Wyoming County Historical Society News & Projects

News and Projects

Updated 6/20/10

SAVE THE DATE!

Kiwanis Wyoming County Fair

September 1–6, 2010
Visit our booth at the Kiwanis Wyoming County Fair, Route 6 West, Meshoppen. The WCHS will be closed during fair week.

Footnote.com Membership Discount

For a limited time, WCHS members can obtain a new or renewal full-access annual membership at a 50% discount ($39.95 instead of $79.95) to Footnote.com.

Footnote is amassing the largest collection of original documents. With unique partnerships with the National Archives and others, Footnote has millions of original source documents that include information about people, places, events and topics. Family historians are among those who contribute their digital images of documents, manuscripts, photographs, and more to this online resource.

To participate, paid members may email Paula at society@epix.net and ask for the Footnote.com discount. You will receive further instructions in a return email message.

New Newspaper Abstracts Online

On the Newspaper Abstracts page:

Republican Farmer & Democratic Journal (Luzerne Co) 1833
Republican Farmer & Democratic Journal (Luzerne Co) 1834
Republican Farmer & Democratic Journal (Luzerne Co) 1835
Republican Farmer & Democratic Journal (Luzerne Co) 1836
Wyoming Republican & Farmers Herald (Luzerne Co) 1837

Society Photos

Visit this page to see photos of the society in action. Please let us know if you have photos to add to our site!

Starkville ME Church

We are searching for information about the Starkville Methodist-Episcopal Church, which was also called the Stark Church. It was located next to the Starkville Cemetery in East Lemon, just off Route 92, along the cemetery road. It may have been torn down in the 1920's. If you know about this church, or especially if you have photos of it, please contact the society.

Delayed Birth Records Project

Paula is currently extracting these to be collected into booklet form and sold at a nominal fee as a fundraiser for the society. Delayed Births were recorded for people usually born between 1893 and 1905 (but sometimes earlier) whose births were not initially documented by the county, but who needed proof of their birth date and place later, mostly for Social Security.

Local Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Database

The society is collecting information on veterans from the local area and would like YOUR input. If you served your country or have a loved one who did, please tell us. This database will prove invaluable to future researchers and will leave a lasting record of Wyoming County's many loyal veterans.

We are currently concentrating on World War I and World War II veterans, but we welcome data from any person who served in the Armed Forces.

You may download our form in either PDF or plain text format, and mail it back to the society at the address on the form.

If you need Adobe's free PDF Reader software, download the latest version here.

Photo Scanning Project Scanning project photo

Gina Evans and Glenn Stark (photo, right) have been very busy with this wonderful project. They are organizing and scanning thousands of old photos of people and places in Wyoming County (and the surrounding areas) into a huge digital database.

These are photos that have been donated to the society over the years, and which were found among the holdings. After scanning, Gina and Glenn keep the original photos safe in individual, archival envelopes for the future.

The INDEX of these photos will eventually be available online for you to search, and we will be updating it as further scans are completed. The photos are available for a small fee and different sizes are offered.

Read this article in the New Age-Examiner about the project. (5/14/2008)

Gravestone Photo Project

Paula and Ron Radwanski have bravely taken on the daunting task of photographing all gravestones in Wyoming County, and they are a good way toward accomplishing their goal! The inscriptions from the photographed stones are being used to update and add to the society's cemetery inscription database, started back in 1975 by the following members: Jean Brewer, Hazelle and Foster Brooks, Dolores Radwanski, Katherine Kiethline, Dorothy and Lew Cavalier, Rodney Ball, and Paula. These photos may also be the only lasting records of stones that will eventually deteriorate or be completely grown over.

The project began while the couple was taking GPS readings to create the Wyoming County Cemetery Map. Slogging up hills and through the brush and overgrown weeds to some of the out-of-the-way grave sites, they thought it was a shame that many people would never see the stones, so they began to take photographs. Things took off from there.

The photos available so far can be viewed at the society on the new computer, and will eventually be offered to patrons for a small fee.