Please visit this site at its NEW location: http://www.pawchs.org
The Rootsweb/Ancestry site is no longer being updated as of 6/6/08.

WCHS Home

News and Projects

Updated 6/2/08

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Dates to Remember:

Founder's Day
On Saturday, June 21, 2008 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, the WCHS will again participate in the Founder's Day Celebrations.

Wyoming County Fair
From August 27 to September 1, 2008, the society will have a booth at the fair and will be looking forward to your visit. The museum and library will be closed during the fair.

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FOUNDER'S DAY, June 21

Join us for a special display on Tunkhannock businesses, and tour the Museum. The genealogical library will be open from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The Society will host the following authors for book-signings and discussions about their local history works:

• Allean Fassett Derr for "Factoryville, PA 'The Hollow' In The Beech Woods"
• Sean Billings for "Postcard History Series: Wyoming County"
• Cece Krewson for "A Millennium Keepsake: Wyoming County Salutes the Millennium - A Historic Overview of Wyoming County, PA 1700-2000 Volume 2"
• Tim Hortman for "Hop Bottom, PA 125th Anniversary Commemorative Book"
• John Orlandini for "Indian Settlers and Forgotten Places in the Endless Mountains"

We will also have the new book "Images of America: Lake Carey, PA" by Walter Broughton for sale, as well as books from Charles Petrillo. This will be a great time to meet these historians and snag a copy of these books for yourself or as a gift.

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New Search Feature

We hope you've had a chance to try the new Search feature on the home page. This is an extremely useful tool for genealogists and historians, allowing you to search for people and place names throughout the entire WCHS web site. It is updated each time there is a change on the site, so new items that are added are included in your searches.

The tool has options to search for single words, several words at a time, and even phrases. You may also use Boolean characters like quotes, and plus and minus signs. Click Help in the search box to see how to use the search feature more effectively. You may also search within your results, which makes it easy to narrow down a large amount of data. The results will also include the "alt" names of images on web pages, which may include names of people and locations in photos.

When you're done with your search, click the WCHS title box to return to our home page (just like you can above).

The free search service is provided by PicoSearch, and the results page does include small ads; this is a small price to pay for such a valuable tool. Please let us know what you think.

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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.

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:

 

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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.

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Complete Newsletter Index

Sherry Shiffer has been diligently indexing the Lest We Forget Wyoming County Pioneers and it's almost ready for prime time. This is a huge job, and the final product will be a valuable tool for researchers. The price hasn't yet been set. Please tell us if you are interested by clicking on the button and sending an email, and we will let you know as soon as it's ready.

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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.

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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.

 

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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)

 

 

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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.