New Tasks New Insights

Saturday at the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society, I spent another day learning the ropes of the facility. The menial task of filing funeral announcement cards are finally finished after many frustrating and stressful hours. The frustration came in when some “thoughtful” person misfiled or multiple copies were separated by dozens of cards requiring me to backtrack to find the proper spot. When I was almost 2/3 of the way through the collection, I came to several cards that were folded so the name was showing instead of the picture on the front. From that point on I opened each card, then went back through to make them all match.

Saturday, I started another chapter in tasks that needed done. When an item, document, or photograph is donated to the society, it has to be given a number and catalogued to simplify its location of storage, the donor, the date donated, its condition and a short description of the item. It’s not a difficult task, but can be time consuming, especially if multiple documents or articles are given to us at once.

With less than 2 hours before closing time, a lady carried in a small blanket. It was obvious that she had something inside. I was unprepared for what she had inside. She opened the bundle after sitting it on the desk. I could see why she had the items protected. It was a stack of old documents, ledgers, bills of lading, and letters that were found in her attic. The stack was nearly 6 inches high. She also shared there were more and wanted us to visit sometime and remove the remainder.

The house was one of the older homes in Stahlstown and the documents reflected that. Other than trying to decipher the fancy cursive writing on the documents, most were legible. Some of the papers were fragile and I was almost afraid to touch them. I knew that I wasn’t able to catalogue them all, so with freshly washed hands, I began to separate them into piles to facilitate the cataloguing process later. Notes were placed in one pile, papers with the same name in another, bills of lading and order forms in a third. Tucked into manila folders, they would be safe until the task of completing the forms and inserting them into protective plastic sheets can be accomplished. I was thrilled to see some of the dates on them were into the mid to late 1800s.