WCHS Home

News and Projects

Updated 10/14/08

Newsletter Index Now Available

A complete every-name index to the WCHS newsletter Volumes 1–25 is now available, thanks to the hard work of volunteer Sherry Shiffer. Now you will be able to quickly find the exact location of people's names in each of the first 50 issues of Lest We Forget - Wyoming County Pioneers. This valuable resource consists of 158 double-sided sheets (316 total pages), printed on 8.5x11-inch, three-hole-punched paper, ready to put into your binder. The cost is $30.00 ($24.00 for members). Please order using this form.

View a sample page (PDF, 192 KB)

During the Open House in May, members of the 1122 D.A.R.N. N-track Railroaders Club assembled their wonderful model rairoad display of old-time Tunkhannock.	A close-up of some of the buildings and tracks in the model

Factoryville, PA 18419 – The 'Hollow' in the Beech Woods

This is a newly-published book by local historian and long-time researcher Allean Derr about the town of Factoryville and its families. It contains many photographs that were collected from residents with subjects like schools, railroads, Keystone Academy (Keystone College), famous son Christy Mathewson, and early families like the Reynolds and Capwells.

View Sample Pages: Page 270 (200 KB), Page 325 (176 KB)

This work is a hefty 405 pages with a paper cover, and you may order it directly from the author for $25.00 plus $1.50 sales tax for PA residents, and $3.00 postage per book:

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

Gina Evans and Glenn Stark (photo, right) have been busy with this wonderful project, and we're proud to finally share it with you. 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 soon be available online for you to search, and we will be updating it as further scans are completed. The photos will be for sale beginning this fall, and different sizes will be offered. Keep checking back for more details!

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.