ARCHIVES PROJECT UPDATE: RESEARCH AND DIGITIZATION ROOM

Work on NCCHP's new Research and Digitization Room kicked off today. The new room will be conveniently located on the first floor of Building 15 and the official opening is planned for 2018. If you are one of the many who worked at Noble & Cooley back in the day, you may remember it as the box labelling room!

What is a Research and Digitization Room? There are two distinct functions:

Research Center: The room will be laid out to provide a comfortable place for researchers to view material from the NCCHP Archives. Because the archives are on the third floor in an unheated space conditions are less than ideal for spending hours looking over historic records and documents. The new room on the first floor will have a proper work space, lighting, a copier/scanner, and even a bit of heat to take the chill off.

Digitization Station: The digitization facility will be set up to make it easy to digitally photograph and/or scan documents, photos, artifacts and other items that are relevant to the Granville area and community. Our goal is that beginning in 2018 the digitization facility will open to the public and we will begin scanning historic photos and documents that are tucked away in local attics, barns and basements. Anyone who wants to have electronic files made of their old photo treasures, papers or artifacts will be welcome to bring them in for photographing or scanning at no charge. If you bring a USB flash drive you will be given a copy of the electronic files. More details to be shared when the time comes but that's the basic idea. Our mission is to make sure Granville's rich and amazing heritage is shared with the community and passed on to future generations.

Here's box labelling room this morning:

(NCCHP photo, 2017 Jun 25)

Here's the beginning of the Research and Digitization Room this afternoon:

(NCCHP photo, 2017 Jun 25)

Lots of work ahead to make this a comfortable, dust-free work space but it's a start. Stay tuned for progress reports!

NCCHP Archives and Genealogy Research

It has been over two years since the Archives Project kicked off in earnest. It has taken that long just to construct archives storage facilities, collect records, do a preliminary cleaning, get them organized, and re-boxed in archival containers. During that process we stumbled across some amazing documents. In the years ahead we will be reviewing the material itself in much more detail.

One of our very pleasant discoveries is the amount of material that relates to family histories, including handwritten payroll records dating from the 1880's, "Age and Schooling Certificates" required by law for underage workers, newspaper articles, and so on. We will be working to have this material digitized and made available on line.

As an example we researched the Age and Schooling Certificate for Fred Rowley:

Age and Schooling Certificate (NCCHP Archives, Genealogy Collection)

By combining information on the Certificate with information available on Ancestry.com, we learned that Fred's father William filed a Last Will and Testament in June 1893, months after signing the form that would allow his son to go to work at the age of 14. William died in August 1893 of tuberculosis. By putting these puzzle pieces together we can make a reasonable assumption that Fred wasn't going to work in November 1892 because he was on summer break. It was because his father was ill and the family would likely depend on Fred's income to help pay bills and offset the loss of his dad's income. Suddenly the story becomes much more meaningful and provides far more insight on the circumstances of one Granville family.

We believe that every Age and Schooling Certificate (and there are many) has a story and is a valuable part of Granville's community and family histories. They are another fascinating way in which NCCHP "keeps the drumbeat of history" alive.

Stay tuned to the blog for announcements later in 2017 regarding the availability of NCCHP's genealogy collection on line.

And what became of Fred, you ask? He lived a long and happy life, eventually moving from Granville to East Longmeadow. Here he is with two of his grand-kids. Good job, Fred.