In a recent discussion with another supporter of the Bridgeville Area Historical Society, I found myself tabulating the impressive list of things the Society has accomplished in its brief life. I ended up suggesting that he visit our website, “bridgevillehistory.org”, which I characterized as easily the best one in this area.
The Society website is the product of Ed Wolf; he has every right to be proud of it. The amount of historical information it provides is outstanding. I am particularly impressed with menu item “Bridgeville History”. It consists of sixteen separate articles in chronological order, derived from our series of workshops at the Bridgeville Public Library eight years ago.
The first article, “Bridgeville in Pre-colonial Times”, is accompanied by a brief slide show with illustrations extracted from the workshops. We are in the process of providing Ed with appropriate slides for each of the other articles.
In addition, we are supplying him with similar source material from two other historical series – “Bridgeville High School History” and “George Washington in Western Pennsylvania” – based on workshops from the Society’s “Second Tuesday” program. Also supplemented by slide shows, they will provide viewers with access to a valuable collection of historical information.
An equally valuable resource is the menu item “The Archives”, taken from the History Center’s impressive collection of artifacts. Subject areas include “Area Sports”, Around Town”, “Bridgeville Schools”, “Local Businesses”, “Notable Residents”, and “The Neighborhoods”. The first five areas feature slide shows of relevant photographs, each accompanied by a descriptive caption.
“The Neighborhoods” is still a work in progress. Bridgeville has been subdivided into sixteen unique neighborhoods, as illustrated by up-to-date maps. Eventually we hope to have narrative input from residents of each neighborhood. For example, the page entitled “Bell Town” has an eloquent reminiscence by Virginia Regine Bourg, entitled “Growing Up in Bell Town During the Great Depression”.
Of course, I am partial to menu item “Water Under the Bridge”, which is an archive of these columns, dating back to 2016. It is easy to question archiving this column on an historical society website, although its author has become so old that every recollection he has qualifies as being historical. Nonetheless a significant number of the columns have topics that have historical relevance to this area.
My friend did indeed visit the website and was properly impressed. I passed on his compliments to Ed Wolf and was surprised by Ed’s response. He was pleased that his efforts had been appreciated, but implied that my characterization of the Bridgeville website might be inaccurate. He referred me to the website for the Fort Vance Historical Society, in the Burgettstown area, and reported he had just finished pulling it together.
That website comes very close to being a true “virtual museum”. One of their goals is to digitize their archives for the benefit of the Burgettstown area. They have been working on this for six years and have compiled a vast amount of digital information.
The “Photo Galleries” section of the website is similar in content to “The Archives” section of the Bridgeville website; it is subdivided into eight subsections. Each photograph has a descriptive caption. Once again, this is an easy way for the viewer to take a random walk through history in a specific community.
The “Archival Resources” section is truly impressive. It houses the results of their digitization effort – eleven categories with as many as two dozen items in each one. I started with “Businesses” and quickly found one entitled “RailBuff”. It turned out to be a twenty-six-page document written in 2010 by “WNP”, which was full of references to Bridgeville.
The author’s father grew up in Bridgeville and was fascinated by Mayer Field in the early 1920s. The article includes a photograph of a biplane in front of the hanger, that I don’t think we have. The author gained his love of railroading, and especially of the P & WV line “up Millers Run” from his father.
The “Military” section also appealed to me immediately. The Burgettstown area had its own Company K during the Civil War, this one from the 140th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. The website entry for it is the complete seventy-eight-page history of the Company, including a description of all the campaigns in which it participated and a roster of all its men.
As a reminder, Bridgeville’s Company K was part of the First Pennsylvania Cavalry. There is a similar history of that unit; I am embarrassed that I haven’t procured a copy of it for our History Center. Add that to my bucket list!
The Fort Vance people have digitized well over three hundred significant documents – an impressive achievement. I am not convinced that that level of detail is justified for our situation. The Fort Vance Society is small and very limited in space for archiving. They rent a small room in the local library.
With the resources we have, I think it would be sufficient to post a catalogue of documents on the website and encourage researchers to visit the History Center for detailed information. For example, our Society has an extensive collection of files on Bridgeville families; perhaps we should list their surnames on the website.
Similarly, Fort Vance has fully digitized six Yearbooks. Perhaps it would be constructive if we were to list all the issues of the Bridger and all the Yearbooks in our archives on our website. Somehow digitizing that many pages doesn’t seem a good use of our resources.
Unquestionably the Internet and retrieval of digital information is the wave of the future. Nonetheless it can’t replace the experience of turning a Higbe Glass goblet over to look for the Bumble Bee logo on the bottom, or leafing through Mike Carrozza’s binder on the Chartiers Branch Railroad, or thumbing through an eighty-year-old copy of the Bridgeville News. Our challenge is to utilize leading edge technology as a conduit to explore our treasure house of historical artifacts.