REMEMBERING THE CARD CATALOG — Steubenville and Jefferson County Public Library Director Mike Gray examines the newly bound volumes in the local history section of the Schiappa Branch Library. –Contributed
STEUBENVILLE — Forty years ago, the local library system had about 150 books in its local history collection. Today, the collection contains more than 8,000 books, 120,000 digitized pages of local history and 3,000 local history photographs.
Local history collections are different from typical public library collections. Although libraries sometimes purchase new books on local history, more often than not books are donated, found at garage sales or in private collections. Other “books” are created by local history librarians who compile, collect, and index materials to provide information on a particular subject.
Erica Grubbs is a librarian who curates and often creates new collections housed at the Schiappa branch. I volunteer to catalog the collection, and this year we’ve added over 50 new items, all of which are digitized online in Digital Shoebox. Paper copies are returned from the bindery and placed in the collection.
Many yearbooks have been donated and we have a collection of over 225 yearbooks from past and present schools in Jefferson County. In addition to photos of graduates, the school yearbooks also contain information about the local villages and cities of these schools.
One of my favorite additions is the Dillonvale Scrapbook, donated by the Dolphy family. It is filled with photos and information about the Dillonvale area collected over the years by the late Steve Dolphy. Grubbs did some light editing and indexed the entire book. The book is available in hardcover and online editions. The History of the Steubenville Volunteer Fire Department was collected by Carol Weber. It covers the city’s firefighting history in the 19th century.
For research purposes, Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel’s United Steelworkers application cards were collected and cover the period from 1952 to the 1970s. Many of the steel giant’s records are kept in Charleston, and this small collection helps trace local employment history.
A frequent donor to our collection is Peter Bates, who discovered the “Wiggins Directory of 1883” for Jefferson County. This unique directory contains a comprehensive list of residents who lived in the county that year. City directories date back to 1856 and were available until publication ceased ten years ago. David McCann has also donated many items over the years. His “Diary of Elizabeth Goucher” is now in our collection. Jerry Green has also donated many items, including the “Diary of Estella Hutton.”
The book “Richmond Cemetery, Ohio” is now online and bound for collections, and allows readers to explore the burials at Richmond Cemetery.
Of interest to me is the Steubenville and Jefferson County Industrial Survey from 1935. Some may consider this outdated, but it is local history that gives you an idea of what industry was like 90 years ago.
“Steubenville Riverboat Captains” was prepared by Jerry Green, who used many sources to provide a history of the Ohio River based on a list of men who were riverboat captains in the 19th century.
Scrapbooks from the Wintersville Junior Federated Women’s Club from 1969-1970 have been “selectively edited,” indexed and included in the collection, showcasing local history from 50 years ago.
What about the “Final Impact Statement” for a new bridge over the Ohio River, now called the Veterans Memorial Bridge? In 1978, studies were completed and plans for the bridge were released.
“Taxpayer Stories” is a series of articles written by the late Geraldine Cohen of the Jefferson County Taxpayers Association for the paper between 1978 and 1991. The articles were discovered in an abandoned office and provide detailed local history of government agencies and organizations from that time.
The 1900 Steubenville atlas has been digitized, and pages can be enlarged online for easier viewing.
I found it odd that Grubbs was excited about the donation of a book called “Streetcars of Beaver County, Pennsylvania,” but then I realized that the local streetcar service that operated until 1938 was part of Beaver County and was called the Steubenville, East Liverpool, and Beaver System. Until this resource was added, it was hard to find information about our streetcar system.
Questions about the history of this regional railroad arise often, and Mr. Grubbs has compiled clippings of that history into a 40-page book that has been bound.
It covers the history of local churches, including Holy Name Parish and St. Joseph’s Church in Amsterdam.
The new book, “Spanish American War Veterans of Southeast Ohio,” has a military history theme.
The U.S. Census was used to create the book “African Americans in the 1900 Census.” Census information is kept with restrictions for 70 years after it is collected, so it is currently available through 1950.
These new sources include the histories of several families, including the Sherrards, Barlows, Gochers, Crews, and Ellisons. Today, computer-assisted searching is common, but book research remains a tool for genealogists.
“Talk Through Time” has been added to the collection. It is a compilation of interviews conducted in 1996 with Catherine Sinclair Minor, Jack Boyd and John Flenniken, in which they talk about the reconstruction of Fort Steuben from the 1970s through 1996. The benefit of adding these items to the online Digital Shoebox is that you can search the documents using keywords, eliminating the need to read through pages of material.
Do you have local history items hiding in your home? Something your grandparents hid, or something your family would like you to clear out of the house? Maybe it’s local history. Let a librarian decide if it’s something we should add to our collection. If you would like to keep the originals, the library will copy and digitize the relevant materials.
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