Uncovering overlooked local history with Heritage Montgomery

Hello all! I'm Isabella Hlavacek and my internship this semester is with Heritage Montgomery. HM is a non-profit organization which has a mission of furthering Montgomery County heritage and history while protecting and highlighting various buildings and landscapes in the county that have historical and cultural value. The three big undertakings that HM is busy with right now are African American and Quaker Heritage sites in the county, the Agricultural Reserve, and Transportation Trails such as the C&O Canal. Another big goal of HM's is promoting local tourism through fostering a pride of place in MoCo.

Dr. Blair was nice enough to help me get some information about the possibility of interning with HM, and I'm so glad she did. I've been working at HM since January and now that the semester is in full swing I go to the office twice a week. Saturday March 2nd I was fortunate enough to assist in being a Special Prize Judge for MCPS' National History Day competition with Sarah Rogers (Executive Director) and Jamie Williams (Administrator) at HM. Those students who took home prizes for the main categories are going to the Maryland state finals (taking place at UMBC this year!) and the winners at state finals will move on to the Nationals!

We got to examine a ton of cool history projects from middle and high school students in the county. Since the project I'm personally working on is researching Heritage Montgomery's African American heritage sites, the category I helped judge featured a special HM sponsored cash prize for those high school students who did extraordinary work in furthering African American history.

When the weather gets nicer I'm going to go on a tour of all of the HM sites I am researching so I can get some personal experience exploring them. Later down the line I'm also going to be contacting the individuals who run some of these sites, such as the lovely people who run the Warren Historic Site in Dickerson, and helping them take inventory of any old records, information, and uncovered stories they might have related to their sites.

Basically it's a big ol' local history party!

Jamie Williams (front) and Sarah Rogers of Heritage Montgomery soaking in the intrigue of History Day

Gaithersburg Historic Museum Park

Gaithersburg Historic Museum Park

My name is Erik and I am a senior attending UMBC. My internship is with the city of Gaithersburg Museum.  My career goal is  to be a teacher and this internship is a great opportunity since its helping me put historical research together for general  audience as well as preparing educational information. In the internship my main task is to improve some of the museum existing exhibitions such as the Gaithersburg observatory exhibit. Another part of the internship is collecting historical information and creating my own exhibit to be display in the museum.

The internship is helping me understand more about the way the field of public history works and what it takes to run a successful museum. I am also being sent to few meetings to get knowledge of how museums obtain their artifacts. To make any exhibit there are multiple variables that need to be taken into inconsideration, such as the target audience and the information one could obtain for that specific topic.

The artifacts used in an exhibition are also important: there might be multiple objects available but you need to find the right one to best tell your story. A few categories an exhibit item needs to meet are its relationship to the topic, its cultural value or how well it represents a large group or community.

Overall the internship is giving me great skill and knowledge that I could use in a classroom or in a future job.  

Hey Mom, I’m at the Maryland State Archives!

My name is Morgan Miller and for my graduate internship, I was able to work at the Maryland State Archives (MSA) in the Special Collections Department. The Special Collections Department was the best fit for me because Special Collections is where you get to see all the cool and unique stuff! For the purposes of my blog posts, I will go through the beginning, middle, and end of my internship through the collections that I was able to work on. My central question has been: what is the best way to make a collection accessible to the public? So let’s start at the beginning! I was able to go through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Photo collection (MSA SC 908) and update the MSA catalog.

The WPA Photo Collection is a collection of photographs for the book Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State. This was done through the Federal Writers’ Project, as part of the WPA. The collection goes through different scenes from the different counties within Maryland. These scenes include photos of houses, agriculture work, leisure activities, and industrial work that range from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis to the first George Washington Monument in George Washington Monument State Park, Washington County, Maryland. Catalog information ranged from detailed descriptions of photos to simple phrases like “man fishing” or “children on road”.

Naturally, this presented a problem for the MSA catalog. Who could find a picture they wanted to see if the only information they saw was “man fishing”? What if they needed a photo from a specific county and could not find that information accessible?

It became my task to fix this issue.

Through the help of my superiors, Maria Day and Megan Craynon, I was able to formulate a template to input information from the photos into the catalog. If you go to the website and look at MSA SC 908-1-1, you will see a description that follow this format:

City, County. Object in photo, location (or any extra information found with the photo or on it). WPA Number.

This format allows people to see all the information associated with the photo that is being described. Now the caption “man fishing” has a location and any other information that could be found relevant.

The first part of my MSA experience has been amazing. Being taught how to catalog information has helped me in other areas of my life and has taught me a lot about myself. I look forward to my next blog post about the middle part of my MSA experience!