Continuing to Acquire Outstanding Primary Research Materials

We recenty acquired a couple of ledgers books for our collection from the middle of the 19th century, which should provide researchers with new primary research documents. One is an 1866 inventory of all the businesses in the county with weights and measures and the other is an 1841 inventory of mills by Adam Whann.

Ernest Howard Fact File Digitized

A fast facts file on Cecil County History was created by Ernest A. Howard in the 1960s or 1970s. Based on years of research, he outlined basic data pertaining to the area's towns, villages, companies, geography, churches, organizations, and much more on 3 X 5 cards. Although it was created nearly half-a-century ago, the cards are a source our volunteer staff consults when helping patrons with an initial investigation for they contains a basic framework for initiating a project. Since our library staff finds valuable insights on those old 3 X 5 cards, the Society’s editor, Milt Diggins, digitized the material so our Internet patrons would have access.

Click here to access the Howard Files, including his almanac.

Death & Burial Records Added to Web Site

Evelyn Wekke and Billie Todd, two of our volunteers, have digitized some of the death and burial records in our collection. (Evelyn is shown at right working in the library.) Their products can be accessed by clicking on the link here. Maryland law required a burial permit in order for a body to be interred and a sexton or other person could not permit a burial unless it was accompanied with a certificate. Locally the burial permits were issued by coroners and the burial spreadsheet contains abstracted data data from 1912 to 1955. The death certificates came from the file copies kept in the local corners office. These records are important sources of genealogical information and Evelyn and Billie are working on more of these valuable projects, including additional death records. Billie, our most experienced genealogist and the person we turn to with our complex family history research questions, is also working on digitizing (with images) some of our naturalization records. We thank them for this valuable contribution for we're sure researchers will find insights here. Please check back occasionally as we add more of the content they've created to the web site.

Researcher Alert - Additional Naturalization Records & More Added to Collection

We're constantly adding new research materials to our holdings and this past week we've added a few items, which will be of great assistance to researchers. We now have a large run of naturalization records from about 1889 into roughly the 1920s. We also acquired the register of intended voters for 1925 and records from the Bohemia River Bridge.

Naturalization Records, Optometry Register & More Added to Collection

It’s always exciting when we add primary source research materials to the collection, especially when the documents involve records that haven't been accessed in a century or more. With some degree of regularity that sort of exciting thing happens, and just last week we had an opportunity to receive a group of new research materials materials when we were taken to a seldom visited storage room deep in the basement of the old courthouse, a room that overflowed with leather-bound volumes of old records.

As the official county archives we were asked to check out some of these unexpected treasures, to see if they belong in the research archives. Well they do for they are full of nuggets of information for genealogists and local history researchers. As these records aged and were seldom used by the public, they were placed in long term storage and were largely forgotten.

In the material that we have acquired thus far are three volumes of naturalization records from about 1905 – 1921, a debt docket the middle of the 19th century, and the Optomestrists Registration book. We have these just in time for the summer vacation season, a time when many genealogists hit the road in search of elusive ancestors. These might just contain some clues for the traveling or local genealogist. Continue to monitor the blogosphere as we continue sifting through these materials.

Lights, Camera, Action . . . . Old Home Movies Tell a Story

Tucked away in closets and drawers gathering dust, are old home movies made in Cecil County. Some of those flickering images recall how area families celebrated holidays, birthdays, graduations and the gathering of relatives. Some focus on sports and school events, town parades, and fairs, but also squeezed on the aging footage are valuable scenes of the landscape and our built environment. These types of relics from the past grow more valuable with each passing decade and they capture a few minutes of time in a unique, valuable format.

For some time now we’ve said that we’d like to add some of those reels to our collection. Well Jane Bellmyer came through for us again. (You may recall that in 2006, she helped us kick off our Cecil Sounds collection.) A few weeks ago she brought us several reels of film showing the Weaver family, Wiley Manufacturing, the Conowingo Dam, the Susquehanna River and the bridges across the waterway. We just had those digitized so we can watch them on the computer and we just finished take our first glance at those decades old movies. We found them fascinating, especially the scenes of the launching of a boat at Wiley Manufacturing and the water rushing through the Dam.

Click here to review an out-take of this video on our web site. We're still working on publishing this piece, so we'll have improvements on the page over the next few days so check back occassinally as we process this valuable addition to our research collection.

Thanks Jane for continuing to help us build unique collections for researchers.

Lost Video Joins Cecil's Lost Sounds

The Society launched a new collections initiative aimed at capturing largely forgotten recordings from the County’s past at the end of 2004. We got the idea from the National Public Radio after hearing a broadcast called Lost and Found Sound. When our request first went out for help in capturing these materials, the Cecil Whig’s Jane Bellmyer answered the call, finding four old audio tapes from WSER, an Elkton AM radio station, which was a full service broadcaster in that era when local DJs hosted most of the shows and produced the news, sports, and advertising. Jane was the news director at the station from 1980 to 1988. Since the time when she helped us kick off this collection, we’ve added other items and you may want to read the press release on the subject..

Jane occasionally comes in with some additions, but a month or two ago she brought in some 8mm home video of the launching of a boat at Wiley Manufacturing, a Port Deposit company that closed several decades ago, and some family home footage. We are in the process of getting those digitized so these lost moving images will be available to researchers. We’ll also add some samples to the web site so you will know that we have them available.

Additionally, we acquired two new items for our oral history collection this past week. Kara Green, our project coordinator, interviewed 94-year-old retired school teacher, Lilian Watkins and 84- year-old Karl Feucht, a retired farmer. We’ll get some samples of those up online shortly. Both are very insightful pieces.

Please keep us in mind if you have some audio or video from a long ago parade, sports-event or some other local public activity, for we would like to add those to the collection. In this new information era, sounds and video are going to be important additions to research collections as print media becomes less important.

This is just one of many new initiatives being undertaken by the Historical Society of Cecil County to collect and chronicle unique aspects of our past. It joins other innovative program such as the Cecil County Veteran's Oral History Project.

Mike