Sunday, July 27, 2008

U of Scranton History Major Volunteers at the Society

This summer, Erik Lesniak a history major at the University of Scranton, is volunteering with the Society. The 2007 Tome School graduate is also taking a minor in creative writing and is interested in applying new media methods to the study of the past. At the Society, Eric is doing restoration work on a model of a 19th century Cecil County house that is in our collection and is also examining the possibility of writing an article for our journal. It is always exciting to see young scholars emerge, particulary when they apply their interests to the study of local history. We are pleased that Eric is spending part of his summer with us and taking on a couple of worthwhile projects.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Over 29,000 Cemetery Records Online

As we blogged Sunday evening, we were able to add a large database of Cecil County tombstone inscriptions thanks to outstanding work done by Gary Burns. Today Gary gave us additional data, and the database now contains over 29,000 inscriptions from several dozen cemeteries throughout the county.

Check it out at the URL below since we're sure it will help you will local research.

www.cchistory.org/cemetery

We hope to add more digital collections in the future.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Researcher's Alert: Over 16,000 Tombstone Inscriptions Placed Online

One of our most experienced family history researchers and a past president of the Genealogical Society of Cecil County, Gary Burns, has worked several years transcribing tombstones at practically every known cemetery in Cecil County. From Bald Friar to Warwick, and every other place in between, he and helpers, have visited quite old country graveyards, as well as those in towns, to record data found on the memorials. Once they collected the information, they entered it into an Excel Spreadsheet.

Gary has given us a copy of this insightful work and we have created a web page for the product, since it will be extremely helpful for researchers. As it stands now, it contains over 16,000 entries for Cecil County Tombstones. It is still a work in progress and we will add additional data as Gary makes it available. (Right now it is only through the letter P.)

The Society appreciates the opportunity to make this valuable product available to online visitors to the Society's web site. We thank Gary and all those who contributed to this work. We will update this as he gets more work done

Click here to visit the appropriate section of the web site.